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Dogma – Is it a miracle?
Weird coincidence. Heide and I were at a planning meeting today (okay, we were in a pub, surrounded by people in leprechaun hats, supping Guinness at ten in morning) and we were discussing a possible plot line for our novel in which God has decided to temporarily vacate his heavenly throne. We disgressed into discussing…
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Judging a book by its cover: The title (2)
Back in January, Heide and I, still in search of a title for our novel gathered all the suggested title together – the good, the bad, the mad, the inspired – and put them to our blog followers in a survey. The results are below and they present a combination of the expected and the…
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SJ Watson at Birmingham Library
Heide and I were lucky enough to meet the author SJ Watson this evening. He came to Birmingham (he’s a local lad originally) to talk about and promote his phenomenally successful novel, Before I Go To Sleep. There is something very impressive (and envy-inspiring) about the success he has had with this, his debut novel.…
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Sewing the pieces together
Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, 1931 Charles Dickens died in 1870, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished. His readers, who had followed the story of Drood, his Uncle Jasper and the Landless siblings, were left with an unfinished story abounding with unanswered questions. Who killed Edwin Drood? Who was the Dick Datchery…
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I read because I write
All readers read for different reasons. All writers write for different reasons. The reasons I read Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for my GCSE English Literature were different to the reasons I re-read it three or four years later. The reasons I wrote my first full-length novel, Blue Angel, were different to the reasons for which I…
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Dating Advice from Satan
Heide and I have now spent nearly six months and approximately 50,000 words in the company of Jeremy Clovenhoof, Satan’s earthbound alter ego and we feel we’ve got to know him quite well. He’s not the character we perhaps initially envisaged. He’s more human, earthier than either of us expected. He’s like the child we…
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Collaboration: Can two people write with one voice?
A writing collaboration can take many forms. One partner might be the ideas person and the other the writer. Or one might be the writer and the other the editor. Or each author might write separate story strands which are then woven together once complete. These are perfectly fine methods of collaboration but, in them,…
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Vote for your favourite book title
As of this week, our collaborative ‘Clovenhoof’ novel is half completed and we still don’t have a proper name for it. But not for much longer! We’d like YOU to pick the title of our novel. We’ve been given a plethora of possible titles by people who’ve read sample chapters of the novel and we’d…
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Heaven: A Visitor’s Guide
Back in November, I blogged about Hell because the central character of our collaborative novel has spent a lot of time there and I wanted to get a feel for the place. Well, now, as we start to think about some of the celestial beings we will ultimately be pitting him against, my thoughts are…
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Judging a book by its cover: The title
Names are important. They shouldn’t be but they are. In their brilliant book, Freakonomics, US authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner compile top ten lists of children’s names that are most likely to indicate low income backgrounds and low academic achievement. For example, the top five boy’s names that indicate low income and…