Why is everybody writing personal stuff these days? Do we have to talk about ourselves in order to get cultural traction? How much do you really want to know about somebody, and have you read personal things you wish you hadn’t?
When we mourn famous people we’ve never met, we’re also mourning the people we once were. And that’s okay. Because there’s a lot of feeling wrapped up in all that.
The Secret Actress is currently writing anonymously for the Guardian newspaper about the stuff nobody will admit publicly in Hollywood. It’s time for The Secret Author to do the same for the writing community. Are you the next online Superhero?
Ten years ago we could never have envisaged a situation where we could be personally insulted by lots of people we’d never even met. Aren’t we the lucky generation to have all these opportunities, and more? What upsets us most on the internet? Is it trolls? Contradictions? Or simply someone who doesn’t agree with what we’re saying?
There are too many women crying in fiction. You can’t move in film and TV for women in floods of tears. Who is writing the crying woman? And how can we make it stop?
You just can’t beat the popularity of the fashion or beauty blog, so today, I’m joining their ranks with my Essential Guide To Wearing Your Fave Books This Season. What should you wear while reading Crime Fiction? And why do Literary Fiction and Louis Vuitton not mix?
We all know what it’s like to have difficult flatmates. Insomniacs. Musicians. Drug Addicts. Botanists. When things get really sour, a fictional flatmate would be ideal. But what if you were to live with a modern grip-lit heroine from the likes of Girl On The Train, Gone Girl, or Before I Go To Sleep?
On what online piracy really means for authors and musicians; and why it’s all really the fault of Big Tobacco.
In the third and final part of ‘what the hell is a book blurb and how am I supposed to write one’, we explore the genres of Short Stories – from both famous and less famous authors; Self-Help, and Literary Fiction. Sort of.
In the second part of ‘what the hell is a book blurb and how am I supposed to write one’, we explore the genres of Crime, Historical Fiction, and Science Fiction/Fantasy. Sort of.
Tara Sparling writes 