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Spousemeal!
It’s spousemeal time again. What? You don’t have spousemeal? Oh, that’s probably because you’re not married. And a co-writer of comic fantasy novels. And spend more time with your co-writer than your own wife. Spousemeal (I can’t remember when it got the name but I like the way it sounds like a German compound noun,…
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All Good Things Come To An End
At some point, any collaboration must come to an end. Your novel is published and is selling and you’ve done everything you reasonably can to help promote the book and those sales. What happens next? Perhaps the first thing to do is take the time to evaluate the success of the collaboration. Actually, no, the…
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When is a novelist’s job complete?
Yes, when is a novelist’s job complete? That’s a tricky, almost unanswerable question, up there with ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping?’ or Bishop Berkeley’s old chestnut about the tree falling and no one being around to hear it. It’s an important question and doubly important for collaborators because you need to know…
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Four and a half things a good self-editor needs to do
So, one day, after lots of ideas have been passed around and plans drawn up and several chapters written and hacked about, the collaborative writers wake up to the realisation that they’ve written a novel. Or at least something that looks like a novel. But just as a pile of organs and limbs does not…
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Editors v Beta-Readers
SCENE: Flat 2a, four-hundred-and-something Chester Road, Sutton Coldfield. Ben Kitchen sits at the table, painting war-gaming miniatures (Seleucid soldiers from Antiochus’s Indian campaign if you must know) and trying to ignore Nerys Thomas who has come downstairs to get Ben’s opinion on her latest lingerie purchases. In walks Jeremy Clovenhoof (Satan) clutching a lulu.com package…
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Curtain Calls and the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome
Now, I’m not a big theatregoer but I have a huge and perverse love for that most British of traditions, the Christmas pantomime. To explain the essence of pantomime to anyone who has never seen one is almost impossible but, roughly speaking, it’s a retelling of a famous fairytale through drama, slapstick and song in…