Digging…
I get inspired by the oddest things – I’ve said before that it can be as simple as an ancient dye, a splinter of wood, a fragment of cloth and so on.
I say to myself, ‘There’s a story in that…’
If one is a mainstream writer, one rarely if ever has input into cover design. However, if one is indie, and one has an amenable cover designer, one can give them a brief and they work with it.
concatenation; plural noun: concatenations a series of interconnected things.
‘A series of interconnected things…’ If you’re a writer, it’s most likely that someone at some time has said: ‘It would be great as a series.’
And the truth is that many writers write copious series. Myself? I’ve written three series and am now in the middle of the fourth.
Why you may ask?
I’m writing a new novel at the moment. It’s tentatively called Oak Gall and Gold and is Book Two of The Peregrinus Series.
The series, like my others, is set in the twelfth century, and inevitably involves the machinations of the trading house of Gisborne ben Simon. This time, there’s an incomplete illuminated manuscript, a monk with no memory, and dealings with the Holy Roman Empire.
I’m excited to announce that the anthology, Sword and Sirventes, has just been released as an e-book. The paperback version will be released in the next fortnight.
This is one of those chatty posts, as though you and I might be sitting across a café table from each other and we are meeting for the first time. I’m drinking a cappuccino with a coffee macaron on the side. And you? You’re having a coffee as well? Excellent.
You want to know what I do?
Well…
Over the years, I’ve often commented on how inspirational Dorothy Dunnett’s writing has been to me as I tread the path.
Once a couple of years ago, I was asked to write a piece for the Dorothy Dunnett Society’s august journal, Whispering Gallery, on the nature of shock or more particularly, what I found to be the most shocking piece of writing in Dunnett.
