Month: April 2019

#60 – David Baboulene – Write Through The Roof

Episode 60 – interview with David Baboulene – author, academic & story consultant

‘I find inspiration but analyse the inspiration to speed up the process’

Episode 60 – David Baboulene – Show Notes

  • Type of writing depending on mood and deadline
  • Both a plotter and a pantser – wearing two hats
  • Successful writers are very productive
  • Writers being hermits
  • Winning a competition but having an unsatisfying experience with a Hollywood guru
  • Explaining the story craft without telling the writer what to do
  • Storification – what jumps off the page and lives in the reader’s mind e.g a moral message in a fairy tale
  • The author doesn’t need to know the ending half as much as they need to know how the story storifies. Then you can work backwards.
  • Encoding knowledge gaps which are decoded by the receiver (the reader) as meaning
  • Leaving gaps makes the reader create meaning in their own mind – puzzles for the reader to do the work
  • PG Wodehouse – books released after his death
  • The Primary Colours of Story coming out in 2019

‘He’d been rubbish but he became a genius because he worked’

Links

#59 – Rebecca Tope – Write Through The Roof

Episode #59 – Interview with cosy-mystery writer Rebecca Tope.

‘I didn’t get published until I was 50.’

  • Written 35+ murder mystery novels as a pantser
  • Coffee or gin
  • Themes of natural burials & anti-technology.
  • British cosy mysteries featuring a village pub.
  • Mobile phones affecting crime stories & the inclusion of drones
  • Practice – millions & millions of words
  • Writing groups didn’t help
  • Mentoring others helps own writing – seeing the good & bad in aspiring writers
  • Brutal feedback
  • Long apprenticeships & writing competitions
  • Biography of Sabine Baring-Gould – writer of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’
  • Research – a lot of research done for the biography & historical fiction but little research for murder mysteries
  • Celia Fremlin (domestic suspense), Agatha Christie, Lee Child, Kate Atkinson, William de Morgan
  • Settings – real & fictitious
  • The Grasmere Grudge, Secrets in the Cotswolds, the Patterdale Plot
  • One draft

‘Readers don’t mind if they think their house is the scene of a murder.”

‘I only really do one draft.’

Links

Women of Wasps and War – cover reveal

I’m delighted to reveal the cover for my next novel – Women of Wasps and War – the Sting of Injustice.

Women of Wasps and War is a grim feminist historical fantasy inspired by a true story.

Women of Wasps and War will be released by mid-June 2019. If you’d like to keep up with the latest news, including pre-order links and a chance for a free Advance Reading Copy (ARC), make sure you join my mailing list.

Women of Wasps and War

Agata, the Duchess of Ambrovna, was never meant to take the throne. 

In a land where men rule, her sole purpose was to smile and curtsey.

However, when war left her land leaderless, the Fatherhood religion begrudgingly allowed a first; a woman to rule. 

Now the war is over and the men have returned more arrogant and cruel than ever, and the Duchess is shoved back into a life of needlework and silence.

But with her new thirst for justice, Agata is reluctant to allow her country to return to its old ways.

Without her position of power, Agata and her circle of women look to the taboo wisdom of the Wasp Women for answers. But this ancient knowledge comes with consequences, and with death and treachery on the horizon, Agata must decide whether it is worth the risk. 

Women of Wasps and War is a grim, gripping tale of power and politics, and the heart-breaking struggle between love and honour.

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