Category Archives: Authorial voice

Well, I’ve given in. Faced with 650 plus pages to scan and edit, I found I just couldn’t face it. Nor, I felt, could my scanner. By the end of scanning ‘Candle in the Dark’ the cover of my printer … Continue reading →

It’s an odd feeling revisiting a novel you wrote many years ago. But that’s what a writer has to do when preparing a book for digital conversion. It can be a painful process, because all the book’s faults leap out … Continue reading →

Six down, fourteen (I think) to go… And now for the historical novels: the seven romances and the seven middle-brow historicals. That’s ‘all’ I have left to scan, format, edit and find covers for, so as to convert them into … Continue reading →

Not so long ago there was an interview in a Sunday paper with the crime-writer Ian Rankin. Asked how he knew when he’d got to the end of a novel he was writing, he said, ‘When I get to the … Continue reading →

Self-publishing puts the author in the driving seat – so we were told at a very upbeat recent meeting of fellow writers. It’s true too. We writers no longer have to wait for a publisher to consider our books for … Continue reading →

I called it ‘contemporary fiction’. The way I saw it, anything happening within my lifetime was contemporary. Historical novels are set in the past, in Victorian times or earlier. Then I came to edit ‘Family Business’ prior to launching it … Continue reading →

‘Never design your own cover.’ That’s the advice all the ‘experts’ give to writers struggling to get their books in the Kindle store. You need a good eye-catching design, so an amateurish job just won’t do. Paying for a design … Continue reading →

I’d only ever written historical fiction before. But in 1994 a lot was happening in the Church of England, of which, as a vicar’s daughter, I’ve been an active member nearly all my life. Above all, it was the year … Continue reading →