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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…
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The Devil and the W.I.
What links the devil with the Women’s Institute? Or, more precisely, who? Go on. I’ll give you ten seconds to work it out. I got thinking about this person whilst doing a spot of research for a chapter of our Clovenhoof novel which features a children’s choir (and animal slaughter, fake blood and credit card…
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When real people turn fictional
Inspiration comes from all manner of sources. This is an almost verbatim transcript of an e-mail conversation Heide and I have been having over the past week or so. Heide: I realised last night that for a couple of weeks or maybe more I have unconsciously been picturing Simon from BWG [Birmingham Writers’ Group] when…
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I could draw you a Venn diagram of our likes and dislikes
The first thing, Heide and I had to decide was what could we possibly write that would play to both our strengths. I had recently read Heide’s novel, ‘The Million Dollar Dress’ and, whilst I loved it, it was a world away from the stuff I tended to write (body horror, ghost stories and metaphysical…