Category: eBooks

Getting the past in your sights – why I’ve turned to detective fiction

It’s nine months since I wrote this blog – a long enough period of gestation for any work of fiction… which indeed it has proved to be. After a year in which I moved to a different city, and started a new job, I finished my novel, Line of Sight, and delivered it to its Read More

Having a fabulous time

One of the joys of publishing with an independent online publisher is being able to re-publish one’s out of print work – hitherto doomed to a half-life in the ‘used’ section of the Amazon store, or to second-hand bookshops -– themselves fast disappearing. It’s a wonderfully liberating feeling, to know that one’s characters are no Read More

Writing in a changing universe

The beautiful pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the giant galaxy Centaurus A which appeared on the front page of the Guardian a few days ago are a reminder that – as William Herschel discovered 230 years ago – our universe is not static, but changing all the time. Supernovae explode, and new Read More

Fiction Can Save Your Life

Flying back from New York a couple of nights ago, on the ‘red-eye’ – and never was an unaffectionate nickname more aptly bestowed – I found myself once more confronting the fact that a good book can save your life. I’m speaking figuratively, of course – although there are doubtless instances, from the bullet-stopping Bibles Read More

Publishing in a changing world

As the author of three novels, several anthologies, and a guide to children’s fiction published by mainstream traditional publishers, and – recently – a novel published by an independent online publisher (The Dark Tower, Arbuthnot Books, 2010), I think I can say I’ve seen publishing from both sides. When my first novel, A Mild Suicide, Read More