The Literary Sofa
Life
My First Year as an Agented Writer
A year ago, after a radical re-write of my first novel, I found myself in the midst of something I never thought would happen – having previously failed to get anywhere, my book and I had finally succeeded in attracting the interest of several literary agents. I’ve been thinking back to that fevered, exhilarating time … Continue reading
Guest Author – Alice Jolly on Crowdfunding – How to make new friends (and lose old ones)
*PUBLICATION UPDATE – JULY 2015* **CONGRATULATIONS to Alice Jolly and to her publishers Unbound on the publication of Dead Babies and Seaside Towns. The hardback edition (see the cover below) is a thing of beauty as befits this extraordinary true story and it is rightfully receiving a great deal of media attention.** As with many … Continue reading
Endless Distractions
I’m winging it this week. The planned guest post hasn’t materialised – nobody’s fault, just one of those things. And right now life is full of ‘those things’. I’m finding it hard to keep all my plates spinning – maybe that’s why my eye was drawn to author David Mitchell’s piece in The Atlantic. It’s called … Continue reading
Making a Difference – the WoMentoring Project
I’m back on the Literary Sofa after a lovely Easter break in which I got to spend some time with my sons (to my great relief I didn’t have to nag my eldest to revise for GCSEs – apparently a month before is a reasonable time to get your act together). It ended with the … Continue reading
My First Five Years as a Writer
It’s five years to the day since I started writing fiction (for someone so terrible with numbers, I am surprisingly good with dates). By that I mean actually doing it. Not thinking about it. Not talking about it. I’d been doing that for years. During the period leading up to me signing with my agent … Continue reading
The Joy and (mostly) Horror of Houseguests
Last week we had a family of French friends staying with us, which led me to reflect on the subject of houseguests. This time we were exchanging bisous by the hundred with my oldest friend, her husband and their three children, the youngest of whom is my gorgeous eight-year-old goddaughter. Although we usually meet in … Continue reading
I Remember
Following the excitement of the York Festival of Writing, I am spending every possible moment polishing my manuscript but I don’t want to neglect the Literary Sofa. So for this week’s blogpost, I decided to cheat and use a fantastic writing exercise from the York mini-course led by editor Andrew Wille on the Four Elements … Continue reading
The York Effect – Festival of Writing 2013
I first attended the Festival of Writing organised by Writers’ Workshop in 2012. If you’d told me then that I’d end up going two years in a row, I would have been surprised, not least that I could spare the money or the time away from home. I would have been frankly appalled to think … Continue reading
The City and the Road – August in America
It’s good to be back on the Literary Sofa again after spending almost all of August in the States. If you know my blog or my fiction you already know that I have a thing about America which dates all the way back to my very first taste of it as a 22-year-old. Somewhat bizarrely, … Continue reading
The Online You and Me
This week marks two years since I joined Twitter. Within months, I’d started the Literary Sofa blog and the rest is… amazing! Now, wherever I go, people talk to me about things they’ve read or discovered here. That makes me very happy. I’m often asked ‘how I’ve done it’, especially by would-be or reluctant bloggers. … Continue reading
My new novel SCENT – out in paperback on 19 May 2022
The Literary Sofa 