Getting to Know You: How do you select the names of your characters?

This is one of the coolest things about fantasy writing! I get so much scope to create new words and interesting sounds. But, as I have a background in language with a limited amount of linguistics, I have a good idea about how languages work. I hope that lets me avoid the many pitfalls of…

Book Review: Book of a Thousand Days

When a beautiful princess refuses to marry the prince her father has chosen, her father is furious and locks her in a tower. She has seven long years of solitude to think about her insolence. But the princess is not entirely alone - she has her maid, Dashti. Petulant and spoilt, the princess eats the…

Getting to Know You: What period of your life do you wrote about most often?

I find I draw a lot of inspiration from my teenage and just-into-twenties age. I went through a very tough time with my mental health from around the age of fourteen, and I was also the victim of a non-contact sexual assault at 15. My whole psyche kind of…fell apart. It took me a very…

Book Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here

Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and irreverent novel powerfully asks what if you weren't the Chosen One? The one who's supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you were like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go…

Getting to Know You: What’s the Hardest Thing About Writing?

Writing is a lonely business, and sometimes it feels like you’re screaming into the void. It can feel like you’re working on something that will never go anywhere, that will never achieve anything, and you start to wonder if you’ve spent such a huge chunk of your life on nothing. At least, that’s been my…