Dramatis Personae

  I have always been drawn to graveyards for ideas. Not to the wooden crosses and molehills of the recent dead or to the neat lines of gravestones that stand like polished teeth, but to the crooked, the broken and the long-forgotten. I like my graveyards overgrown and weed-filled and suffused with life. I don’t …

Sleeping with Gladstone’s Books

  I’m writing this post from a cloistered corner of the magnificent Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, Flintshire. After former prime minister William Ewart Gladstone’s fourth premiership ended in 1894, he bequeathed £40,000 and most of his 32,000 volume collection to fund this library in North Wales.   I have been here for two days and I’m …

I could get used to this

Click here for the interview: ‘For there are ghosts in the air’. Thank you to the very lovely Lily Graham for this interview on the origins of my book and how I approached the writing of it.  I could get used to this!

The self-addressed envelope

When rejection comes, it comes in droves. The first came in the form of a bulky white envelope that didn’t initially scream ‘rejection’. I took it into the kitchen and admired the flowingly artistic letters of my name and address, intrigued rather than apprehensive. It took a few moments for me to realise that they …

Marking Time

Alan Bennett, in ‘Staring out of the window’ from Untold Stories, states that “a writer is only a writer when writing.” My book, in its current form, is finished and I’m reluctant to start writing the next until I do all I can to promote the first. Maintaining this blog, updating Twitter and composing emails …

An Ominous Beginning

I managed to wait two weeks before sending an email to the agency that had shown such early interest in my novel. The agent’s tremendously gracious assistant replied within minutes.

Disbelief

From a well-known literary agency: Dear Nicola, Many thanks for submitting the first three chapters of For There Are Ghosts in the Air and for your lovely covering letter. ******* and I have both had a look at the three chapters, have thoroughly enjoyed what we’ve read so far and would love to read on. …

Seeking Advice

This month I have tried to be very productive. I sieved through my wardrobe and dutifully hauled three bin bags of clothes to the local charity shop, only to realise the next day that I’d accidentally donated a dress that I was actually quite fond of. It was a dress so special that the charity shop …

A Fitting Prelude to Publishing

It was a nervous wait in the queue at the Post Office.  I cradled the heavy A4 sized envelopes tightly to my chest and only half-heard the conversations around me.  There were three people ahead of me, all over a certain age and all familiar with each other, or at least mutually versed in the stock phrases …

Letting go of my novel

  Up until two months ago I was an apathetic writer: a fair-weather, time-wasting, social media-browsing waste of potential. I had an unfinished novel and a shelf of beautiful notebooks, each with a page of ‘research notes’ and the obligatory chapter-by-chapter plans that never amounted to anything resembling a narrative overview. Then, something shifted. Perhaps …