It’s never too late to… get a six-figure book deal

Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

L If they’re ever looking to recruit spies, forget handsome, fit, blue-eyed Bonds. Forget gym-buffed Daniel, impossibly good-looking Tom and danger magnet Matt. Look instead for a middle-aged woman in

Life has a bad habit of mirroring art. Sometimes, this can be in a deeply sad way. A while after I wrote about the assumption of guilt in a traumatised young woman with poor social skills, I watched a

Thanks for coming in today, Bea,” said Jason, the commissioning editor at Bluestone Press, where Bea was interviewing for yet another assistant job. “We’ll be in touch.” “Okay, great,” replied Bea, fo

We tend to imagine our literary icons in ivory towers – poised, thoughtful, wrapped in something muted and cashmere, tapping away at sleek laptops. Perhaps it’s how you picture yourself when attemptin

Having struggled with panic attacks, Cecelia Ahern thought becoming an author would allow her to retreat from the world. Instead, she was forced to face her biggest fears. She tells Bethan Rose Jenkins how she took control