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My latest blog post

I’m writing a lot every day recently… more than I ever have before, I think. And it’s like the thing I’m on with is exerting a kind of spell. Really, it sounds silly, putting it like that. But February is a good time to be hypnotised, if only to forget about the cold.

I was wondering if I shouldn’t be reading old favourites while I’m writing as solidly as this. Old favourites of the kind that have worn a groove in my memory. They won’t open up new avenues or distract me too much. I keep looking at my TBR bookcases and seeing all these new books… and really, what I perhaps need to read are the soothing favourites. For a week or two at least.

I think I’m right to trust my own instincts, about how best to work on my novel. I guess it’s different each time, with each book – to an extent, anyway. By now i should be an expert in carving out my own unique path…

Enough, musing, anyway. It’s all abstract when I can’t actually tell you what the new novel is about. Poor J. is the one who hears about that. He never reads my books, but he hears them as they’re happening *live*. I gabble on at him about where things are heading and where they’ve been and where they might go next…

For one reason or another, this week I’ve been thinking of what kind of writer I am. This was my facebook status on Thursday, and it was an ironic summation of my overall status in writing since the start… It’s a compendium of all the reasons i’ve been implicitly given for why my fiction just shouldn’t work…

“Too controversial for teen fiction; too common for literary fiction; too camp for science fiction; too wayward for Doctor Who; too warm for horror; too funny for thrillers; too northern and common to *ever* sell in the US or abroad, apparently. Can i just say…. aaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh…?”