Guest Blog – JFK’s travels & writing

Last week I had a guest blog on Karen King’s ‘Travel Thursday’ Blog. It seems to have had a lot of hits, so thought I’d post it here as well. You can read it here.…

Writers and Russian Roulette

People always ask me if I know the end of my next book. I always reply yes,  because I do, and that I know the beginning. However, the middle 250 or so pages is sometimes a different matter. It’s like being able to see a house on a faraway mountain, but the valley before it is shrouded in mist. As a writer, having promised a book to a deadline, this kind of feels like Russian roulette, because there’s a chance that the inspiration simply never comes…

After 66 Metres and 37 hours, which have the same protagonist (Nadia) but are slightly different books in style, I wanted the third one also to be different.…

Write what you don’t know…

About 18 months ago I was at the York Writer’s Festival pitching my book 66 Metres to three agents, who all roundly rejected it. One of them took me aside, and said, ‘Look, this book is about a young Russian woman. You’re not Russian, you’re not a woman, and let’s face it…’ He told me to write about what I knew. I decided to stick to my course instead, and a year later 66 Metres was published by Harper Collins.

But ever since that conversation, it got me thinking about the adage ‘write what you know.’…