What’s this? Me, the arch-planner, admitting that my characters sometimes have a will of their own? I’ve always dismissed that idea as nonsense. Characters come from the mind of the writer, where else? The writer invents them, so they dance to her tune. She can make them do and think and say what she wants [...]

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I’m not keen on New Year’s resolutions. It’s too easy for us to end up in a mire of guilt, weighed down by our failure to meet our own expectations. On the other hand, defined goals can help those of us who might otherwise become TV watching, junk food eating couch potatoes, with nothing more [...]

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I had a concept in mind that had been nagging away at me for months, demanding to be crafted into a story. Two concepts, in fact, one about a cat and one about two dogs. Both seemed ideal for inclusion in my short fiction collection, Prickle Moon. I made numerous attempts to write these stories, [...]

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A couple of days ago I caught myself trying to do five things at once: bake scones for a family visit (English scones, the kind you eat with jam) complete the fancy beading on a princess outfit for a teddy bear sweep the floor, put away the washing, quickly toddler-proof my living area write my [...]

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So you need to write. And you love to read. How do you find time for both? Some people don’t read for pleasure at all while engrossed in a writing project (such self-discipline!) Some limit what they read, steering clear of their own genre – a writer of historical romance might read true crime; an [...]

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Kath here. Well, she’s done it again. Fantasy author extraordinaire, and valued WU contributor Juliet Marillier’s next book, SHADOWFELL, is the first book in what is sure to become another bestselling series for young adult readers. It releases today with huge buzz, and terrific reviews. Tough-to-please Kirkus writes: Marillier’s deep knowledge of folklore and the early-medieval period [...]

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  Here in Australia, season one of the ABC fantasy-drama series Once Upon a Time recently came to an end. The series concept is this: in the magical world of fairy tales, the evil queen lays a curse that transports everyone to Storybrooke, Maine. The evil queen does this to punish Snow White who, as [...]

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On the first day of the winter break, my granddaughters’ school was gutted by fire. It started in the middle of the night, and by the time firefighters reached the scene, the hundred-year-old heritage building was well ablaze. Whoever set this fire – and it was certainly arson, with three separate ignition points – not [...]

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Why is the second book in a fantasy trilogy so hard to get right? The first book introduces the world, the protagonist, the goal – it grabs the reader’s imagination and holds it with everything bright and new. In the third book the reader gets the answers to the perplexing story questions, and sees the [...]

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I’m working on short fiction just now, and boy, is it difficult! I’m a novelist by profession, happiest when working on something in the range of 110-160,000 words. But I got an opportunity I couldn’t turn down: to have a collection of my short fiction published next year by a specialist small press, Ticonderoga Publications. [...]

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I’m going to write a whole post without using a certain 8 letter word describing something short people and aspiring writers can build and climb up on in order to be more visible. That’s not to downplay the value of other contributors’ recent posts about balancing your writing time with your visibility time, or the [...]

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Actually, for a writer, the tomayto/tomahto thing doesn’t matter as it’s all in the pronunciation. But those of us who are published in separate US and UK/Australian editions do have to face a string of differences: got vs gotten, further vs farther and practise vs practice, for instance, not to speak of the Oxford comma [...]

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