Using the Little Grey Cells

If there’s one thing I love it’s a murder mystery. I almost hosted a murder mystery dinner party once, but I couldn’t get anyone on board to be the suspects and victim. I love sifting through the clues that the writer has carefully left for us in order to work out who committed the crime. Of course, I never get it right.

Why Go Zombie?

Zombies. They’re like marmite, you either love the, or hate them. I, myself, am partial to a zombie every now and then, but only in small doses.

Where’s the Sexual Tension? Everywhere!

As an English student, I have learned that all books are about sex. It’s true, apparently. Jane Eyre? Repressed sexual desires. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe? Sexual tension between Edmund and the White Witch which is not weird at all. Wind in the Willows? Mole orgasms over food. And the authors definitely meant for sex to be present in this repressed form. It’s not like people are just reading way too far into it or anything.

The Madness of Stories

Writers. They’ve all got to be a little bit crazy. Tell me I’m wrong. After all, we spend hours, days, weeks, months, years even living someone else’s life on paper. Now tell me that is not madness. Lengthy projects are the worst for it. You spend all that time poking around in someone else’s head until you know your characters better than you know yourself. Might be you start to go crazy. Might be you already are.

Characters That Touched My Heart

I’ve always found characters to be the most important part of a story. I’m probably wrong to prioritise them, but when I read a book it’s not the setting or the plot that I fall in love with, it’s the characters. So without further ado, I present to you, my top four favourite characters of all time:

Falling in love with a Fantasy Epic

I bought my first adult fantasy novel at fourteen from Waterstones, in Leeds, perhaps. The book was the Orcs omnibus by Stan Nicholls. The heroes, while loyal to each other, generally looked out for themselves and damned the rest of the world – well, you would too if the rest of the world wanted to kill you. The villain was so devious, twisted and sex-obsessed that I prayed for her swift death from the off. That’s something  Fantasy has that Teen Fantasy doesn’t. Gratuitous sex and plenty of it. Sometimes it’s weird – Jennesta of Orcs has a very open sexuality in that she seems to have sex with anyone, male, female, human, dwarf, orc, elf, she’s not fussy – and sometimes it’s not.