5 Tips to Keeping New Year’s Resolutions
Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Have you tried in the past and succeeded? Or failed? Given up? Or even forgotten what they were? Here are my 5 tips to keeping New Year’s resolutions. And…
Want help adapting a book for screen?
This week I have two new resources for you if you want help adapting a book for film or TV, or are a reader/viewer who’s interested in seeing how writers set about transforming works for…
How to start a novel – holiday or chaos?
I’m at that wonderful, scary, exciting, fearful point of starting to plan a new novel. The first glimmerings of ideas are beginning to come. The romantic view would be that they are like whispers in…
How to be confident
How do you gain confidence? From time to time, I answer readers’ questions in my blog. Today’s question comes from Australian author Anne Howell, whose memoir All That I Forgot came out last year. It’s…
How I managed to overcome overwhelm: The joy of lists
Things to do? Books to write, movies to watch, people to see, bills to pay, meetings to arrange, trains to catch, deadlines to meet… argh! One of the most challenging tasks in today’s world is…
Unique chance: Verbal Aikido Sept 1
Subscribers with a good memory will remember I’ve twice featured the inimitable Luke Archer, creator of Verbal Aikido. Well, the good news is that I’ve managed to persuade him to provide a very rare class…
The popularity of amnesia – talk and guest blog
Last time I mentioned I was talking at the Milim Leeds Literary Festival about why amnesia stories are so popular. There’s no doubt that writers have written about amnesia for thousands of years. What attracts…
Why are books and movies fascinated by forgetting?
Is it me, or are novels and movies fascinated by forgetting? This century, amnesia is very in. I was invited to talk about this and my new amnesia-based psychological thriller Room 15 at Milim Leeds…
Why most people are crap at persuading
GETTING GOOD AT PERSUADING This message was intended solely for writers and film-makers, until I realised that pitching and persuading is something that everyone in the media has to get good at. And then I…
A plague on both your houses
So now we are visited by the plague, it seems. Plague is an archetype that goes back deep into our histories. Perhaps the most famous plague quote comes from Romeo and Juliet – when Mercutio,…
Computer says procrastinate
I went into my study this morning, bouncing, full of ideas for a new short story and turned on my computer. It had a message for me. COMPUTER: I NEED TO SCAN FOR TROJANS (OR…
Angry movies at the Baftas
We live in angry times, it seems. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I had a load of angry movies to watch for this year’s Bafta awards. Now, I don’t mean the controversy over…
Interview with award-winning author Louise Doughty
Louise Doughty is one of the most interesting authors today. Refusing to be pigeon-holed, every book breaks new ground. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Orange Prize…
How to deal with a verbal attacker – Verbal Aikido
Do you ever find yourself lost for words? Or outmanoeuvred by a verbal attacker? Perhaps someone gets the better of you and you’re not even sure how they did it. You need the marvellous Luke…
#IndieAuthorChat Nov 19 & book offer
Christmas is coming and the first presents are on their way. First, I’m hosting a free Twitter chat next Tuesday November 19 at 8pm GMT (find the time in your own time zone). Second, to…
How to tell when you’re being lied to in cyberspace
Lies are big news at the moment. Lies by politicians, lies by social media bots, lies by journalists… Most of the focus is on stopping the lies – less about helping us see the truth.…
How to get stuff done this autumn
Holidays are over and the photos are almost all that remain (aside from maybe some extra weight around the middle). The days are drawing in, at least in the northern hemisphere, and people are getting…
Openings
It was like they weren’t there. This is the opening sentence of my novel The Breaking of Liam Glass. Why did I write the opening as I did and not in one of a million…