Category Archives: Writing

Feeling it?

This week my Seattle writer friend and newly fledged Dark Angels associate, Richard Pelletier, has picked up the quill with an inspirational post about where writers themselves find inspiration. Are you feeling it? he writes. Inspiration is the soul of your … Continue reading

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Be prepared

It’s nearly book festival time again – by which I mean the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Every August, Charlotte Square Gardens sprout canvas and are transformed into a kind of intellectual carnival of some 800 events that seem between them … Continue reading

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Nudge, nudge

Until yesterday I had never heard of the government’s Behavioural Insights Team, otherwise known as the Nudge Unit. Last night I watched a news item about how they have been changing the way officials communicate with taxpayers and consumers to … Continue reading

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Sonnet with Indian

Perhaps one is more aware of it as one gets older and looks more and more for meaning in things, but serendipity seems to me to strike with increasing frequency and impact. At our recent Dark Angels gathering we asked … Continue reading

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Company of angels

I love Moniack Mhor, the Scottish writers’ centre near Inverness. I’ve often written about it here. Some of our most memorable Dark Angels experiences have taken place there, though none quite so memorable as last weekend. To start at the … Continue reading

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Summer in Scotland

There are times when writing this blog feels beyond me. No matter how much I promise myself that I’ll start mid-afternoon on Thursday, it’s invariably 5.00 pm before I get going and then, on a normal Thursday, I’ll go for … Continue reading

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Publishing pains

Longstanding readers of A Few Kind Words will be familiar with the saga of The Artefact, the third in a series of young adult novels, with which I have been grappling for a number of years. To wind back a … Continue reading

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Competing realities

This time last week, all being well, we would have been preparing to receive the novelist Philip Pullman as our guest speaker for the Dark Angels masterclass at Merton College, Oxford. Sadly, all was not well. Poor Philip had been … Continue reading

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Come to the edge

I spent the day in Edinburgh on Tuesday discussing the future of Dark Angels with Stuart and John at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. Round one of our AGM, at Heathrow Terminal Five, three weeks ago, had proved insufficient for … Continue reading

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Winter spell

The last four days have felt like real winter. The thermometer has hardly risen above zero since I arrived here. The cold bites my cheeks as soon as I step outside and the snow crunches underfoot. Through the picture windows … Continue reading

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