Writer's Routine

It's a BOOKSHOP DAY SPECIAL. Bookshop Day is on Saturday 9th October, and Books Are My Bag are encouraging you to spend time in your local bookshop, be it big or small. This week, we're chatting to children's author Piers Torday. He's published 7 books, they've been translated into 14 languages, he's won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, and been nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. His ne...

Bella Osborne has had a busy year. In the last 3 months, she's had 2 different books out with 2 different publishers. 'The Promise of Summer' is a romance novel with Avon. 'The Library' is a bookclub read with Aria. We try to talk about both of those, but it's mainly about the former. All in, Bella has published 9 books. 'The Promise of Summer' is about Ruby and Curtis, trying to reunite a engagem...

Alex Michaelides is the only ever UK debut writer to go straight in at number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. His novel, 'The Silent Patient', was the 2nd bestselling novel on Amazon in 2019, they named it their 'thriller of the year'. He's followed it up with 'The Maidens', about an exclusive set of students at a University under the influence of a sinister Professor, and a murder he kno...

Paul Rudnick is an acclaimed Hollywood scriptwriter. He's worked on 'Addams Family Values', 'The Stepford Wives' and the 'Sister Act' movies. Now, he's just published his 3rd novel, 'Playing the Palace'. It's about a New York event planner who falls in love with England's gay Crown Prince, Edgar. It's a satirical look at romance stories and Royal life. We talk about writing for movies, working wit...

A few years ago, Bridget Collins came on the show to talk us through her novel, 'The Binding'. It was a huge, genre-defying success, and she's gone on to publish 'The Betrayals' to equal acclaim. Before then, Bridget published 7 Young Adult books, a few plays, and she's beavering away on her 3rd book right now. Here's a little snippet from our chat, as Bridget runs us through her writing space and...

Christina Sweeney-Baird works as a lawyer. It's a busy full-on job, working all hours under the sun, and she had barely any time to write. Until a life-changing moment changed everything, and forced to her sit up, to sit down and write. 'The End of Men' is her debut novel. It tells the story of a pandemic that wipes out 90% of the male population. We talk about the idea, how she developed it, plan...

Helen Fields first came on the show back in 2018. Starting with 6 DI Callanach thrillers, Helen has written standalones, and her newest novel introduces a new cahracter, Dr Connie Woolwine, an American Psycological Profiler who arrives in Edinburgh to pursue the Shadow Man. After working in Law with police, social services and Doctors for many years, Helen has a peculiarly accurate insight into th...

This week's guest taking us inside their working day is Jamie O'Connell. He's published short stories before, runs an editing and mentoring site called 'Blackwater Writing', and his debut novel, 'Diving for Pearls', is out now. It's a story set in Dubai, a mystical, alluring, divisive and controversial place. It's about a woman's death which influences a whole cast of strange and inter-connected c...

This week's Random Routine comes from Mark Billingham. His new book is 'Rabbit Hole', his 4th standalone thriller, which comes after his 15th Tom Thorne novel, the series he's best known for. Mark joined us back in 2018 to take us through his writing day. Where we chatted about how Mark's writing style and method has changed in the 17-or-so years since he published his first novel 'Sleepyhead', wh...

Claire McGowan goes by two names. Claire for crime thrillers, Eva Woods for women's fiction. We talk about how she switches between the two, and how thoroughly she thinks through style and different readerships when she writes different genre. Her new work is an audiobook series exclusive to Audible, called 'The Vanishing Triangle'. It shines a light on the unsolved disappearance of at least eight...

This week's Random Routine comes from bestselling Tim Marshall. He came on the show back in November 2018. Tim Marshall worked for some years as the Diplomatic Editor for Sky News, travelling and living all over the world to get the stories. His book 'Shadowplay: The Overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic' is widely regarded as one of the best accounts of life in the former Yugoslavia. Tim reported in th...

Michael Arditti is an award-winning author of 11 novels, he's written short stories, and worked as a theatre critic and book reviewer for national newspapers. His new novel is 'The Anointed'. It's a retelling of the biblical King David, as told through his 3 wives, Michal, Abigail and Bathsheba. We talk about how he put his own spin on history, and why he chose to write about such a specific time,...

Liz Nugent is an Irish Book Award Winner, whose 4th Novel is 'Our Little Cruelties', which is out right now. She came on the show back in 2018 to take us through a day writing her 3rd novel 'Skin Deep'. After working as a stage manager, running all over the place in a theatre, then being shackled to the desk writing for soap operas, Liz Nugent became bored with dull, desk-driven office work, and b...

