The author, his writing, photography and more
Where does the horizon of your story lie? When it is far off that can be reassuring, but the closer it comes the more the doubts form…
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
How far away is the story horizon? Very often as you’re telling a story you can see where it’s going.… Read more
As some promising threads remain unexplored in writing a novel, the question is what to do with the loose ends. Cut them out? Or weave a new thread through the novel?
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The first draft of Alan McCluskey’s novel The Boy in the Book is complete. Read more, including an extract from the book.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
I’ve just finished the first draft of my latest novel, The Boy in the Book.… Read more
Based on my own novels, some elements of a possible framework for writing aimed at sparking future narratives in readers.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
In my article Stories for the Future, I wrote: By hinting at possible narratives, fiction can be a powerful tool for change.… Read more
Carefully crafted stories can help stave off anxiety due to uncertainty about the future by inspiring individual narratives of ways forward.
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Anxious? It’s hard not to be. Just turn on the radio or the television or browse the Internet, the news is an unending tale of woe.… Read more
The diversity of the stories I tell is too complex to be shunted into convenient, saleable categories, but there are identifiable underlying forces that characterise what I write…
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Each of my novels is born of the fountain of story fragments that are constantly bubbling up inside me.… Read more
Approaching writing on the basis of accumulated experience rather than a set of rules such as grammar is natural for some people but can cause problems when confronted with an education system based on rules.
I have just completed the draft of Bursting with Life! taking the overall word total of my sixteen written novels (see the complete list) to more than two million. Who would have thought I’d write so much when I began my first novel, The Reaches, fourteen years ago in 2007.… Read more
I have just finished the first draft of my latest novel, The Cloud Catcher. From my perspective as a writer, it’s been a very strange journey. Begun in tandem with another novel, Bursting with Life! – writing two books in parallel was something I’d never done before – The Cloud Catcher won the battle for my attention, leaving me to complete the other, half-finished novel later this year.… Read more
As a novel writer, people’s names are important. A character called Imogen is hardly likely to react the same way as one called Lucie. Just say the two names out loud. The different sounds immediately conjure up contrasting traits.… Read more