Author of Creative Fiction Writing, Books and Stories
Incredibly proud of my eldest son today, who has just released his fifth album aged just 20 years old. He’s a musical storyteller, and goes all wild west with this one. If you’re looking for music to write your Western-themed novel to, try this one …
Some song lyrics are just irresistible, and this one always jumps out at me as being so dramatically macabre. The gloriously unexpected combination of cake and the death of enemies is strangely quirky and satisfying.
“The brightest and best of you,” says Mrs Holloway, clapping her hands with palms flat and fingers pointing upwards, so that each clap is a prayer of thanks. And so begins the Annual Parade…
Want to be a prolific author? Worried you’re not writing enough? It might depend on how many cups of coffee you’re prepared to drink! 😳
I was invited to create a shepherd.com book list, and chose magical, modern fairy tales. If you read that kind of thing, check out my page, and see if you agree with my picks. What would you have chosen instead? I was impressed with the cover versions they picked for each of my choices – my own copies are quite plain in comparison!
I could pick hundreds of satisfying sentences from Elbow songs, written by Guy Garvey. As NME magazine once said “Garvey is a poet, and one of the most creative and goddamn heartbreaking wordsmiths we have in the UK.” This is my all time favourite… 💙
There will be no smiles on this page. Not today…
In which we look at old novels with much longer original titles than the short title they are usually known by, often extending to several sentences, that effectively give the plot away and even, on occasion, the ending, so you are left wondering if you should even read the book in the first place…
As it’s Groundhog Day, here’s the story-behind-the-story of my book ’11:42′ – not because of the cute little woodchuck in Pennsylvania. But because of the awesome time-loop film that Bill Murray was in, which famously made the term ‘Groundhog Day’ synonymous with recurring situations…
‘Never Let Me Go’ takes you completely inside the head of a young woman as she navigates an unimaginable life without knowing she is living one. As a result, her thoughts are remarkably uncluttered with baggage, her sentences simple and mostly unemotional, yet the story she tells carries significant emotional undercurrents and unanswered questions, drawing the reader into her troubled existence. So cleverly done by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Jo Danilo | Writer 