Well, this is the last #HistFicThursday blog before I launch Beneath A Darkening Sky at an event in Thurso on Monday 13th . Shame it couldn't be a Friday 13th, but we can't have everything! One thing is for certain: October is the spookiest month. And not just because we have Halloween. Halloween could be a day later and October would still be the spookiest month... Look at how the light retreats at this time of the year: up here, the seasons' turning drains away the daylight at a rate of 2.5hours over the course of this month! Up here, anyway. Our ancestors knew, a long time before they tracked time using clocks, that this month we now call October was a time to look back at what has been and ahead to how we will survive the winter. Is it any wonder then that, with generations of people looking back, October became a month for souls and spectres? People we have loved and lost come back to visit our hearts, imaginations - and, perhaps, our homes - as we recall autumns of ...
Editing One of the things that is a real privilege about being from a family of writers is having the opportunity to read raw, unedited first drafts. There is something very exciting about how those first thoughts and forays into a deep, rich imagination make the transition from brain to paper (or screen). I’m told that I’m bad for laughing at the mistakes that people make, and a first draft is always a great opportunity to do that too! The best example was almost certainly one of my own: High Fantasy novel I wrote as a child/teenager/young adult: The king was returning from a big battle and about to enter the capital city with his annihilated army. Naturally, he was concerned, so he said, “how can I tell them that their sons and fathers will be returning?” So, since then, I’ve been known for missing out “not”s in sentences. Of course, when you have passed that exciting First Draft Stage and you’re beginning to look at preparing the book for going out into the wider wor...