Back in April 2016, I started writing reviews of the books I read. This prompted me to look at adding a bit more variety to my reading habits. Now, that doesn’t mean I was suddenly going to start perusing the sort of books I wouldn’t normally touch with a barge pole, just one or two…
Category: Reading
‘How to Be a Victorian’ by Ruth Goodman
How to Be a Victorian If you’ve ever wondered what life was like during the reign of Queen Victoria, you should either build a time machine, or get your hands on this book. Historian Ruth Goodman charts the Victorian experience from getting up to going to bed, and everything in-between. Goodman is a historian and…
Killer Clothing…
One of the things I like about writing historical fiction is doing research. Well, I’ll clarify that a bit – the thing I really like is looking at pictures. Trouble is, finding images that will fire the old imagination ain’t that easy, so sometimes it comes down to good old fashioned reading. I mentioned in…
The Hardy Boys and Me
What makes us write the books we write? Back in the summer of 2013, after years of writing stage plays, I finally got around to finishing two novels I’d started several years before. At the time, I had no inclination to write books for adults, so those first novels (‘The Devil’s Porridge Gang‘ and ‘The…
Three Easy Steps to Not Finding Your Writer’s Voice
Yes, you read that right – this is a post about not finding your writer’s voice. But first let’s just clarify what I’m talking about. Every writer has a voice. Sometimes it’s exactly like their actual voice (the writing sounds the same as the way they talk), but more often it’s a sophisticated version of…
The Trick is to Keep Reading
I remember reading ‘The Baader-Meinhof Complex’ by Stefan Aust and wishing I could somehow speed things up. Of course, I wanted to enjoy every word and not miss anything, but the book was so damn heavy and unwieldy, I sometimes felt like I was preparing for battle, instead of settling down for a good read.…
