October means autumn is here. Time to curl up in front of the fire with a good book. And of course at the end of the month it will be Halloween, so maybe it’s time for a good ghost story? There are so many creepy books out there I decided that in order to...
Today is National Read a Book day, so I’m celebrating with a list of funny books. I don’t know how you are feeling, but I’m nearly at the point of boycotting the news altogether. It’s a bit like reading a crime or horror story, I’m still...
Last month’s blog, which was written at the start of the summer heatwave and was about books set in hot places, seemed to strike a chord with a few people. As the heatwave intensifies, maybe it’s time to think about cold places as setting. The novel...
it’s still June and already records have been broken. I feel quite fortunate to live in Edinburgh and not Spain. But I’m fascinated by extremes of temperature. In fact I’ve got the first draft of a MG book which is set entirely in the summer of 1976,...
We’re off to the Canary Islands for a week, and as my bags sit waiting in the hall, full of suncream and fiction, I find myself thinking about travel writing books. We have a small shelf of guidebooks which we never look at these days because of course we look...
An interesting article in the Guardian recently made me think about that advice you hear all the time – to be a successful writer, you should write every day. I’ve never found that works for me. I’ve done Nanowrimo a few times; this is where you try to write a...
