Diary of a writer

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  Some Final Writing Thoughts

  28 June 2013

  Until the next one …It's been three months now since I started writing this little diary blog with Cult Pens.I have to admit, it's been good fun having a chance to share a little about the work of an author - especially the pleasure of ......Read More

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  Libraries and Public Lending Right

  21 June 2013

  I had the “fun” this week of getting back to administration.People think it’s a delightful job, being an author. Well, yes it is. How many jobs can you think of where you get paid to daydream? But it does have the unfortunate difficulty that there ......Read More

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  Signing - and not Signing

  14 June 2013

  This has been an enormously busy week. Launch weeks tend to be pretty loopy, but this one, with four books launched simultaneously and then a weekend away, has been more mad than usual.Last week I said I’d enjoyed the running around from Exeter to Plymouth ......Read More

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  Diary of a Writer - Competiton Winner

  11 June 2013

  Before anything else, I must just say that I am enormously grateful to all of you for the entries to this little competition.I hadn’t expected quite so many names to be thrown at me - usually a competition of this type generates about twenty to ......Read More

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  Signings, Marketing and Morris!

  10 June 2013

  First, let me apologise. This is late on a Thursday night after signing a lot of books, and I am, in short, exhausted.We - that is Richard, the excellent Simon & Schuster sales manager and me - set off this morning before nine o'clock and ......Read More

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  The Process of Publishing a Book

  31 May 2013

  There are times in the life of every author when they begin to feel they're going stir crazy.It's usually at this time of year, and it's normally when the weather is looking unbearably good out, while the poor scribbler sits indoors and shivers in the ......Read More

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  Morris, Mayhem and Marketing

  24 May 2013

  This week has been rather lovely!It all kicked off with a wonderful Saturday, the first day in ages that has been warm and summery. And thank goodness for that, because I, and the rest of Tinner’s Morris, were dancing out with Winkleigh Morris.Morris more or ......Read More

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  The Wonders of Old Technology

  22 May 2013

  Many years ago now, back in the early 1990s, I was sitting in the New Cavendish Club in London, enjoying drinks with some Crime Writers’ Association colleagues, when a loud voice could be heard. It was the larger-than-life author Laurence Block, a proud New Yorker, ......Read More

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  Keeping it Simple

  10 May 2013

  For a writer, to sit indoors and stare out when the weather is fine is a form of torture. The urge to nip out and get on with the gardening, or just to take the dog for a walk, is almost overwhelming when confronted by ......Read More

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  It's not all Champagne and Caviare

  3 May 2013

  On Sunday, I finally finished the last proofs of the three books to be published in July. That was a relief. Two weeks to work on three novels is not a lot of time, but luckily, because the books were all published already, the number ......Read More

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  A Week Without Coffee

  26 April 2013

  There are some weeks when the words flow and hum. At such times, it seems as though all an author has to do is sit at his desk and the words wash through him like a river. This week hasn't been one of them.It's a ......Read More

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  The Writing Process

  22 April 2013

  Ask one hundred authors what the best part of their job is, and you'll probably get about a hundred different answers. No author out and out hates writing, no matter what they say - or I hope they don't. What a miserable thought: having to ......Read More

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  How an Author Writes

  19 April 2013

  Authors are often asked how they get ideas.There seem to be two supposed ‘facts’ about writing which are absolutely set in stone in the minds of the public: that all authors are multi-millionaires, and that it’s an easy job with a magical formula that changes ......Read More

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  Scarborough & the Medieval Murderers

  19 April 2013

  This week has been a busy one. Over the weekend I had to drive 400 miles to Scarborough for their literary festival. Medieval Murderers - that is, my friends Susanna Gregory and Karen Maitland - and I were the very last gig of the festival ......Read More

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  The Diary of a Writer

  15 April 2013

  It was many years ago that I first began to appreciate better quality writing tools - long before I became a full-time novelist, in fact. However, I still have a delight in using real pens and pencils, smooth paper and a variety of inks. Six years ......Read More

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