Comments for Write a novel? I must be mad!

Comment on Did the books you loved make you into the writer you are? by Alison

Alison — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:54:16 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation, Denise. Off to order it…

Comment on Did the books you loved make you into the writer you are? by Denise Barnes

Denise Barnes — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:13:00 +0000

You’ve probably seen my response on Twitter, but if not, I’m reading a book by Susan Hill called Howard’s End is on the Landing. She decides not to buy anymore books for a year and just read from her own home library. She discovers many books she’s never read, but lots of old ‘friends’, and comes to the conclusion that these particular authors have definitely helped to shape her into the writer she has become. It’s so interesting. I thoroughly recommend it. I just picked it up in the library but I’d quite like to have it as it is a sort of personal reference book.

Comment on Self-publishing – total confusion for a newbie writer by Alison

Alison — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:28:04 +0000

Helen – Good advice from one who knows! I would also recommend Mick Rooney’s Independent Publishing Magazine website to give people a good grounding on independent publishing.

I see an awful of cross-genre books now and being a fan of alternate history as well as mainstream history, I’m a happy reader. I even saw a tweet from a prominent agent encouraging authors to inject a little fantasy into their work. Hm. There seems to be a growing appetite fo something a little different…

Comment on Sparking a controversy by Alison

Alison — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:19:37 +0000

Ah, the lovely times we can have with British and American English and with all the dialects and variations of both these standards. You only have to read Florence and Giles.

My heroine was brought up in the US, in a different reality. I play around with linguistic shifts and registers on purpose, something that readers may consider mischevious, playful or plain silly. But this is only to add to the alternate history framework the thriller is set in; it stays plausible (I hope!) while slightly jarring. But it’s all part of the setting.
This is something J D Robb does wonderfully in her Eve Dallas stories.

Comment on Sparking a controversy by Helen Hollick

Helen Hollick — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:08:03 +0000

LOL Alison – what a good idea! I have had e-mails from readers (US readers, I’m afraid) challenging me on some words I’ve used, I think this stems from the difference between US English and English English.

One that sticks in my mind is a very irate e-mail from a lady from the US who complained that I was a rubbish writer because I mentioned feeding corn to horses. “Corn” she said scathingly “comes from America. America was not discovered until the 15th Century, so how could your 6th century characters feed their horses corn!”

My polite answer: “Corn-fed is an English term for feeding horses on cereal crops, i.e. oats and barley. A ‘corn fed’ horse is a horse that is owned by someone who can feed it more than hay and grass, and indicates that the horse is valuable and fit. All racehorses, for instance, are corn fed.”

What annoyed me, she never replied to apologise.