Walking the dog

Posted onOctober 15, 2023October 16, 2023Leave a comment

While I was writing my new novel, The Perfect Date, I gave it the working title The Dog Walker. Caz, the central character, is a professional dog walker, and it opens with her rescue dog discovering a body early one morning up on Brighton Racecourse.

She realises with horror that it's the man she met through a dating app, the Perfect Date she was due to see again that very evening. But worse – far worse – is that this is the second time this has happened to someone she was seeing. Is it a horrible coincidence? Or is there something else going on?

One Year, Two Books

Posted onApril 19, 2022April 22, 2022Leave a comment

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

Teaching News, and Ten Mistakes all Crime Writers should Avoid

Posted onApril 25, 2017Leave a comment

On Friday 19 May, I will be guest novelist tutor on the Professional Writing Academy Secrets of Writing Successful Crime Fiction workshop, which is being held in Bristol as part of Crimefest.

Led by Tom Bromley, a fellow tutor at the Faber Academy Online, this practical workshop is for aspiring crime writers seeking to unlock the secrets of successful crime fiction and start developing original ideas. Through close readings of key texts and writers, practical writing exercises and guided discussion with the tutor guest author, this course will give you a grounding in some of the core elements that make crime fiction work.… read more

A Sense of Place

Posted onFebruary 15, 20172 Comments

Reuben Powell Claydon House Heygate Estate

Claydon House, Heygate Estate, by Reuben Powell. For more of his work, go to Hotel Elephant http://hotelelephantgallery.blogspot.co.uk/

When I’m thinking of a new story, I usually start with a ‘what if’ question – what if you couldn’t remember parts of your childhood? (Tarnished) ‘What if, sixteen years down the line, you bumped into the man you nearly left your husband for (indeed, your own personal ‘what if’) and you still had that deep chemistry thing going on?’… read more

Adapt and Survive – me and the #RTYDS

Posted onJanuary 15, 2016January 15, 2016Leave a comment

with Farnham Youth Theatre, about 1988. (I’m centre back). The production was Stephen Lowe’s Touched. They’re in 1940s costume. I’m in 1980s.

If you have read my bio, you’ll have noticed that I have had what might kindly be called a portfolio career. This is a feature of the lives of many writers – not many of us manage to start earning money with our very first words. It also happens to many people who become parents, too – particularly the women parents – as we seek ways to allow our work and family lives to function more effectively.… read more

NaNoWriMo: are you lost?

Posted onNovember 10, 20155 Comments

It’s day ten of NaNoWriMo, and if you are keeping to the ideal daily word count of 50,000/30=1670, you will be approaching the 20k mark. If so, congratulations!

I started my first two novels with NaNo, and have sped each of the others on in November. Sadly, I’m not doing it this year – I’ve just handed in the second draft of my next one and really need to have a bit of a brain defrag before I embark on the next project.… read more

Write it all down

Posted onFebruary 19, 20145 Comments

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

How NaNoWriMo stopped my fear and helped me find my fourth career

Posted onNovember 7, 2013November 7, 2013Leave a comment

(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

The First Reader

Posted onAugust 15, 20137 Comments

What a first reader looks like

When the first proof copies of Cuckoo were distributed, I likened the feeling to taking my knickers off in public.**

But I have found something in this writing process far more challenging even than that, and two weeks ago, on holiday on France, I had to go through it again.

The most difficult part is the very first read.

Well, not the very first read – I do that myself, obviously (and god knows, that’s hard enough).… read more

TARNISHED publication day!

Posted onMarch 14, 2013Leave a comment

Photo by Darren Cool for CONNORS BRIGHTON

It’s a funny old business, publication day. Particularly when it’s your third book and you’re writing a fourth, and the deadline is looming.

For your first novel you go out and have a long, boozy lunch, ‘possibly’ followed by an ill-advised walk along the seafront. Your second might see you nipping out to the pub and perhaps sharing a bottle or two of champagne in the evening with a couple of mates.… read more

Julia Crouch

Novelist: the queen of domestic noir

Tag: writing