Books

When friends ask me how long it took to research and write Legion: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Lawrence of Arabia, I sometimes say “Pretty much exactly half a century.” ...

1. I volunteered in the Calais ‘jungle’ refugee camp in 2016. It was a heart-breaking experience. My time there helped to shape a section in Cows Can’t Jump where Billy ...

As many writers can no doubt understand, struggling to find time to write while balancing a full-time job is a constant challenge. Over the last few years I squeezed in ...

'Write what you know' is solid yet uninspiring advice for new writers. It's fine as long as you don't want to write science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, superhero graphic novels ...

1. I used to be a translator and lived in Italy for a few years, so I speak fluent Italian. Obviously when I started studying the language I made a ...

Who would have thought years ago that you would have access to all your favourite magazines in one place? Well with Cafeyn, you can, so as a fellow online platform ...

When lockdown began, I was writing Book 2 of The Dover Café series, and was confident that if I stuck to my strict regime of 2000 words a day, five ...

My characters and storylines frequently deal with abuse and controlling behaviours and actions. Certainly, my recent psychological thriller, One Fatal Night, deals with painful past events and how they affect ...

Being an author during lockdown is definitely not the hardest job in the world. We’re used to locking ourselves away with our laptops, assorted pets, and buckets of coffee, but ...

You remember it so well, the moment you first saw him. One look and you felt your knees weakening. This was HIM. The one. Your soulmate. He swept you off ...

1) I’m not as creepy as you might think! I’ve read lots of psychological thrillers (and have a thing for Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King), but also enjoy the ...

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At first there was excitement – the rush of adrenalin that comes with the sudden and possibly dangerous. I was sent home from the newspaper office, my children were sent ...

I had just been given the green light and started writing my fifth book for Transworld when Lockdown hit. Like a number of authors, I found it hard to focus ...

By Carnegie-nominated author of the Emily Knight middle grade/young teen fantasy fiction series, and prize-winning publishing entrepreneur, Abiola Bello www.a-bello.com https://twitter.com/ABelloWrites I found lockdown really hard. I am not a ...

We are multi-dimensional beings – mind body soul – however we have spent too long working on our mind and body and not nearly enough time nurturing our soul. Much ...

Your work emails are backing up, the kids are refusing to do any schoolwork and throwing a major strop. Your house looks like it’s been ransacked, and you’re counting down ...

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was a pioneer of photography, not just in her work with scientists such as Sir John Herschel on lenses and methods of developing prints, but also ...

My love of food stemmed from a childhood spent with my grandmother in Nigeria. She liked to visit her favourite half-sister in the heart of Lagos and dragged my brother ...

The first time I read a book with an autistic protagonist, I was in my late teens, maybe early twenties. By that point, I’d already read thousands of books, and ...

On publication of his debut adult novel To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Eragon author talks to exclusively to Female First about achieving his goals. Trust the process. That’s ...

“Hey Hudson! Come downstairs, I made you a cupcake!” My blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter, Isabel, calls up the stairs to her little brother. Four-year-old Hudson has been busy all morning in ...