Blog Archives

What’s your preferred length for a novel? #amreading

30/10/2017

Like people, novels come in different sizes. With the rise in obesity, I don’t know what the average size of a human being might be, but I do know that the average for a novel is around 300 pages or 100,000 words – although it varies between genres, just as the average for a person can vary across countries. As a fairly small person, I’m nevertheless sometimes surprised to encounter a member of the same species who is two or three times the size of me. I suppose we have some kind of “standard” in our heads. Is it the same with novels?

8 Comments

Does a ‘first draft’ video reflect badly on my published fiction?

27/10/2017

17 Comments

Since undertaking my desk time audit earlier this summer, I’m hyper-conscious of time spent away from fiction. It’s especially pertinent right now as I’m on a roll with yet another draft of my currently nameless WIP, about a brother and sister separated for fifty years. But with an event to prepare for recently, I thought it would be a good opportunity to make some videos about my novels. Was it?

17 Comments

Alienation in contemporary England: Missing Fay & Jihadi Jane

24/10/2017

2 Comments

Has my country always been this conflicted, or is the second decade of the twenty-first century a particularly sour time for England? Can fiction help us understand our current disaffected state? If so, these two very different novels – the first a gentle exploration of fear of difference among the largely white population; the second addressing the attractions of Islamic State to young people of South Asian descent, and its more violent repercussions – might help.

2 Comments

Using your own experience as a springboard for your debut novel

21/10/2017

4 Comments

A first novel is often produced from autobiographical material. Jeanette Winterson poured her experience of growing up gay in the Pentecostal church into her debut Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, while the poet Sylvia Plath’s only novel, The Bell Jar, closely parallels her own descent into mental illness. But even writers not blessed – or cursed – with such interesting biographies can use our own experience as a springboard for our first large-scale fiction project.

I’m delighted to have had an article on this subject published in Writers’ Forum earlier this year which arose from Q&As I carried out with debut novelists. If you didn’t manage to catch it in the magazine, you might like to read it here, along with links to the original posts from which I’ve taken the quotes.

4 Comments

Three spooky reads for Halloween

19/10/2017

6 Comments

If you like to be scared, Halloween is the time for it, and if you like to be scared by a book, any of these might do. The first two are about houses haunted by their history are described as Gothic horror. The third seems to be going that way, but then veers off into a different kind of disturbance which, for me, provided the richer read.

6 Comments

The Visitors by Catherine Burns #blogtour #giveaway

15/10/2017

4 Comments

Middle-aged siblings, Marion and John Zetland, rattle around the crumbling Georgian townhouse that has been their home since childhood. Timid and childlike, Marion has never had a job, and her more educated brother hasn’t worked since being dismissed from his teaching post at a boarding school twenty years before. She spends her time with her large collection of cuddly toys, dozing in front of the TV and heating the tinned food on which they subsist. John occupies himself with making model aeroplanes and attending to the visitors in the cellar, an unpleasant part of life which Marion does her best to ignore. Who is she to judge whether it’s right or not? John has always known better than her and, as the reader discovers as the story unfolds, her parents, teachers and schoolmates were never any help in teaching her how to be a person.

4 Comments

Anger is understandable in Crimes of the Father & Seeing Red

12/10/2017

2 Comments

Life’s a game of snakes and ladders; we all have our ups and downs. But some people’s snakes are much longer than some other people’s ladders, and some so unlucky on the roll of the dice it’s like they’ve landed in a slithery nest of snakes. If fear or despair hasn’t shut down their emotions, these people are angry, understandably so. And that’s my tenuous link between these novels: the first about a young woman’s sudden blindness and the second about the victims of paedophile priests.

2 Comments

No feelings? #amwriting #mentalhealth #Flash4Storms

9/10/2017

5 Comments

One day last summer, I had an errand to do ten minutes’ drive or half an hour’s walk away from home. Even though the route, along a fairly busy road, isn’t particularly pleasant, I prefer to walk, both for the exercise and to feed my writing. So I grabbed my raincoat (it was that kind of summer) and laced up my boots. On the way back, the sun came out at the moment I levelled with a track I’d never previously taken. It was time to investigate.

5 Comments

Two fictional young Americans wondering what it’s all about

6/10/2017

6 Comments

If we leave home at eighteen, it’s often to a particular kind of institution. For me, as for Selin in The Idiot, that means university; for Billy Lynn, as for many young working-class adults who are less academically inclined, it’s the military. While, as Selin discovers, universities encourage questioning, not all questions are received with equal relish. On the other hand, as Billy learns, the army might discourage independent thought, it can’t prevent his wondering. Will these young people find the answers they’re looking for? Read on!

6 Comments

BBC National Short Story Award: Q&A with Cynan Jones

3/10/2017

7 Comments

The winner of this year’s BBC National Short Story Award will be announced this evening. Of the five shortlisted stories I’m rooting for “The Edge of the Shoal” by Cynan Jones. You can listen to the story on the BBC website or get the collection from Comma press. Thanks to Frances Gough for arranging my review copy and Q&A with Cynan Jones.

7 Comments