Blog from the Borders

Last Friday, as part of the Church Stretton Arts Festival, I went to a talk by Phil Rickman, author of the Merrily Watkins series of novels.

As writers we’re frequently told to write for a specific genre, such as crime, romance, horror, thriller, mystery, fantasy, sci fi etc.

But Phil’s Merrily Watkins novels don’t quite fit into one genre. Although Merrily is the Diocesan Exorcist for the Diocese of Hereford, and the books clearly draw on the Church of England for their setting, conflicts and its many characters, they’re not religious books.

Read more

Once a year, authors receive their PLR statements. For those of you who don’t know, PLR stands for Public Lending Right and is a payment to authors in recompense for the loss of sales due to people borrowing their books from a library.

While we receive a royalty for each copy of our book bought by the library service (as we would from any other book buyer), PLR recognises the fact that that single copy is then borrowed many times over.

Read more

Here in the Welsh Borders, we’ve had a lot of weather, recently. Well, I say a lot of weather, but, of course, what I really mean is a change in the weather. 

Just before I moved to Shropshire from the London suburbs, my urban neighbours would say, “Shropshire? Ooh, you’ll get a lot of weather up there!” And they were right, sort of. We do get a lot of weather up here. But we get just as much as anyone else. It’s merely that ours tends to be a little more varied.

Read more

It’s a dangerous game coming to the Welsh Borders to give an author talk. If you don’t believe me, ask archaeologist and historian Dr Alex Langlands, who’s a friend of this area thanks to the popular BBC2 Victorian Farm television series.

Read more