Ruth’s Blog
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Can you extend your books’ ‘shelf-life’?
One of my gripes about writing and selling novels based where I live, in West Cumbria, is that some booksellers insist on describing them as 'local fiction' and condemn them to an out-of-the-way corner of the shop labelled 'local books', far away from anything...
Another book group question: why ‘Forgiven’?
It's interesting how the request for questions about the books started me thinking about them, and what they mean and represent to me, a year or two after writing them. In particular, I've been thinking about the title of the second one 'Forgiven'. As I was writing...
Book group questions for my trilogy ‘Between the Mountains and the Sea’
An email last week (thanks, Lesley) prompted me to think for the first time about book groups reading my books, either as a whole trilogy or just one of the three. I know that the library service in Cumbria has sets of each of the books for loan for this purpose, and...
Self-publishing: what does it really entail?
On Saturday September 5th, at the Borderlines Book Festival in Carlisle, I'll be running my first workshop on self-publishing. I'm delighted that they asked me to do something at this event. I went last year and did a very short session on writing local fiction. It...
Self-doubt: necessary or a waste of energy?
One of the many things that made Margaret Thatcher anathema to me - even now after all these years - was her apparent complete absence of self-doubt. It's a 'fundamentalist' trait, I suppose, which manifests itself in similar ways whatever the beliefs of the believer....
Making audio books: a sensible investment?
For a while now I've been thinking about doing an audio book, but only recently began to gather all the relevant information about how much it would cost, to decide whether I can afford it, and whether I would ever get a reasonable return. The basic sums are...
The author as tyrant: is writing stories a form of control?
With novel number 4 all but finished, I find my mind turning on what next. There was an interesting conversation the other day about a possible plot for book 5, and I heard myself saying, 'Well, I could kill off so-and-so, and have so-and-so falsely accused, etc etc,'...
Counting words
I've just finished the third draft of my new book 'Cruel Tide', and the last thing I needed to do before I sent it off to the Editor for the first stage of its journey to publication was to count the final word total. It's a bit of a chore and half way through I...
Why do we crave recognition?
For the third time this spring I sent off four copies of my latest book to enter a local literary competition. The first time, three years ago, I was quite sure that the quality of the work, its local roots, deathless prose and professional publication values would...
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