A sense of place

An old man lives at the bottom of my garden. His name is Robert Barkus, or Bakehouse, or Bagust. Nobody is quite sure. But I often sense him around when I’m gardening, and I’ve found out a fair bit ab

When the Fireflies Dance is set in Lahore, Pakistan and a significant challenge when writing it was to ensure the reader was able to place themselves in the setting. I wanted to be able to transport t

This year marks the publication of my eighth novel, The Time Hop Coffee Shop. Eight feels like quite an impressive number, especially when there were times I thought I’d never get a book published. I

In the first part of our examination of The Building Block of Dialogue, we looked at how to build a Scene of Dialogue. A Scene of Dialogue contains the elements which supplement the words spoken by th

This month’s story, ‘The Surrogate’ by Tessa Hadley, is a study of two men through the eyes of one woman. The title suggests that one man is a surrogate for the other, but is it as simple as that? As

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