First, thanks to Colin for last Friday’s blog. You often hear people who are ‘sniffy’ about genre fiction saying it’s plot driven, whereas literary fiction (usually their preferred reading/writing matter) is character driven. It’s OK for a book or story to be character driven but if those characters don’t provide some forward movement or development (a plot?!) then the reader loses interest pretty fast. Read the rest of this entry »

By now I’m sure that all of you have heard of Facebook boss, Mark Zuckerberg’s New Year resolution to read more books. But he’s also launched an online book club and the first title on his reading list is The End of Power by Moises Naim. Needless to say, the book has rocketed into the Amazon bestseller list and sold out.  Had you heard of it? No, me neither. And I won’t be taking any bets on the number of people who download it but never quite reach the end!

Apparently, after announcing his New Year resolution Zuckerberg said: “Books allow you to explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today”.  Nothing like stating the obvious! Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to keep this week’s post very brief as I’m sure you’ve got better things to do at the moment than read our blog! Read the rest of this entry »

Writing has saved my life in a way no one could imagine. The day I was born I was just the same as every other baby. Kicked, screamed, cried and crawled. But one thing was puzzling, you could never tell when I was happy or sad because I never smiled, frowned or articulated any facial expressions. When I learned to talk, my speech was also unclear. Read the rest of this entry »

How are you with criticism? Must admit, my skin gets pretty thin sometimes. It’s silly, I know. I should be more mature. It’s just … when I’ve been working on something for days, or weeks, going over and over it, all I really want to hear is ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ But how often does that happen? Read the rest of this entry »