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When I was a social worker listening closely was a big part of my job and I’m sure that has helped me to write believable dialogue. What one deduces from what other people say is another matter, I think. Some of my musings on this have informed my novel ‘Timed Out’. In the passage quoted ... Read More
With my DeQuervain’s tenosynovitis (posh person’s repetitive strain injury), I’ve been writing less and reading more. And Going to Things. Less of a home body and more of a woman about town on the cultural scene in Oxford. Blackwell’s Bookshop hosted an author event with Roma Tearne on her latest novel ‘The Last Pier’. I ... Read More
Advice and sympathy are pouring – or rather, trickling – in. When I last blogged I was waiting for inspiration for my third novel while waiting for the verdict of The Oxford Editors on my second. The verdict was very encouraging and I have done a little revising and now wonder where to send it. ... Read More
I’ve just dug up this little report, written in 2013 as part of my final submission after the Guardian/University of East Anglia Certificate course on the Novel. I thought that rather than deleting it I would share it, since it may be of interest or use to others. My novel ‘Timed Out’ has been accepted ... Read More
Special event at Blackwell’s: a workshop by that excellent writer and teacher Richard Skinner, Head of Fiction at the Faber Academy. We began with a mini story-telling task relating the events of our Sunday. (Mine was singularly event-free.) He had us cut our words and twist our paragraphs around and for most of us that ... Read More
Imagine a beautiful woman on killer heels standing unsteadily under a lamp post in a dark street. She’s got lost on the way to what may be the most important engagement of her life. It is six fifteen on a July evening in Oxford, England. See what I mean about a really nice bit of ... Read More
Another short list: for my first and probably only ghost story, which bears the peculiar title ‘Potter, Dimity, Lilies.’ When they announced this news, Spooky Tales/What the Dickens? Magazine promised an ebook anthology and – how lovely! – a paper edition as well. Several months and emails later I have discovered that the anthology has ... Read More
After a run of three small successes with my (unpublished and unagented) novel, whose title Timed Out seems to be becoming ever more resonant, I have done a fair bit of showing off to friends and creative writing classmates. The latter often seem over-impressed, and having read or heard their work, I can’t understand why ... Read More
Over the last three days I’ve experienced at second hand what it is like to be sought after by the media. It’s been exciting. My friend Nora Crook, Professor Emerita at Anglia Ruskin University and a noted Shelley scholar, has discovered some Mary Shelley letters in the Essex Record Office and the news ‘broke’ while ... Read More
Now I look at it again…I’ve found infelicities: sentences that go on and on and cliches and ‘-ngs’ and ‘-isations’ that I somehow failed to see before. And inconsistencies that have demanded a lot of working out on bits of paper: dates of events, ages of people, things happening in the wrong order, wrong flowers ... Read More