This post is part of a series started by Debra Brown and passed to me by Deborah Swift who used to work in the theatre as a set and costume designer.She is the author of three novels set in the 17th century, The Lady’s Slipper, The Gilded Lily, and A Divided Inheritance. She lives in the north of England in a small …
I’m delighted to welcome Carol McGrath as guest author to my website today. Carol and I both write historical fiction and are members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Carol’s debut novel, The Handfasted Wife and am delighted that Carol joins me on the shortlist for the RoNAs in the Historical category. …
Surprisingly I’m not writing about the dreaded saggy middle that creeps up on writers from eating too many slices of hot-buttered toast while waiting for the muse. No, the saggy middle I’m referring to is the one that becomes apparent when you’re halfway through your novel. Suddenly the fascinating plot seems contrived, your amazing …
The received wisdom is that you should write about what you know and that may be good advice – to a point. It’s important to remember that what you know may be strange, surprising and even intensely interesting to others. If you are a Druid, working as a steeple-jack and living on a barge, your …
The creative process isn’t always easy to pin down and put into words. Novels are a complex piece of work involving a juggling act between plot, action, characters, setting and so on. So how do they all come together to make a finished story?