A battle of wits?
Recently my old friend Pauline reminded me that when we were teenagers, we used to read Agatha Christie together and try to work whodunit. We must have been thirteen or fourteen years old. We would even draw up lists of suspects and clues. I had forgotten all about that. And I can’t remember whether we ever […]
Proustian moments
I’ve been thinking about perfumes and how evocative both can be, since I read that Joanne Harris wears a different scent for every book she writes and uses it to get into the zone. I have sometimes done the same. And this reminded me of something I wrote years ago about perfumes and their names. […]
The Blitz Spirit?
Last year comparisons were often made between the pandemic and the Blitz in WWII. I thought of that recently as I read Margaret Kennedy’s Where Stands a Winged Sentry, her splendid memoir of the months between May and September 1940, when German invasion appeared imminent and it seemed likely that Britain would lose the war. […]
I’ve started, so I’ll finish?
Certainly there was a time when I felt duty-bound to finish a book once I had started it. I am not quite sure when that stopped. Certainly I felt that way as a conscientious student doing an English degree. Once I had started something – Paradise Lost, War and Peace, all Shakespeare’s plays which I […]
Writing in lockdown, or Cassandra redux
Or should that be NOT writing, or at least, not writing a great detail. Last year’s tally included two short stories and a fair amount of work on a novel, including a lot of research and a synopis. However to date I have only written about 5,000 words of that novel. Not a lot to […]
Sarah Ward, also writing as Rhiannon Ward, is my guest
I loved Sarah’s first four novels which were police procedurals set in the Peak District where we both live. Her most recent novel, The Quickening, is a gripping and atmospheric Gothic tale, published under the name Rhiannon Ward. It’s a pleasure to interview her. Your most recent novel, The Quickening, is a new departure. Where […]
Favourite books on how to write
I’ve got far more books on writing than I can care to admit to. There’s some justification. Some of them have been essential tools in learning how to write. And then too writing is a solitary occupation and it’s good to have a few old friends to turn to when I grind to a halt. […]
Be afraid . . .
It’s nearly Halloween so now seems a good time to review an absolutely cracking ghost story, Strangers (1987), by Japanese writer, Taichi Tamada. It is a novella and can easily be read in a couple of hours. The narrator, a middle-aged scriptwriter, divorced, disillusioned, takes a sentimental journey to the Toyko suburb where he grew […]