The First Draft Is Always a Crime Scene
Nobody tells you what the first draft actually looks like.The finished crime novel — taut, precise, its clues embedded with surgical care, its red herrings earn…
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Blog
5 articles in this category
2026-03-24|Blog
The Hell of Historical Research
Call it the Hilary Mantel effect or the CJ Sansom effect, but so much fiction is set in the past these days. But how do you find a balance between re-creating t…
2026-02-02|Blog
Write a novel in an hour
Alison Joseph raids her kitchen drawers to demonstrate how to knock up a bestseller in 60 minutes…The heading of this blog is taken from a writing workshop I ru…
2025-12-10|Blog
5 Ways to Tell You’re In The Wrong Genre
Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train, reveals how she knew it was time to switch tracksIn another life, under another name, I wrote books with (relati…
2025-10-01|Blog
Learning to Love Unlikeable Characters
Today I hit a sweet spot, the sort of which has been rare of late. I was elbow deep in plot, the cogs of my mind whirling and spinning, throwing out ideas faste…