So you’re famous! Congratulations! You’ve spent years building up enough fans/cash/scandal/failed relationships/headlines/backhanders/gratuitous nudity, to be recognised on the street! Well done, you! Now all you need is to bung out the first volume of your autobiography. After all, a few million in royalties will give you some extra pocket money, and your bad habits have been catching up with…
Category: Creating the Bestseller
How To Know If You’re In A Young Adult Novel
It sucks being a young adult. Too young to die, too adult to care. Everything totally sucks. You wouldn’t be surprised if the world around you were fictional, it’s so sucky. Though if it were fictional, you’re pretty sure it’d be better than this. Like, you could be anything in fiction: the heroine of a…
How To Know If You’re In A Literary Fiction Novel
Do you sometimes wake up feeling like life is too ridiculous to be sublime? That the truth is stranger than fiction? Or that your life, if made into a book, would be in danger of running into cliché, if it didn’t have so many beautiful-sounding words in it? Is it possible that you – Dear…
Flash Fiction Runners-Up Too
Today’s an emotional day, when I say goodbye to the old Book Title Generator/Flash Fiction Competition. I find myself worrying about whether the people who were so close to the ones who were so close to the one that won (yes, you read that right) know just how good their entries were. I’m hoping that by seeing the…
Flash Fiction Competition Runners-Up
There were 2 runners-up in the Book Title Generator/Flash Fiction Competition which were very close. Then there were a further 3, which were again very close to the ones which were close to the one that won. Got that? But anyway, in the interests of not trying to be all things to all men, I’m forced…
Probably The Best Flash Fiction In The World
Because….. we have a WINNER! Amid much anguish, hand-wringing, and a few stomach ulcers, the results are in. The winner sprang straight out of the Literary Fiction Title Generator. There were more than several reasons for the entry published below being the winner, but fewer reasons separating it from the very close runners-up, making it a…
Top 5 Asinine Excuses For Not Writing
Good Friday, gentlepersons. I’m ending this working week with my top 5 excuses for not writing. Perversely, they include, well, work. But that’s not the point. Because I have so many writing projects I intended to have finished by now, and my success rate is only marginally better than that of an Irishman at a speed dating…
The Writer I Am, And The Writer I Want To Be (sort of)
This is how most people think writers write Lorna Sixsmith, writer of Would You Marry A Farmer? and blogger/chief over at Irish Farmerette, very kindly asked me to carry the baton on a blog tagging exercise where writers say a little something about how, why and what they write. As it turned out, I found it very unsatisfactory writing…
Flash Fiction / Book Title Generator Competition – REMINDER
A gentle reminder about this competition, which is closing on April 25th, but open for all entries now. Full details are here, but the rules couldn’t be simpler. Find your own personalised book title from any of the 3 title generators (Chick-Lit, Crime Thriller or Literary Fiction), and use that title for inspiration to write 500…
On The Perils Of Having More Than One Writer Wandering Around Your Brain
The rules of publishing seem to dictate that you find a writing style, and stick to it. But not everyone wants to do this. And not everyone is capable of it. J.K. Rowling made headlines last year when she published crime fiction under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, having previously confounded the market with adult literary fiction…
Tara Sparling writes 