Preparations are under way for the Deathly Affair launch, which promises to be an enjoyable evening! I hope to welcome some of you there with a complimentary glass of prosecco, live music (courtesy of my award-winning daughter, Phillipa), an author reading from the new book and, of course, plenty signed copies for you to keep or give as Christmas presents!
The launch is taking place from 6:00pm to 7.30pm on 14th November at BrOOK’S in Pinner, and the bookshop will remain open until 10:00pm so you are welcome to stay and chat all evening. The bookshop is a five-minute walk from the nearest Underground station and there is parking nearby, so do join us if you can!
OUT AND ABOUT
This month, Michael and I went to the fascinating city of Budapest, where we went on several guided walking tours, enjoyed a wonderful concert of Hungarian classical music and listened to live music every evening as we ate in authentic Hungarian restaurants or overlooking the Danube, where we also took a boat trip… It was a truly memorable few days.
With the statue of Anonymous, unknown chronicler at Court of King Bela III (ruled 1172-1196) who wrote the early history of the Magyars. Writers touch his pen for inspiration.
This month also saw the annual glittering Crime Writers Association Awards Ceremony, where various luminaries of the genre were awarded Daggers. I was delighted to present the Debut Dagger and to see my publisher, No Exit Press, win Best Crime and Mystery Publisher 2019!
WRITER’S BLOCK
With book 13 in my Geraldine Steel series due out in December, and 21 of my books published in 10 years, I am often asked the secret of my productivity. There’s no magic to it! The secret of my output is that I just keep writing.
The term ‘writer’s block’ has always struck me as unhelpful. Writers are navigators, not drivers following a previously laid out path. Nobody pretends that writing a book is easy, but part of the challenge lies in creatively overcoming obstacles along the way.
Writing flows when ideas are consciously expressed in words, but the ideas themselves originate in our subconscious minds. When my writing feels laboured, it is usually because, on some level, I am resisting the direction my words have taken. Best-selling author Jeffery Deaver describes it like this: ‘When I find myself frozen… it’s usually because I’m trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place’.
Taking a wrong turning can lead to a dead end. But as Lee Child, one of the best-selling authors alive today, says, ‘writer’s block is… a reluctance to get to work… But if you want it, you just have to go and do it’.
When my writing is progressing slowly, I simply keep on going and, after a while, the words flow easily again. In the words of Stephen King, ‘amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work’.
