The Novelry Blog

You’re likely all familiar with the ‘getting ready the night before’ routine that takes place ahead of a big day. You pack a lunch, and hang your outfit on the back of the bedroom door, and you squeeze your new notebook into a bag (alongside my laptop perhaps, a myriad of coloured pens and - of course - a mask!).

I am doing all of these things right now because tomorrow will be my very first day in a new job. I will become, officially and after weeks of waiting, your Editorial Director at The Novelry. 

I know that you’ve all been here a while, writing brilliant books and sharing your stories, and I hope you won’t mind squidging up and creating a little space on the bench. I know that there will be plenty for me to learn from you over the coming months and years, and I hope that you’ll learn something from me too. 

I have worked - and still work! - as both a writer and an editor, and I hope you won’t mind me taking this...

From the Desk of Rachel Edwards.

I am between novels. This was to be an open-ended rest, but it has already become a pregnant pause. Despite myself, I have begun gestating: ripening with seeded notions; pulsing with poetry and plot; hoping to nourish a cluster of characters with vital, fluid ideas; contemplating the long labour ahead to deliver what so many call a ‘book baby’.

My second novel, Lucky, has just come out, on 24^th June 2021. A moment’s elation, then a feeling of being spent. I am lighter, unburdened.

Then again, drop writing fiction for too long and I might feel untethered. As I hold the hardback reality of my book in my hands, I already glimpse another hovering, a shadow on the periphery of my imagination. ‘Too soon?’ 

You tell me.

With my debut, Darling, I flung myself headlong into writing it after my characters started to whisper, then, in the run-up to the EU Referendum, to shout. Their haranguing was enough of a catalyst to...

The closed circle is a beloved sub-genre of mystery, suspense and thriller fiction.

It refers to a crime, usually a murder, for which there are a limited number of suspects, each with credible means, motive, and opportunity.  The criminal (murderer) is one of the people present at or nearby the scene, and the crime could not have been committed by some outsider. The detective has to solve the crime, figuring out the criminal from this pool (circle) of suspects, rather than searching for a totally unknown perpetrator.

From the Desk of Lucy Foley.

My favourite Agatha Christie novel – and possibly my favourite murder mystery of all time – is And Then There Were None. There’s the tight plotting, the wonderfully awful cast of love-to-hate characters, the sheer astonishing brilliance of the reveal. But first and foremost for me is the closed circle setting. The island is a menacing, deadly presence from the outset. It’s that idea of the...

Can you remember the feelings of first love? The giddy excitement, the blissful sigh of your body as the whole world became covered in a honey-tinted glow? That’s what it felt like for me with my first love; story.

I had a solitary childhood. The only Asian family on a predominately white council estate, my mother rarely allowed anyone over or let us out to see friends. Growing up, what kept me company were stories. The ones read to me at the end of the school day, the TV shows and films I watched when I got home and the books I borrowed from libraries and devoured in my room, their words filling my mind full of vibrant worlds that felt as real as the walls around me. Stories have helped me get through the hardest of times, they have been there for me when I needed them most but, more than anything, they have shown me there is always another way. As soon I was able to, I was making up and writing my own stories so when I discovered there were people who could make...

From the Desk of Polly Ho-Yen

The term “imposter syndrome” was first coined by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in their landmark 1978 study of 150 highly successful professional women in various fields. Susan Pinker, author of The Sexual Paradox: Troubled Boys, Gifted Girls and the Real Difference Between the Sexes, describes Clance and Imes's findings as follows:

“Despite accolades, rank, and salary, these women felt like phonies. They didn’t believe in their own accomplishments; they felt they were scamming everyone about their skills.”

Sound familiar?  

You would not be alone; according to a review article published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science, an estimated 70% of people experience these impostor feelings at some point in their lives. Impostor syndrome is seen to affect both genders and all kinds of people from every part of life. Perhaps it’s not, in fact, a useful term and helps to mask...