I had a little chat with with my brain, who told me in no uncertain terms that I had abused it and it was really unhappy with me. That’s it in a nutshell, really. It’s hard to write an elegant introduction when your brain doesn’t love you anymore.
Why are bad reviews more useful in book selling than good reviews? Because they contain much more useful information, that’s why. Here are 10 kinds of bad review which make authors weep and wail, but are actually working harder in the background to sell their work than any 5* review ever could.
So you think that being thinner or richer would make you happy? Read this, and don’t even weep for a second.
It’s the time of the year where we look back on my predictions for 2016, which I cunningly disguised back in January as a futuristic review of what had already happened. So how right or wrong was I? What implications does this have for the global power framework? Will I be a benevolent dictator? And do you have any jellybeans?
Literary Fiction heroes inhabit a world of such beauty and introspection, that to know them would be to feel a deeper connection to the universe. Right?
Perhaps this idea warrants a little further exploration. Might living with one of the protagonists of your favourite literary fiction novels inspire you to a better understanding of humanity? Or might it inspire you to want to kick their arse?
3 Writers enter Mr McGuffin’s Plot Device and Writer Unblocking Emporium in dire need of help. Will Mr McGuffin be able to save the tragic lovers of the romance novelist? What’s in the bloodstained suitcase? Just what is going on with the world’s most mysterious dog? And how long can one pun be stretched out over an entire blog post? Click the bait to find out.
The notion of artists working for free is a frequent hot topic online. Is writing or performing for free in order to get so called ‘exposure’ the great modern swizz which is destroying the potential of a generation? Perhaps that question has already been answered, because a lot of high-quality free internet content is disappearing. And it’s making me think.
You love the cops in crime novels. So careworn, and yet mysterious. They have money, and yet never spend it on themselves. Granted, being married to one is just asking for trouble. But you could just share a house with one, right? That would be exciting, and spice up your humdrum existence no end!
Let’s take a look, and see if you might want to think this through a little more…
Three Narrative Points of View attend their regular Writer’s Group meeting in a licensed premises, and proceed to have an argument. If you think that sounds like a very contrived joke, you’d be right. The punchline, however, is what you might least expect.
Where did pieces of glorious human creativity go, before the internet? Where were the cat pictures, the listicles and the punny prose, before they appeared on our Facebook news feeds? The internet has had a lot to do with the way we consume our entertainment – but it’s done even more for how we produce it.
Tara Sparling writes 