Storyworks Monthly #1 In this varied collection of new work, Stephen J Carter has fashioned an interesting series. In the tradition of Dean Wesley Smith (Smith’s Monthly), he presents a handful of stories, a novella, a serial novel and a piece for writers on inciting incidents in movies. Being a fan of Dickens, I liked…
Category: Writing
Pushing Through the Pain Barrier
Whether you’re expecting to churn out 50,000 words or 150,000 words, getting to that last sentence – the one that tells you the book is finally done – can be a bit of a battle. For me it’s also the justification that even though for most of the process I didn’t really know what the…
New App from Inkitt
Thought this was interesting – Inkitt Publishing have launched a new app that looks pretty neat. They say it can be downloaded from the App Store There’s also a nice little video Inkitt, the Hipster’s Library – Read and fall in love with novels before they go mainstream. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Crime, Romance, YA, Action,…
‘Jurassic Park’ by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park We all know the story – a remote jungle island, genetic engineering that knows no bounds, and a bunch of humans who (mostly) think they’re in control. Naturally, the creatures Hammond and his pals create have other ideas and when given the opportunity to escape their enclosures, carnage and catastrophe can’t be far…
‘The Lights Went Out and Other Stories’ by Fiona Cooke Hogan
The Lights Went Out and Other Stories Taking the ordinary and everyday, Ms Hogan weaves her fictions around seemingly unexciting people and commonplace occurrences, creating recognisable and occasionally extraordinary stories, that reflect the feelings and obsessions we all encounter from time to time. From the petty arguments and disagreements in ‘Table By the Window’ and…
How to Turn an Idea into a Novel…
All writers are asked where they get ideas from and whenever I start a new project, I often find myself wondering about the process I go through from that first spark to the finished novel. For instance, with Death on a Dirty Afternoon, I know very well where the original idea came from but I’m…
Squeeze it Like Arnie
Over the last few months I’ve read and reviewed a fair number of books, and while most of them were enjoyable (good story, interesting characters etc), I kept coming across one particular issue. Now while this issue doesn’t cause me to chuck the book out the damn window, it’s quite irksome and constantly distracts me…
How to Tweet Nice
One of the things I love about the online writing community, is how supportive everyone is, promoting each other’s books, blogs and anything else that needs a bit of publicity. However, this bonhomie doesn’t extend to everyone and there are a few writers whose work I regularly re-tweet or otherwise endorse, who rarely (if ever)…
How Songs Saved My Characters…
Writing dialogue is often a bit of a sticking points for authors and finding ways to get past it to free up our creative juices can be frustrating to say the least. These days I find dialogue quite straightforward, but a few years ago, a couple of female characters had me tearing my hair out…
5 Things I Learned from Writing
I always assumed my writing would improve as time went on, though I have to say I wasn’t sure how that would happen. With 13 titles out in the world now, it got me thinking about what I’d learned from each of my books and how that affected subsequent creations. I’ve only included my middle-grade…
Colin Garrow 