by Claire | May 23, 2025 | Uncategorized
My life in plants: small triumphs. Many disasters… Writing The Woman Who Got her Spark Back got me thinking about plants. My main character, Celia, has the greenest fingers in her Glasgow neighbourhood – and that’s why she runs a houseplant hospital from her...
by Claire | May 23, 2025 | Uncategorized
Ideas for novels come from all kinds of strange little crevices in the brain. But this one was a little bit different. I was chatting to a friend, Hazel, who’d just moved into our area on Glasgow’s Southside. ‘Did you know there’s a houseplant hospital near here?’ she...
by Nia Beynon | May 21, 2025 | Uncategorized
The general strike in 1926 was mainly out of sympathy for the miners. Because of certain changes internationally, it became difficult to export coal at a price that remained profitable for the mine owners. Therefore they cut the wages of the men from £6.00 a week to...
by Nia Beynon | May 16, 2025 | Uncategorized
In 1928, Agatha Christie took her first solo trip abroad, a year after her divorce from Archie Christie. Originally, she planned a trip to the West Indies. But at a supper party two days before her scheduled departure, her friends Katherine and Leonard Woolley...
by Nia Beynon | May 9, 2025 | Uncategorized
There are many examples of stories about twins (or triplets, in one case), both in fiction and real life. As a writer, I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of twins, and I’m clearly not the only one. These are some of the stories I had in mind while I was writing...
by jenna | May 2, 2025 | Uncategorized
“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware” – Martin Buber For me, Japan is a land of secrets. Tiny bars hidden down lantern-lit alleys. A Michelin star ramen shop in a seemingly abandoned shopping mall. Ancient temples...
