Author Archives: James - Page 107
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Writing Routines
This is inspired as a short piece from a question on the A215 (Creative writing) student forum about what discipline people apply to their writing. I write as part of my work, although mostly not for publication these days (I've had posts in the past where some of my output was made public). The last public work I did was a guest blog entry for the Government Digital Service on Learning from Service Assessments. On the other hand I also write for my own enjoyment, and lots of that is made public, mainly blog entries here, although I also write fiction and have published some of the Exodus Series recently. I joined in National Novel Writing Month last year (it runs every November - affectionately known as NaNoWriMo to its participants). That challenge of writing 50k words in a month got me…
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Book Review – Fun as Hell by L.J. Kummer
Fun as Hell by Kummer My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was a featured kindle single a few weeks ago which is why I bought it. It is a rather strange piece of life writing about the development of the writer. I read it on the plane in rather less than an hour. It jumped around a narrative of an action day out (cars and guns) with his surgeon girlfriend while also retrospecting on his life and career as a writer. View all my reviews
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A215 Creative Writing Starts Soon
The next course on my Open University degree is a departure from the Business Studies focus, I'll be studing Creative Writing (course code A215). I got the course materials the other day, a big red book (affectionately known to the students of A215 as BRB); some CDs with author interviews and a study guide. Controversially amongst those on the forum there is no list of TMA questions (all the usual guidance etc is there, but the core questions that tell you what is required are missing). Theories abound on whether this is to get us to engage first, or whether they are just still re-writing the TMA questions. I guess we'll find out soon enough. The course website and tutor group forums are due to open on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to this course, for what I hope are obvious…
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Book Review – Guess Who I Pulled Last Night? by Nikki Ashton
Guess Who I Pulled Last Night? by Nikki Ashton My rating: 2 of 5 stars I picked this up cheaply on kindle because it was in the top ten sellers list and I'm trying to read a wider selection of fiction in the hope of making my own stories better by reading and observing. The story itself was interesting, and I can see a real human angle on it. There are three friends in their 30s dealing with quite different life outcomes and trying to deal with their own traumas. It's a sort of condensed soap opera of a book, and I can see why that might well attract a lot of readers looking for a bit of escapism by reading about how others have more problems than they do. The characters are reasonably well developed, and there is a…
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Book Review – Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin
Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin My rating: 4 of 5 stars A fairly easy read. Rebus is an interesting character and the story was well plotted with a less than obvious outcome. It has a realistic feeling to it and lives within the time that it was written, although much of that would still work now. I read it because it was cheap and I have always wondered if the Rebus novels were any good. I think that they are based on this one (the second of many) and I can see why they sell by the truckload. I suspect I'll be catching some more of these on my kindle. View all my reviews Related articles Ian Rankin creator of Inspector Rebus writes new book inspired by 'greatest guitarist' Ian Rankin: 'Mavericks like Rebus wouldn't join the modern police…