My thoughts about books, writing, life and so many other things….Judy Leigh/ Elena Collins.
I always write a synopsis for my novel before I write the novel itself. There are two basic reasons for this: one is to communicate what I’m doing to the people I work alongside, so that they know what I’m writing. If my agent or publisher’s response was: ‘Really? Are you mad?’ then I’d trust …
Continue reading What the book I’m currently writing is about…
I work on the basic principle that novels and films are always valid if the person or people for whom they were created enjoy them. I’m not a fan of self-indulgence on the part of writers but I try never to criticise a genre because it isn’t for me, because there may be others who …
I’ve read several good books over the summer months. Choosing from a wide range of genres and topics, here are seven books I’ve really enjoyed for a variety of reasons and I recommend them all. The list is random – there is no rank order implied. J Le Vieux, Biographie d’un Youyou. Azzedine Grimbou …
Continue reading Some of the great books I’ve read this summer…
I have to admit, I’m a summer person and the warmer months always seem to pass too quickly. It’s good to be outside in the sunshine, walking in the countryside, travelling to new places in the van, enjoying the open space on the beach. I love to cross the channel, go to France and beyond …
Continue reading Autumn is here – what will it bring, though?
It is really like welcoming an old friend again, now the football season has returned. I always feel a little bit sad when the season ends in May, even though this year my team did really well and we went out on a high. Now the new season has started, there is a kind of …
Continue reading The new football season is here – an old friend is coming home
It is always sad to read that a longstanding heroine has passed away. For years, when asked ‘Who’s your favourite author?’ I’d answer ‘Toni Morrison’, seconds before I wondered if I should have said ‘Jeanette Winterson’ or ‘Cormac McCarthy’. But Toni Morrison was always the first name on my lips. So when I heard that …
Continue reading Huge thanks to Toni Morrison for my torchlight tremors
A few nights ago I was doing my Wuthering Heights impression, running around the garden in my pyjamas, shouting and waving my arms, screaming into the darkness as a storm blazed overhead. Cracks of thunder rumbled in the hills as lightning split the skies: everything was illuminated white and then swallowed in shadow again. I …
Authors read a lot – it’s part of our continued professional development, if you like. But it’s more than that – reading’s an obsession. I learned to read at three years old– my mum taught me and I was a receptive learner – I would read everything from cereal boxes and advertising hoardings to any …
Continue reading Novelists and Tour de France riders have something in common…
The sun’s out. It’s got me thinking. I’m spending too much time indoors at the computer. Isolation and summer sunshine don’t go together. I need to drag myself away from the next novel. But it’s a writer’s lot, hunched at the desk, eyes on the screen, typing just one more line, just one more chapter. …
Continue reading It’s so easy to slip into the antisocial writer stereotype …
I decided to have a couple of weeks away from writing. It was a simple idea - it was summer time, so I'd write nothing, just let the summer shine in through the mind’s window and the brain bask in the warmth. After all, I have three new novels more or less completed – maybe …
Continue reading Sometimes what’s outside affects what’s inside: on nature and inspiration
That quintessence of dust 