Writing Magazine

What do you do when you’re not writing? You know, those pesky job things. Among our featured authors this month, there’s a thread of biding your time, and knowing that becoming a writer was the only ultimate goal. Editor For some, like our ruthlessly dedicated and hard-working star interview author Gillian McAllister (p14) and selfstarting self-publishing superstar LJ Ross (p18), it meant turning their backs on stable, and potentially financially rewarding, careers in law. For others, like new author Scott Kershaw (p24), knowing what he really wanted and was aiming for fortified and motivated him through years of stultifying shifts in dead-end jobs. Giles Kristian (p81) even changed direction drastically after starting out as a singer in a boyband. The desire to write is a passion and for most of us…

MURDER SHE WROTE ‘As a romantic suspense writer, I spend a lot of time thinking about murder…’ began a blog post many of us will surely relate to, on the See Jane Publish blog. The writer, US romance novelist Nancy Crampton-Brophy, went on, ‘Divorce is expensive, and do you really want to split your possessions?’ The article, published in 2011 and since removed, was entitled How to Murder Your Husband. Eleven years later, in a plot which recalls Joe Eszterhas’ screenplay for the infamous 1992 thriller Basic Instinct, Crampton-Brophy is on trial, charged with murdering her husband, allegedly killing him so as to be able to redeem the ‘numerous’ life insurance policies she had taken out on him at a cost of over $1,000 a month. Perhaps somewhat fewer of us will relate at…

FALLING, NOT FAILING For several years now I’ve been on medication that makes me unsteady on my feet. It’s caused me to fall over more times than I’d like. But it got me thinking that my falling is a metaphor for my writing. Each time I fall, I dust off my grazed knee and get up. It doesn’t matter how many times I hit the ground, I will always get up. I need to remember that when writing; no matter how many rejections I get I just dust off the laptop, and carry on writing. KAREN MEADOWS Desford, Leicestershire The star letter each month earns a copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2022, courtesy of Bloomsbury. AN INSPIRING INDIVIDUAL As an unpublished writer of short stories and novels I’m always thinking that one day I…

I once found myself able to sign up minor celeb David Gest to write his autobiography. I was a publisher then and he had recently, to everyone’s surprise, won I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and a good friend of mine was handling his PR. It is a classic instance of being careful what you wish for. Few people in the UK had heard of him before he went into the jungle and really, other than a couple of notable scores as a producer of live music events, his biggest claim to fame was that had been married to Lisa Minelli for a while. He is now, several years after he died, all but forgotten. In the last few weeks I have been wrangling with the vagaries of UK libel…

If you’ve not yet encountered the Save the Cat! books you will, because the original book Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (2005) proved so successful it led to a franchise which now includes at least seven volumes, including Save the Cat! Writes for TV: The Last Book on Creating Binge-Worthy Content You’ll Ever Need, by Jamie Nash, and Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need. These books break down the structure of novels, TV and film stories as a way of offering a very precise outline for structuring a script or book for maximum commercial success. They’ve even spun off into online writing courses. But perhaps the biggest, and most controversial, Save the Cat! innovation…

At the heart of a lot of fiction is the question ‘what if?’ In the hands of bestselling crime writer Gillian McAllister, fast developing a reputation as queen of the moral dilemma, the question becomes ‘what would you do?’ At the beginning of Gillian’s ingenious new high-concept domestic thriller Wrong Place, Wrong Time, lead character Jen watches her teenage son Todd commit a murder. From the opening pages, the book has the reader in a vice-like grip as Jen tracks backwards through time, not just to solve the crime – but to stop it from happening. ‘I watched Russian Doll on Netflix, about a woman who died [and relived] every single day at her birthday party and I was really inspired by that time leap quantity to it,’ says Gillian. ‘Like Groundhog…