The Literary Sofa

You’ve seen the mountains, now let’s talk about the books! After last week’s travel post on Canada, here’s the one I promised on my month of reading exclusively Canadian fiction (an action-packed two week trip didn’t give me much time to read, so I kept going).  When I asked my Twitter followers for recommendations of … Continue reading →

How’s your summer going? Mine’s been great and incredibly busy so far – definitely time to wind down with my last post before taking a nice long break*.  I’m glad to hear that many of you are enjoying books you discovered on my Summer Reads selection and/or the guest author series which ended last week … Continue reading →

It’s that time again, and I’m excited to bring you this year’s Summer Reads selection.  My search sprang many surprises, producing a dozen fantastic books revealing all kinds of lives: from the real and ‘ordinary’ to some which are anything but, plus several dogs! The majority are set during different periods of the 20th century … Continue reading →

Like many novelists, I get asked a lot of tricky questions and that’s not likely to change when my next book comes out. (Yes, I’m saying ‘when’ because I have to believe that to put myself through this.)  Today’s post – by popular demand! – looks at some of those questions and my experience of … Continue reading →

Back to my Summer Reads and I’m declaring this week’s post a Special Edition, partly because it’s a change from the normal format but mostly because I am so thrilled to be hosting the talented and lovely Catherine McNamara, whose second solo short story collection The Cartography of Others was recently crowdfunded by many and … Continue reading →

As Hemingway famously said, ‘the first draft of anything is garbage.’ (I always thought he said ‘shit’ but anyway.) And as he also famously said, ‘writing is rewriting’. Now I am not a particular fan of Hemingway nor of writing aphorisms, which I have learned to approach on a ‘pick your own’ basis, (as in … Continue reading →

It’s been a busy and exciting time lately, with wonderful reviews of Paris Mon Amour appearing all over the place – one reader wrote to me when she finished it at 2am! It’s so interesting and rewarding hearing what people make of it (and everyone sees something a bit different), so a very big thank you to everyone … Continue reading →

In view of the appreciative response to the above piece I wrote for the Writers’ Workshop (York Festival of Writing) blog, I thought I’d also post the link here on the Literary Sofa. Thanks again to WW for hosting me and for their important role on the journey to publication of my debut novel Paris Mon Amour.   … Continue reading →

It’s nearly a week since my debut novel Paris Mon Amour came out and I’ll be writing about that incredible experience very soon… But in the meantime – and because I was way too busy to post this week – here are some of the pieces I’ve written elsewhere to coincide with the release.  Given the longevity and popularity … Continue reading →

I recently wrote this article about rejection for a competition and rather fittingly, it didn’t get anywhere. When I was telling some writer friends about this over lunch a few days ago (I had to see the funny side), they said I should post it on the blog so I’m doing it before I can … Continue reading →