August 2, 2016
My writing journey has involved traversing a long, winding path with numerous detours and roadblocks, sometimes entire landslides, but I’m slowly learning that nothing we do or experience is wasted – even discarded words and manuscripts. I really do believe that without the countless writing exercises I’ve attempted, hundreds of thousands of words scribbled in […]
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July 21, 2016
You’ve most likely heard the names Kate Cebrano, Frankie J. Holden and Amanda Keller, who were among those recently recognised in the 2016 Queen’s birthday honours list. But you probably haven’t heard of Edna Richardson, who was on that same list. Now in her eighties, Edna Richardson has spent the past twenty years visiting war […]
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July 14, 2016
Welcome back to Six Degrees of Separation, a literary meme in which Kate, from booksaremyfavouriteandbest, gives us the title of a book and we link it to six others in any way we choose. It’s really easy – and fun – so please join in. This months’ starting point is Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. Midnight’s Children […]
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July 7, 2016
It would seem there are plenty of opportunities out there for young writers and other creatives if you know where to look. Whether you’re a young person wanting to know where to submit your work, or a teacher hoping to inspire the creative children and teenagers in your care, I’ve gathered a stack of current […]
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June 30, 2016
Have you ever tried to find out about someone, perhaps an elusive ancestor, but found little trace of them in the history books or other official records? It’s often the case when researching family history, and it was certainly my experience when writing Many Hearts, One Voice. When I started researching the story of the War Widows’ […]
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June 16, 2016
Writing the Past: Truth or Lies?
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NB: This post is an edited version of a speech I gave at the launch of the anthology, Truth or Lies, for the KSP Writers’ Centre Past Tense group on 11 June 2016. I still have to pinch myself that I’m primarily an author of non-fiction – because I always dreamed of being a novelist. […]
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Writing competitions can be great, especially if your head is full of ideas and you’re already scribbling them down any chance you’ve got. But what about when the creative juices aren’t flowing, or you’re only writing a story because your teacher told you to? Although ideas can arise anywhere, from all sorts of sources, having […]
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May 12, 2016
Welcome back to Six Degrees of Separation. Feel free to play along at home; it’s really easy. Simply take the title allocated by Kate over at booksaremyfavouriteandbest, and connect it to six other books in any way that seems fit. This month’s starting point is Perfume: the Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind. Perfume is about […]
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