Books

9 July 2019

Five things I learnt from the Victorians while writing The Seaside Angel By Evie Grace

When I was carrying out research for The Seaside Angel, my investigations took me in many directions from the history of nursing and healthcare, to the rise of the Victorian ...

9 July 2019

Victoria Cornwall shares the inspiration for her new novel The Daughter of River Valley

Author, Victoria Cornwall, tells Female First how as a gangly 1979 platform-shoe-wearing teenager, forgetting her past, inspired her future... Little did I realise that the events about to unfold, ...

9 July 2019

A day in the life of me by Annie Robertson

Before I became a parent, I considered 7am to be a painfully early start; I went out of my way to make sure alarms were set no earlier than eight. ...

8 July 2019

10 Things I'd like my readers to know about me by Agnes Gomillion

I’m named after my paternal grandmother who died a few months before I was born. She’s remembered fondly as a savvy business women who loved to cook – just like ...

7 July 2019

How two women I’ve never met inspired my novel by Sif Sigmarsdottir

Working as a journalist in Iceland, I was once blacklisted by a prime minister. But I got my revenge. He became the inspiration for the most obnoxious villain I’ve ever ...

4 July 2019

10 things I want my readers to know about me, by Ann Shakespeare

1. My first book startled me! I remember watching a friend’s Labrador producing her very first puppies. Eventually, she became a contented mother of nine, but it didn’t start out ...

4 July 2019

Some things I would like your readers to know about me by Fiona Collins

I’ve published four books, and my fifth is due out in October, but I think of mysef as first and foremost a storyteller - by which I mean that I ...

2 July 2019

How to find meaning in a random act of kindness by Sophie Jenkins

My first book, the Forgotten Guide to Happiness, has in it a character that was loosely based on my mother, when she was in her eighties. What the editor liked ...

2 July 2019

Seven things I learned at 50 by Jo Blackwell

Turning 50 made me realise with a jolt that I probably have more years behind me than in front of me. It threw me for a little while, but then ...

2 July 2019

Amanda Saint shares the inspiration for her new book Remember Tomorrow

Although the future UK cut off from the rest of the world and ravaged by environmental disasters that I’ve envisaged in my novel now seems very much like the one ...

2 July 2019

10 Things I'd like my readers to know about me by Sarah Skilton

When I was pre-teen, I auditioned for the Mickey Mouse Club. In the early 1990s, there was a casting call in Chicago for the Disney Channel’s updated version of the Mickey Mouse ...

2 July 2019

Seven reasons to break the rules by Georgia Varjas

By Georgia Varjas, author of The Rule Breaker’s Guide to Step Up & Stand Out (Filament, £11.99, July 2019, available online and in all good bookshops, https://georgiavarjas.com) Life is too ...

1 July 2019

10 Things you need to know about Lyme Disease

Lyme Disease: Medical myopia and the hidden global pandemic by Dr Bernard Raxlen and Allie Cashel, Hammersmith Books, £15.99, 31st July 2019 I grew up in a small town, about ...

1 July 2019

Poems to mend a broken heart

So: to the marriage of true minds, impediments were admitted. Love was not love, and altered. Someone stopped counting the ways in which they loved. Love was once like a ...

1 July 2019

A day in the life of me by Gary Nicholls

Alexa wakes me with a chime, it is 6am. I have packed the car the night before with all my studio equipment so cup of tea and shower before a ...

1 July 2019

10 Things I'd like my readers to know about me by Angela Petch

If I were born again, I’d choose to be Italian. I lived in Rome for seven years as a child as my father worked there for the Commowealth War Graves ...

1 July 2019

How I explore the issues that affect children in my writing by Ali Seegar

I was recently asked the question: how do I write difficult or educational topics into my books without lecturing, boring or—worse of all—discouraging children from reading. I admit it was ...

1 July 2019

10 Things you may not know about Big Pharma by Hedley Rees

Author of Taming the Big Pharma Monster (Filament Publishing, May 2019, £14.99) Straight answers are not easy to get out of Big Pharma. Smoke and mirrors abound, as patients try ...

1 July 2019

10 Things I'd like my readers to know about me by Merilyn Davies

When I was little, I had a Tortoise called Bannister - after Roger Bannister, the man who ran the first sub-4-minute mile. One winter he went to hibernate and in ...

27 June 2019

My KonMari Murder Method, by award-winning author Ovidia Yu

It’s the latest decluttering fad that promises to spark joy into our lives through a ‘sort and purge’ process. But, writes the bestselling novelist Ovidia Yu, the KonMari Method is ...

27 June 2019

My golden summer romance by Gilly Macmillan

He and I met in French class at a college in the foothills of Northern California. I thought of them as velvet hills. They were golden in the sunshine, the ...

24 June 2019

My top ten mystery-writer resources by Clare Chase

I do most of my research online, and it’s usually very targeted. It’s great for quick answers, and can lead further. However, it’s often the books I use for background ...

24 June 2019

Deborah Lawrenson and Robert Rees discuss writing as a husband and wife team

Deborah Lawrenson and Robert Rees reveal to Female First what it's like to write a book together when you are also husband and wife. Deborah: ‘I have to confess that ...

22 June 2019

Seven things you need to know about Hypnosis

By Sheila Granger, author of No more diets! Believe in a healthier, better you. Many of the people my practitioners and I see have been on a journey through a ...