So this week I started to write my next book – working title, Tales of the Ancient Rabbits, a sort of stand-alone prequel to The Chimney Rabbit, set in the same world, but in a different country and with a different set of main characters. I had pondered whether my next project should have been… Read More
Author: John
The Quarry is Iain Banks’ last novel. It is a story of a man dying of cancer, and when Banks was 87,000 words into the first draft he discovered that, in some sort of cosmic joke, he, too, was dying of cancer. His publishers brought the publication date of the book forward, but he died… Read More
How long is a piece of string?
One thing I’ve found very difficult to work out when writing for children is this: How long should a children’s book be? For the purpose of this post I’m referring to books for what our American cousins call “Middle Grade” or MG, which usually translates into the 8-12 age group (sometimes 8-11 or 9-12). There’s… Read More
Keeping it short
I can’t remember the last time I wrote a short story. For (literally) decades I’ve been attempting to write novels, but back in olden times I wrote nothing but short stories. On Friday or Saturday evenings I used to fire up my green-screen Amstrad PCW 8256, bought with savings and a bursary from my first… Read More
12-year-old Lettie Peppercorn lives in an inn on stilts in the land of Albion; her best friends are a pigeon and the wind that whistles through the gaps in the walls; her mother disappeared years ago leaving behind only a cryptic note; and her father is a drinker and a gambler who leaves her in… Read More
The next phase
This week I decided what my next project is going to be. After finishing The Chimney Rabbit and the Underground Mice, I had several options. I could have written the third book in the series, I could have written something completely unrelated, or (and this is what I’ve decided on) I could write a related… Read More
Whistle while you work
Earlier this evening, I booked tickets for a performance by the Philharmonia orchestra here in Leicester in June 2014 – normally I wouldn’t book anything so far in advance, but the good tickets seemed to be selling pretty quickly already, and my other half has recently become a huge Shostakovich fan, so the chance to… Read More
Three chapters
After I completed my first draft of The Chimney Rabbit and the Underground Mice, I took a break from writing for a little while. I’d gone straight from finishing The Chimney Rabbit into editing it, then straight into writing the sequel, and while working like that does have some benefit in the momentum it generates,… Read More
The Underground Mice
Two nights ago I completed the first draft of the sequel to The Chimney Rabbit, entitled The Chimney Rabbit and the Underground Mice. They say that everyone has one novel in them – at least I know now that I’ve got more than one. After so many years of writing without ever coming close to… Read More
A gift from the Culture
Earlier today, the writer Iain Banks announced that he was dying of cancer and had less than a year to live. I found this news quite upsetting, to say the least. It’s never pleasant to hear about cancer, and I’m sure most people have had cancer touch their lives at some point – it’s a… Read More