Monday 27th November 2006 I’m going onto BBC local radio in the south east this evening to talk to listeners about how to get published and what authors need to know about the business. The show will be broadcast live from 8p.m. (UK local time) on BBC local radio stations
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Let’s get something straight: agents are not the Holy Grail. Getting a decent deal is. The reason I say this is that the majority of published authors do not have agents, so if you can’t get an agent, it is not the end of the world.
The debate on Woman’s Hour this morning about women and crime writing was really interesting. As previously mentioned, it followed a comment by Ian Rankin in an interview with me that women write the most graphic violent crime – and the most violent of the lot is by lesbians. It
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Not quite sure what I started the other day by referring to Ian Rankin’s comments about women crime writers, but if it gets people talking about what is happening to women now, and why they are reading increasingly violent fiction – while also being increasingly violent (according to Home Office
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What is remarkable about the whole tawdry episode is the utter cynicism it reveals at the heart of publishing. The same cynicism that makes publishers pump out car crash celebrities and grit lit memoirs that seem to revel in almost pornographic accounts of abuse and degradation.
“We’ve made certain subjects that affect women our speciality,” Annie explains. “We talked about the things that affect us, obviously relationships, children, holidays, and we realised that we’ve always had a bit of a joke about Christmas.”
Good romance tells a transformative story, not just a love story. It is as much about the central character learning to love her self and make better judgments, as it is about meeting some bloke – the best I have read don’t have a hands held walk into the sunset at the end. Like the best crime writers, the best romance writers are challenging the conventions of the genre and playing with the format.
Experience be damned, Patrick Neate thinks authors can write in any voice. He should know, he once narrated a novel as a pigeon. Listen to what he has to say as he gets shirty with me in the final podcast of my Textual Analysis series on Channel4Radio. You can also
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As internet traffic migrates from official websites to unofficial pages on the likes of YouTube, Bebo and Xanga, Random House’s initiative follows a spate of similar promotions by film studios such as Disney and record companies such as Warner Music.
The trend reflects efforts to reach young people, who are resistant to traditional marketing channels including official websites.
Independent on Sunday Registered blind for four years, the creator of Adrian Mole has written a sequel to ‘The Queen and I’, a wry royal saga. I believe people do not mature very much. I’m still waiting to properly mature. I believe that you can live without a mobile phone
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