When you see this post I will have just arrived in Zambia and my children’s book Dust and Rain: Chipo and Chibwe save the Green Valley will have been published by Gadsden Publishers. How a story grows and changes as the world spins It was a shock when I first realised that my story, Dust and Rain, so relevant 20 […]
About good writing – but also about good films
Films need plots Good films depend on good stories according to Steven Spielberg. I watched the BBC’s The Little Drummer Girl with dread and delight. Would it be a pleasure? Could it live up to expectations? It was and it did! I sat down happily afterwards to reread John Le Carré‘s brilliant novel. Film and book had to be different but […]
How to make a book look good enough to read
How to be your own publisher I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m learning on the job and wondering if what I do is make mistakes and then recover from them. The learning curve I’m riding gets steeper and deeper and the pressure to do it all at once keeps on mounting. Yesterday I was sent a cover design and […]
Writers, readers and the publishers picnic
A lovely day, a friendly gathering and a picnic It was a picnic about different ways of publishing books that was held on a lovely hillside venue at a private home – many thanks to our hosts. It was well organised by Jane Sherwin of Cafe Matin and I was delighted to be one of those asked to take part. […]
Finding readers for ‘The Tin Heart Gold Mine’ – Lara’s London and Mandela’s statue.
London’s South Bank Centre and the River Thames Writers write about what they know. Even an imagined world must be thoroughly experienced and known to the author of a book. At the start of The Tin Heart Gold Mine, Lara, the main character of the book, lives in London and in a part of London that I loved, so naturally […]