I grew up by the sea. From the time I was four years old until long after I’d left home, my father was a lightkeeper for the Northern Lighthouse Board, which meant that we lived all around the coast of Scotland, usually moving home every four years. While sometimes my father worked at remote lighthouses… Read More
Neverwhere
Over the past week, the BBC has been broadcasting a dramatisation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, making this the third format in which the story has been told. First it was a 1996 TV series, from the days before the BBC had such a thing as a special effects budget; then it was a book, adapted… Read More
Folk tales and other influences
It’s very easy to be influenced by what you read – or at least, it is for me. When I started writing, I started by imitating the sort of books I liked – one of the earliest stories I can remember putting down on paper was, effectively, Willard Price fan fiction. I was probably about… Read More
Facing the Hydra
The buzz in the world of publishing this week has centred around the contracts being offered by Random House’s new digital imprints Hydra, Alibi, Flirt, and Loveswept. These contracts mark a departure for a genuine, non-vanity publisher, in that they put the costs – all the costs – of publication on the shoulders of the… Read More
Libraries
A couple of weeks ago, Terry Deary, the author of the Horrible Histories books, made an extended and vitriolic attack on the entire concept of libraries. His basic premise was that libraries give books away for free, and that’s cash money he should be putting in the bank. He seemed to miss completely the point… Read More
Keeping going
The Chimney Rabbit is still looking for an agent. After last week’s rejection by an agent, I’ve submitted a query to another agency to fill that gap. I keep a spreadsheet that lists the agent, agency and date submitted so I don’t do something horrible like submit to the same agent twice. So far I… Read More
Playing darts blindfolded
Today I received an email from an agency thanking me for my submission of The Chimney Rabbit, but apologising that they wouldn’t be able to offer to take it any further. This wasn’t the first rejection I’ve received, and it almost certainly won’t be the last, but what makes it difficult is the lack of… Read More
I can’t draw. Or paint, or sculpt, or anything else that involves the visual arts. I can just about lay out a page of text so it doesn’t look completely terrible, but that’s probably the extent of my artistic ability. So when, many many years ago, I had a short story published in Exuberance, a… Read More
Imaginary worlds
Earlier this week, science fiction writer John Scalzi wrote about Richard Stern, who died recently. Scalzi attended a creative writing class taught by Stern, and one thing he recounts about the experience seemed very familiar. Scalzi says: My first problem was that on the first day of class, Stern said to us that he wouldn’t… Read More
Why Scrivener?
I mentioned in my first post that I was using Scrivener to write my novels. It really is an excellent piece of software, and I must give it at least some of the credit for allowing me to complete my first novel. I’m a technical writer, and I’ve been using Word for nearly 20 years…. Read More