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How to Listen to Early Readers
Soon after I started writing The Kosher Delhi, I gave my partner the first few chapters and asked for her feedback. She came back the next day after reading it on the train home and said, ‘Now I don’t want you to get upset, but this might be a difficult conversation…’ She then reeled off a series of points and thoughts about the book which she didn’t think were realistic, didn’t work, or where she got bored. I sat there, listened (very) politely and had to admit to myself that she was right on every account (well, nearly every point). It was sobering but unbelievably helpful. Oh, and she did…
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Late Night Ideas…
Every author knows that for some reason, inspiration can hit you when lying in bed at night. (For me, often when I’m on holiday). Sometimes when you’re still wide awake, but usually, annoyingly, just before you drop off to sleep. And we have all made the mistake of thinking, Oh that’s okay, I’ll remember that idea in the morning. Then we don’t… So I have learned to do the following: Keep my mobile phone by my bed with a Voice Recording app installed, and, if I’m on my own, I quickly click on it and start recording. Simple and effective. I also keep a notebook and pen by the bed,…
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What Influenced Me When I Wrote The Kosher Delhi: Now on Twitter
This is a brief blog post to provide context for a series of tweets I am now commencing on Twitter. These are tweets I am posting because I wanted to acknowledge, and provide some background on the various things that influenced me when I wrote my novel, The Kosher Delhi. The influences come from all directions: the books I have read; the music I listen to; locations; people – a significant set of influences; the food (restaurants, dishes, influencers); films; and a ‘miscellaneous’ category with a few esoteric influences… Most of these things influenced me positively; a few I’m sad I was influenced by, but they did, and in some…
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Using MindMapping for Writing Inspiration
I am a huge fan of using MindMapping techniques when writing, to help with inspiration for plots, characters and ideas. Drawing mind maps helps me far more than simply writing lists on paper or on a computer screen. If you haven’t heard of Mind Maps, then the concept was created by Tony Buzan four or five decades ago, as “a creative and logical means of note-taking and note-making that literally ‘maps out’ your ideas” [mindmapping.com], and “it is often created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the centre of a blank page, to which associated representations of ideas such as images, words and parts of words are…
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Am I Writing For The Choir or For The Nonbelievers?
The themes in my novel, The Kosher Delhi include the issues of racism and homophobia, the need to stand up to bigotry. And so I wrote my book with scenes and storylines which try to show how wrong they are. I won’t write any spoilers here by saying exactly what happens, whether or not the wrongdoer(s) get their comeuppance and so on, but either way, I am trying to make the reader agree/understand that people shouldn’t be racist or homophobic. But herein lies my problem: are most of my readers already going to believe that anyway? In which case, why do I bother? Am I writing for the choir or…
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You don’t have to be a journalist or celebrity to get a book published
When I see that an author is about to have their book published, I sometimes look at their background, and very often, I find that they are a journalist, or a minor/major celebrity, maybe they have worked in publishing for a while, or they have a huge social media following on Twit-insta-book. I don’t have any such background. And I suspect a lot of would-be authors are like me: keen writers but nothing more. If you fit into this latter category, then I am proof you can still get your novel published. In my professional life, I have been an IT consultant for many years, working solely with charities and…
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The Journey of My Novel
One of the most common questions I am asked is, How long did it take you to write your book? The simple answer is I started The Kosher Delhi around July 2016 and we are still doing final edits on it now, in April 2019. But the heart of it I wrote in about a year. I then submitted the novel to multiple agents before I was accepted by my publisher. Thereafter, I have been doing on-going changes and making minor tweaks as I have received more and more feedback from early readers (friends and family) and my publisher/editor, and as I learn and understand what is needed and what…
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Signing a Publishing Contract!
Last month, I signed my contract with RedDoor Publishing for them to publish my first novel, The Kosher Delhi in summer 2019. I am ridiculously excited! I am starting this blog to record my journey as a new author, partly so that anyone interested in my novel can hear a bit about the book and how its publication process is progressing, and partly in the hope that it might interest and inspire other would-be writers. One of the reasons for that is because I suspect that I am very much the norm in terms of many aspiring authors: I have no background in writing or journalism, no contacts in the…