Books

I was born and raised in a council house by the sea on the south coast of Cornwall and have always taken inspiration from my homeland. I left school at ...

I have a penchant for handsome, brooding detectives, my favourite being Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn, so I decided to write my own. Esa broods with the best of them—partly because ...

It depends on the book and the setting, but I usually do have something of a playlist, a soundtrack for the story. For the books set in South Louisiana, that's ...

I have always wanted to write a book but I haven’t always wanted to be an author. I didn’t realise that once I’d written one book, I would be persuaded ...

I wanted to be a writer from a very early age and wrote my first novel at ten – a doubtless torturous boarding school book, a la Enid Blyton, about ...

I am not a creature of habit. Not withstanding my daily ritual of morning coffee making, without which I am a witchy mother and wife, and not the spicy sage ...

  It can feel (absolutely impossible) really hard Because it is. Working full time pre-children, there were days when I thought: ‘Wow, I have SO much to do, this is ...

I must admit, I can’t get enough of all the books on the market right now that encourage you to ‘live more with less’. While Lightly touches upon the importance ...

DAVID STEINMAN is an international revolutionary best known for his strategic planning role in Ethiopia’s recent democracy revolution. He exposed the Ethiopian dictatorship’s human rights abuses, theft of thirty billion ...

Two great pieces have been doing the social media rounds. One was by the author of Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte, in The Guardian about the discovery she made when looking into ...

Preparation. I like to have the book in its entirety mapped out before I begin. This involves plotting the general outline on an A4 pad. When I know where it’s ...

The hook. This is the starting point of any story. For this exercise, it comes in a tidal wave of blogs, apps, and articles that tout the notion that ‘wellness,’ ...

Offred refuses to be stripped of her desires or her agency, a simmering volcano enduring unending nightmares in a dystopia that increasingly feels like a documentary of the future. Reno ...

I write to grab a chunk of me time. Like most people, there are times when I feel like I spread myself too thinly. Part of the reason I love ...

Big Boys Cry - New children’s book aims to empower young boys to embrace and understand their emotions, to save future generations of men from mental health issues. Big Boys ...

I became a writer because of Anne of Green Gables. I saw the 1985 adaptation when I was 11 and it had a huge effect on me. Anne wanted ...

Back in February, while searching in the cupboard under the kitchen sink for something with which to clean the shower, I had a moment of pure summery bliss. To say ...

I took a 50% pay cut to write. I always wanted to be a writer but, being the child of immigrants, I chose a more academic subject at university, namely ...

I DO look like a forensic psychologist. People constantly tell me that I don’t look like someone who would have this job title. What they mean is, I don’t look ...

I grew up in Asia and the Middle East, but my home is in Seattle, Washington. As an expat, I attended both American and British schools, so I spell “color” ...

When you write within the romance genre, you become part of a very supportive community of writers. As writing is a solitary affair, the connections made are important. The friendships ...

When I was 3 years old, I had my first experience of angels. They came to reassure and protect me through what turned out to be a very volatile and ...