The last couple of weeks have been very busy. After twenty years of living in rented accommodation, we’ve put down a deposit on a new flat and are currently going through all the admin and paperwork required to apply for a mortgage. Most people of my generation went through this decades ago, but for a… Read More
Author: John
A year of failures
On 13th January, 2013, I sent a sample of my first completed novel, The Chimney Rabbit, to an agent for the first time. Today, just over a year later, my third novel, Tales of the Ancient Rabbits, failed to make the longlist for the Chicken House competition. I’ve sent my work out 34 times –… Read More
New Year status report
It’s been almost exactly a year since I first sent The Chimney Rabbit to an agent for the first time. In that time, a lot has happened, but unfortunately not much in the way of progress towards getting published. In this article I’m going to provide a quick summary of my projects and their statuses…. Read More
For the third and final part of the Chimney Rabbit Best of 2013, I’m covering children’s books. This was the most difficult category for me to come up with a top five, as I’ve read so many utterly fantastic children’s books this year. In the end I’ve had to cheat and include two books in… Read More
For the second part of the Chimney Rabbit Best of 2013, I’m covering adult books – which is to say, any fiction I read this year that wasn’t a comic and wasn’t a children’s book. A note on eligibility – I’m including only those books I read this year for the first time. Any re-reads… Read More
For a variety of personal reasons that I won’t go into here, 2013 has been a horrible year that I’ll be glad to put behind me. Even the things that, objectively, have been positive, have been tainted to a greater or lesser extent by the negatives, so this is not a year I’m going to… Read More
Why NaNoWriMo is not for me
In principle, I like the idea of NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month, where aspiring writers are encouraged to spend the entire month of November writing a 50,000-word novel. The achievement you feel when you complete a novel is a wondrous thing, and anything that helps people achieve this goal can’t really be praised… Read More
A story in three acts
Earlier this week, I submitted Tales of the Ancient Rabbits to the agent who showed the most interest and provided the most feedback for The Chimney Rabbit, and posted off the manuscript to Chicken House to enter their children’s fiction competition. Now it’s mostly a waiting game – agents can take anything from a day… Read More
When done is not done
John Donne, the 17th century metaphysical poet, wrote in his poem A Hymn to God the Father: When thou hast done, thou hast not done, For I have more. In the poem he’s talking about the amount of flaws and sins he possesses – much like one of my manuscripts. When you’re writing a book,… Read More
A trip to Hay-on-Wye
Last week, I took a day off work for a trip to Hay-on-Wye – the small town just over the border into Wales that boasts more bookshops per square mile than probably anywhere else on the planet. It’s a bit of a trek – it takes over two and a half hours to drive from… Read More