There was a time when Joy Ellis couldn't get her books anywhere near a shelf, one sale, anywhere. She was living in her car, she managed a bookshop, she had many almosts with publishers. She carried on, kept writing, self-published, and was finally tracked down by a publisher who stumbled across her in a newspaper. Now, she's sold over 2 million books, is an Amazon bestseller, and was nominated fo...

This week's Random Routine is with Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a Carnegie Medal Award winning author - his 2004 novel 'Millions' is incredibly successful, and was turned into a film by Danny Boyle, for which Frank wrote the script. It was even Danny's idea that Frank should write the novel in the first place. He's published 10 novels, brought back 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', and w...

This week we're chatting to Hayley Doyle! She's an actor who has starred in the West End, appearing in Mamma Mia and others. Recently, she's turned her hand to writing, publishing two novels, 'Never Saw You Coming' and her newest one, 'Love, Almost'. It tells the story of Chloe, whose boyfriend of just 5 months dies, so to come to terms with things, she does all the many things they had planned to...

This week's bonus bite comes from crime writing behemoth Jeffery Deaver! Jeffery Deaver has published over 40 novels. He's a globally renowned author, writing crime and thrillers. To him, they're not lauded works of art, they're intricate puzzles, fun and games for the reader - and we talk about how he builds these.  Jeffery works anywhere he can - any chance he gets to type away, if that's a...

Alexis Landau's new book 'Those Who Are Saved' builds on the true story of Los Angeles during World War II. It was a safe haven for artists, and was home to many exiled Europeans. It tells the tale of Vera, who is forced to leave her daughter and flee, and explores her path to find the girl she left behind. We discuss how Alexis writes around family time, how it all starts in a flurry of ideas and...

This week's Random Routine comes from the 'Queen of Crime' Val McDermid. She appeared on the show back in April 2019 to run us through her working day. Val McDermid is one of the most successful crime authors in the world. Her novels have been translated into 40 languages, they've sold over 15 million copies and show no sign of letting up. She has written procedural crime, cold-case crime, and eve...

Nigel Farndale is an award-winning journalist whose interviewing prowess has seen him chat to the Dalai Lama, Prince Charles, Henry Kissenger, Hilary Clinton, and many more. He's written for The Observer, the FT, The Sunday Times and many more. His last book, 'The Blasphemer' was nominated for a Costa Book Award back in 2010, and he's just released 'The Dictator's Muse'. It tells the story of 1930...

Ian Rankin came on the show in 2018 to discuss his 22nd Detective John Rebus book, 'In a House of Lies'. Since then he's published the 23rd, 'A Song for the Dark Times'. Here is just his routine, it's full of procrastination and puzzles. You can hear why he doesn't know what the story is until he's finished it, also why a good writing day can start at 8pm, and why he's writing all over the place....

Janet Skeslien-Charles new novel is 'The Paris Library', inspired by the true stories of the librarians who risked their lives during the Nazi's war on words. We talk about when she heard that tale, how she knew there was a book in it, and she'd be the one to write it. It comes off the back of her stunning debut, 'Moonlight in Odessa', which took 10 years to write. We discuss why she brooded over...

Shari Lapena shared her writer's routine with us back in 2019, when she came on to chat about her 4th novel 'Someone We Know'. Shari's first book, 'The Couple Next Door', was the number 1 adult fiction title for the UK back in 2017. 'Someone We Know', a twisting tale of a teenager so desperate for wi-fi he breaks into homes, and then strange things start happening all over the neighbourhood. She h...

Greg Buchanan's debut 'Sixteen Horses' has been lauded as one of the best books of the year, and there's already a major TV series of it in the works. However, the stunning hook of the plot only came to him as a device to explore the characters. Here's the blurb - 'Near the dying English seaside town of Ilmarsh, local police detective Alec Nichols discovers sixteen horses' heads on a farm, each bu...

Louise Candlish shared her writer's routine with us in 2019. Louise Candlish's 'Our House' was one of the biggest books of 2018, it's sold more than 200,000 copies, been read all over the world and won 'Best Crime and Thriller Fiction' at the 'British Book Awards'. It so nearly wasn't the case though. A few years ago, disappointed with her success and publisher, Louise almost gave up - until the k...