Based on my face-to-face creative writing course, Novel Writing Workshop (see Teaching), my new guide is for anyone who has a book currently in them that they’d rather see sitting in a bookshop….
Here’s the blurb:
There has never been an easier time to get your work in front of readers – just look at the millions of self-published books uploaded to Amazon. But if you want success of a commercial kind – i.e. to write a novel that will sell – then you need to take the time to learn your craft. To ask yourself questions: what are the key components every novel needs? How can you make yours unputdownable? How should you approach planning? Where’s the best place to begin? How do you create memorable characters, and build effective plots and subplots? How can you use dialogue to best effect? How should you plan your chapters? How can you make it sing? Where should you end?
But going the distance as a novelist is not just about ticking boxes. Neither is it just about talent. It’s about nailing your theme, maintaining passion, about caring for your characters. It’s also about doggedness and resilience – continuing to write even when everything feels hopeless. How exactly do you find the wherewithal to go the distance with your novel? And assuming you have, how the heck do you find an agent?
Taking you right through the novel creation process and beyond, Novel aims to guide you towards the answers that will work best for you, pointing out the pitfalls that beset so many would-be novelists, and helping you to chart a course through the entire creative process. That book burning inside you – would you prefer to see it sitting in a bookshop? Then welcome – your journey starts here.
15.08.2013 Thistle Publishing www.thistlepublishing.co.uk
Note; for those of you who’ve bought NOVEL, my thanks. Below, as promised, is the planning document for my novel, Wild About Harry, so you can get a flavour of the organic way I plan my books. It’s the real deal, this – unedited, uncorrected, free from any kind of tampering – what you’re seeing is the raw creative process a la me. If you read the finished book as well, you’ll get an even fuller picture, though far be it from me to try to flog you extra books – I beleive it’s fairly well distributed in libraries (in the UK at least). In fact, it was Bedfordshire Libraries’ Book of the Year for 2006. Which still makes me smile. 
