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When I was three years old, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. My answer? A cuckoo clock! My Dad later told me that he knew then that I would be a writer.
He was right. From the age of seven I wrote stories and I’ve never really stopped. But […]
Anyone who has been following my blogs for a while will know that I’m part of an online community called Mi365. You may even be a Mi365er yourself and, if you are, the title of this blog will be familiar to you. It is an idea which we’ve heard a few times.
Those who haven’t […]
Sunday is when I write my weekly blog. It is one of my rituals for the week.
This Sunday, however, I’ve been thinking to myself, “What on earth am I going to write about?” And writing is like that. Sometimes, you just draw a blank. Creativity seems to have fled and there is only so […]
My blog over the past couple of week has been all about the creation of the landscape for The Bremmand Chronicles. It is one of fun parts of narrative fiction – inventing your own geography. It isn’t just the geography either – it’s the society too. So, having created the Kingdom, I also had to […]
When I was first developing the maps of Bremmand (see my blog from last week) I needed to consider geography. It isn’t a topic I know a vast amount about (I dropped the subject at school when I was 13) but when it comes to political boundaries, I know a enough to get […]
One of the less visible aspects of writing a narrative fiction book (i.e. from the imagination), is that you aren’t just creating a time and a place but a whole nation. As I started to develop The Line of Duty some 20 years ago, I started to realise that I needed a map in my […]
This week, I finished the first draft of my next book Age of Oppression.
Writing a first draft is hard work – don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!
I liken it to walking up a steep hill. You start off full of enthusiasm, with a clear view of the end and knowing exactly how […]
There is an interesting nugget of neurology that I cam across recently, about the Reticular activating system (RAS). RAS is a function of the brain which decides what we focus on. It is the reason why, when you are considering blue as the colour for your new car, because, “I hardly ever see blue cars […]
When you invent a kingdom for the purposes of fiction, you soon discover that you have to invent a wide range of other things too. That was certainly my experience with the Bremmand Chronicles. Not only did I have to think about the looks and occupations of Bremmand’s people, I had to consider their spirituality […]
Happy New Year!
I took time off over Christmas – both from blogging and also from work. It is always nice to break out of the regular routine and do things a bit differently. It also gave me time to reflect. Every year I set a resolution to finish the first draft of my next […]
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