top of page
.png){kind=small}
More
"In the middle section of the book Mirabelle breaks into not one, but two houses near Belgravia Books. I had fun scoping these out - checking which windows looked least secure and figuring out how to scale the mews houses to the rear to get her inside. A man came out at one point, 'What are you doing?' he questioned me. 'The thing is, I'm writing a book,' I started with a smile. He waved me off, his hand as wide as a tennis racket. 'Everyone is writing a book, my dear,' he said. Between you and I, it's his house that MIrabelle ends up breaking into."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I write because, as wonderful as life is - and it is truly wonderful - it isn't enough. It does not, for example, contain dragons. I find this unsatisfactory. So I read. And I write."
Author Name
Personal Development
"After each of his books, the writer, for a while, feels once again that he can now die happy."
Author Name
Personal Development
"When you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad things you did do - well that's memoirs."
Author Name
Personal Development
"In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly."
Author Name
Personal Development
"You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We do not write because we want to, we write because we have to."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The best stories are like the best burgers: big, juicy, and messy."
Author Name
Personal Development
More
"That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there."
Want
"I think the Internet, particularly the availability of information, is great. I do a lot of correspondence on-line and have a chat line to talk to my fans as well."
Internet
"But Ship Who Sang remains my favorite story. I really rocked folks with that and still cannot read it aloud myself without weeping at the end."
Writing
"I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens."
Books
"I have my good days and my bad days, but I don't have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn't count the cost - and it takes a lot - to write."
Energy
"I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale."
Writing
"I also don't have organized religion on Pern. I figured - since there were four holy wars going on at the time of writing - that religion was one problem Pern didn't need."
Religion
"People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?"
Life
"I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime."
Chance
"At age 77, I need the help of someone with more energy than I can now summon to finish a book."
Age
bottom of page