Before I completed my novel which was published, I tried writing several other books (plus more that never got past chapter one…), including one called The Spectrum of Legitimacy. That was my attempt to write Speculative Fiction, which I do love reading (think Clare North, Nick Harkaway, Scarlett Thomas). But I wrote it for one main reason: I thought it was what would work commercially, as opposed to what I specifically wanted to write. It was an interesting experience, and as much as I enjoyed writing it, when I gave it to a few early readers, their message was very similar: it’s okay, I liked aspects of it, but… I…

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,…

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…