When the news breaks that a publisher has paid a huge advance for a new or emerging author, it sends a message to the industry. It signifies that – despite excruciating pressures on retail and variable results for debut fiction in particular – publishers still believe that they know how to make and find great…
I called for an industry behavioural code back in January because it seemed to me that a written statement was the only sufficient and appropriate response to the results of The Bookseller’s survey into sexual harassment in the book trade. The books business is founded on shared beliefs: in the importance of free expression, the…
As book people shall we recognise that last year was an important year for storytelling? For personal storytelling, because 2017 was a year in which many people’s stories were spoken out loud or written down for the first time. I am referring of course to the accounts given by those who have suffered sexual harassment…
I keep a number of half-formed essays in the Drafts folder of my blog, adding to and weeding through my ideas every now and again. I have revisited none so often as this piece of writing about sadness, which has grown long and wild over the past two years and yet never blossomed into something…
The first property we bought was a disaster. It was a flat with the most beautiful floor to ceiling windows. It should have been a lovely home, but there was a problem, in the building. I moved in with my mother to try to escape it, while my husband painted walls through the night so…
I spent this weekend reading. I read for hours in bed, in the bath, by the fire, on trains, at the kitchen counter, in bed again, on the stairs with a cup of coffee, in the bath again, bed, bed, lovely bed. I did other things too – well, I mothered – the house went…
Another year is turning: Time is drawing attention to itself again, bragging about how fast it's passing. Some days I let it swing by, grateful; but I ought to catch hold of its coat. In a few months I'll be forty-five. My teenaged daughter watched me getting dressed the other day and commented, pointedly: "You…
I met with an editor of commercial fiction recently who had plenty of ideas for novels she wanted to commission. They were okay set-ups; each one had a decent premise, or character idea at their heart. The ideas all took inspiration from something that had already been successful, in books or on TV, and then combined that plot or…
It's summer so we have left our desks and we're throwing ourselves into Beauty: diving into waves or paragliding into the big blue from cliffs or lying in long grasses or basking in the sun or losing ourselves in music or reuniting with loved ones. And so if we write, let's write about something beautiful…
We were walking in lush green fields, alongside a river that maybe used to be deep and mysterious and now tumbled lazily over rocks – or maybe on a dry day was just a muddy ditch but that day tumbled lazily over rocks for us; and we were with our children, inhabiting the world with…