Tyranny and liberation: Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast
There’s a reason why oppressive societies have images of their leader on every wall and statues in every town square. For the tyrant to…
What’s the book you turn to?
Do you have a particular book that you turn to when you’re feeling lost or confused? Something that you’ve read or dipped…
Generalities are the enemy of good writing
That was quite a general statement, so let me explain. Good writing involves seeing something in a fresh way, and that means…
Interview with a writer (and his cat): James Higgerson
Check out this short interview I recorded the other day with James Higgerson, Manchester-based author of The Almost Lizard. In the interview, James…
Rutherford Park by Elizabeth Cooke
Do you ever get the feeling that you’re not the target audience for a particular book? The cover of this one set…
The ten rules of writing fiction
There’s an old Guardian article I’ve used a few times when giving talks on the craft of writing. It was called The Ten Rules…
Dog and Butterfly
Tolstoy famously wrote that “All happy families are alike”, but John Philip Riffice’s novel Dog and Butterfly proves that all good rules also…
The Rag
I like literary magazines. I read a lot of them, although I don’t review them on here too often. I just read…
A bit of nonsense
I was struggling with my writing this morning, and somehow ended up procrastinating by changing all of the words in the first…