The ‘Saltbury Chronicles’ have always centered on Hazel Fauld and Tina Burns, but there are so many other wonderful characters hovering in the wings. How did working-class Carol Baxter find herself in a (dysfunctional) relationship with the daughter of an Earl, years before she even met Tina? And […]
Writing a series of novels can be a lot more complex than producing one-off books. The stories can weave round each other. One book might show the same event but from a different perspective to another. Different characters can remember or interpret things in different ways, and so […]
I’ve said it before, but I seldom write my books in the order you will see in the published version. Quite often the ending comes first and then I work out how to get there, writing individual scenes in an almost random order, then gradually reassembling them to […]
It’s just four weeks now till my next book, ’Saltbury Tales’, comes out. It is not quite a collection of short stories, some of the tales are a bit long for that, but I have a number of characters that I have wanted to explore in more depth […]
I had an interesting conversation a while ago that got me thinking as an LGBTQ writer. How is it, he asked (it had to be a he), that so many lesbian couples look like sisters, they are so alike? Could this be an insight into humanity as a […]
I really loved the character of Dame Evadne in my last book, ‘History Girls’. She was so very aristocratic, yet not at all snobbish. She loves nothing better than tinkering with old cars and motorbikes. She collects them, does all her own maintenance. She even makes some of […]
One of the interesting things when writing a love story is how to handle doomed love: i.e. love-affairs destined from the start to fail. The thing is, as the author, I usually know they’re doomed. Not always, I admit, but usually. And sometimes I know it several books […]
The Scots have a wonderful word: ‘Dreich’. It refers to the weather and means, dull, cold, damp and gloomy. There is usually the sort of drizzle in which the rain seems to swirl and drift downwards only on average. Yet it still manages to get you very wet. […]
Not all my readers know it, but as well as my novels, I also write about music and I’m a record reviewer for website ‘Hera Says‘, which specialises in music by female and LGBTQ artists. They have just published my review of Courtney Barnett’s new album ‘Thinks Take […]
As this will be my last blog before Christmas I thought I’d enter into the spirit and give you a little extract from my book ‘Sisters‘. It’s Christmas Eve at the Fauld family’s cottage and three year old Sofie (a.k.a. Monster) is really getting the hang of things. […]
Jo Brodie 