1. Melissa Goode on the alchemy of writing to music

    Music is essential to my writing process, sending me to another world, away from this one, and casting me into the moment with the characters. If I listen to, for example, ‘The Great White Open’ by Christian Löffler and Federico Albanese, or Dirty Three’s ‘Sue’s Last Ride’, I can start the process, like swimming towards the bottom of a pool and reaching a different place.
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  2. Injecting humour into crime fiction by Aoife Clifford

    Writing a crime novel is always great fun but creating a funny crime novel is a real challenge. Killing is the easy part, making a reader laugh about it is much harder.
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  3. Abby Corson: How I got into the mindset of a seventy-three-year-old man.

    Hector Harrow is an almost-retired hotel concierge from Yorkshire who likes to drink tea and do newspaper puzzles in his cosy cottage. For me, he was the perfect protagonist for my murder mystery.
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  4. Why Teach? By Yumna Kassab

    I never meant to be a teacher. I, in fact, categorically 100% in no absolute way wanted to teach. My complete prejudice was the result of an adult ...
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  5. Beauty is Only Skin Deep by Shankari Chandran

    My name is Shankari Nadanachandran, and I am a lawyer, a writer, and a mother of four. I am 47 years old. My body has grown older as it’s supposed ...
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  6. Me and Nature by Sophie Cunningham

    My need to get a sense of the physical landscape my characters have lived in and walked on is both a joy and affliction.  In the case of my latest ...
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  7. Don’t Ignore Ideas That Turn Up in the Bath by Zoë Coyle

    I am heavily pregnant, seven and a half months, with my first child sitting in a bathtub. The tub is in a tiny, rented cottage in the hills above F...
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  8. How My Wedding Dress Inspired My Crime Novel by Aoife Clifford

    I am a chatty bookseller. I love to talk to customers about their choices, what they have been reading and introduce them to a new favourite book a...
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  9. My 'Coming of Age' Book Recommendations by Kira McPherson

    The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, about the highly relatable journey of becoming the 18th-century German poet Novalis. Every Penelope Fitzger...
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  10. What NOT to Say to Someone Who is Grieving by Natasha Sholl

    I was in my early 20s when my partner Rob died suddenly and unexpectedly. As I grappled with the loss, I was told to be grateful for the time we ha...
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  11. Personal Connection to the Novel by Shankari Chandran

     

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  12. What makes a novel interesting? By Diana Reid

    As a phone-addict who came of age in the attention-economy, I’m painfully aware that novels demand an archaic amount of focus. Readers have to give...
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