It’s probably not going to be an Internet-breaking observation that characters can sometimes seem to take on a life of their own when you are writing fiction.
Continue reading “The Characters are Ruining It”The Characters are Ruining It
Blog Posts
Some Interesting Locations In “The Mouth”
A few locations that inspired my new novel (and thus became imaginary places whose similarities to actual real places are entirely co-incidental)
The Maunsell Sea Forts
The Maunsell Sea Forts are armed towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War.
Continue reading “Some Interesting Locations In “The Mouth””
Triumph of the Goths!
Gothic was named after the Visigoths, the barbarian European tribes who defeated and sacked Ancient Rome.
Continue reading “Triumph of the Goths!”Writing in the Language of Angels
One of the big problems when writing about the after life or spiritual realms is that the afterlife, if there is one, is an unknown quantity. An author can’t meet up and interview a spiritual being for research in the way they would, say, a police officer.
Continue reading “Writing in the Language of Angels”Edgar Allan Poe and “Genre” Writing.
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” was published in 1845.
In the story a mesmerist (a kind of hypnotist) puts a dying man called Valdemar in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death.
Continue reading “Edgar Allan Poe and “Genre” Writing.”Kenostic vs. Heuristic Storytelling
I once attended a lecture on the Polish-born English novelist Joseph Conrad. The lecturer talked about two types of text.
Continue reading “Kenostic vs. Heuristic Storytelling”