A bag of books

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

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

Throughout his career, our columnist has relied on the music of poetry to provide grace, wisdom and even a distraction from the sounds of war

What revealed the magic of books for me was The Wind in the Willows. When I was five, I contracted measles, which meant I had to spend my days in bed in a darkened room. My mother sat outside my bedro