How long does it take to write a novel?
My first book Cuckoo took me my entire life up to that point. The next three: Every Vow You Break, Tarnished and The Long Fall took me a year each. The fifth, her Husband’s Lover, thanks to a false start, took two years. Then the sixth took four years to write. Indeed, it needs another draft, which I will attend to soon, but I don’t want to talk about that now.… read more
Well, we’re exhausted after the geographically challenging but enormously exciting Long Fall Blog Tour. It’s going to take weeks to recover!
The final stop off is in rural Herefordshire at Chocolate Chunky Munkie, blog of Jenny, 34. Her favourite genres are Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Dystopian, Vampires and Shape Shifters, but luckily she also likes Thrillers and Female Literature. Her very popular blog has hundreds of reviews, as well as giveaways and interviews.
The Long Fall gig is an extract from a bit further into the novel.… read more
My friend Ms Emma Kilbey finds a particularly shocking passage…
After a serene, heatwave-smoothed passage back home across the Irish sea, today’s Blog Tour stopoff is Erin’s Choice.
Erin is 23, and loves books. Her favourite genre is chick lit, but thankfully she can sometimes be persuaded to read the odd bit of crime fiction, too. There are hundreds of reviews, author interviews and guest reviews on her blog – no mean feat, as she has only been going for two years.… read more
So, to celebrate publication day, the blog tour stops off today at The Madwoman in the Attic, A great blog by Lisa D in Ireland. Lisa is a book obsessive, and writes for websites, print and radio. History is her passion and she’s currently working on a novel set, like The Long Fall, in two time periods.
My piece is about my top five domestic noir novels. As you will find out, I had a lot of difficulty choosing …
This is not a watercolour! It’s my photograph of the actual view from a beach in Ikaria.
Today, the Long Fall Blog Tour van stops off at The Book Trail, with a great article about the travelling aspect in the book and a giveaway.
Born out of a love of books and travel, The Book Trail is a blog after my own heart. Subtitled discovering the world, one book at a time, it features reviews and articles on books that involve journeys or have a strong sense of place.… read more
Today’s blog tour stops off at From First Page to Last. This fantastic blog is the brainchild of Janet, who says of herself:
I’m…a 36 year old, wife to one, mum to two. I work in legal publishing, so I spend all day reading legislation. I have a thing for reading and so I thought I’d set up this blog to record my bookish ramblings.
Her blog is a mixture of reviews, author/publisher spotlights and bookish news.… read more
The marvellous DEAD GOOD BOOKS are running a competition to win one of ten The Long Fall proofs.
It’s easy to enter!
My three 1980 notebooks
I am a great fan of notebooks. I have always kept what I call an Everything Book: just one journal that I carry everywhere with me in which I put everything: notes taken at meetings; ideas for stories; word or line sketches of things that take my fancy; eavesdroppings; doodles (rather too many doodles, if truth be told).
Why an Everything Book? Well, I am an alphabetiser, an organiser, a categoriser. By recording everything in just one place, I save a lot of energy that would otherwise be wasted by deciding where to put it.… read more
(This post expands on a NaNoWriMo pep talk I wrote a couple of years back).
Are you at the end of the first week of NaNoWriMo 2013? If so, congratulations!
If you are (and even if you’re not), it’s likely that you will be very familiar with this scary thought:
When you start to create something, YOU ARE FACED WITH INFINITE POSSIBILITIES.
You may sense the germ of an idea, a character, a colour, a bit of story or a setting, but beyond that, once you sit down to start whatever it is you’re making, anything can happen; you’re simply finding the best path through the whole universe of choice.… read more
