A few years ago, American novelist Colson Whitehead published a piece outlining his simple rules for writing (New York Times July 26, 2012). While I don’t completely agree with him, I do have my own ideas on the thorny subject of what writers should and shouldn’t do: 1: Show and Tell. No, actually. While I…
Category: Writing
‘Old Friends and New Enemies’ by Owen Mullen
Old Friends and New Enemies When Glasgow PI Charlie Cameron is engaged to find a missing husband, his contacts soon lead to a body in the mortuary. But it isn’t the one he was expecting. Shocked to discover an old friend has been murdered, Charlie sets out to find the killer, but the path to…
Billy Burke – Georgian Villain No. 1
In a previous post (Historical Writing – Fact or Fiction?) I talked about using research as a tool to help create realistic descriptions of everyday life. Generally, what I’m interested in is detail that adds authenticity to the story, rather than using characters who actually existed (although some of my books feature brief appearances by…
Branding Schmanding – Indie Author Identity
There are a lot of statistics tossed around about how important book covers are, and while we could argue percentages all day, I reckon most people would agree it’s the image on a book’s cover that plays the biggest part in the decision-making process when it comes to parting with our cash. But how much…
How to Write an Unfinished Novel
Not everything that ends up as a novel starts out as a novel. As Stephen King has said, you don’t know what a piece of writing will become until you write it. Might be a short story, might be a novella , or it might be an epic novel. And if it doesn’t go…
Blogging – The Other Way of Writing a Book
There are two ways of writing a book – the first one is the obvious route: start at the beginning and write until you get to the end. The other way is to write a book that isn’t a book at all – in fact, it’s a blog. Years ago, we used to occasionally read…
How to Be a Crap Writer
Back in April 2016, I started writing reviews of the books I read. This prompted me to look at adding a bit more variety to my reading habits. Now, that doesn’t mean I was suddenly going to start perusing the sort of books I wouldn’t normally touch with a barge pole, just one or two…
Got my ePub working…
Not sure about this, but well worth taking a look. Re-blogged from Stevie Turner…
The Something of the Some Thing Thing…
Why ‘something’ is my favourite word. Writing can be a choosy business – choosing which direction to take with the plot, choosing the settings, atmosphere and time of day, and (my favourite) choosing who to kill off, push down the stairs or throw into bed with the leading lady. But choosing which word to use…
Killer Clothing…
One of the things I like about writing historical fiction is doing research. Well, I’ll clarify that a bit – the thing I really like is looking at pictures. Trouble is, finding images that will fire the old imagination ain’t that easy, so sometimes it comes down to good old fashioned reading. I mentioned in…
Colin Garrow 