Charlotte Duckworth was looking for novels that reflected her experience of new motherhood but couldn’t find. So she wrote The Rival. It’s gritty, relatable in parts, shocking and has unbelievable twists. Here, Charlotte explains how she came up with the story…
writing
Work Life
Taking maternity leave as a freelance mum is tricky. Government maternity pay is low, and you’ll be stepping away from the freelance career you’ve been building… will it still be there when you return? Here are Annie Ridout’s thoughts on it all…
Work Life
“Nora Ephron, the famous screenwriter, once said – ‘When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.’” Writer and editor Anniki Sommerville shares five excellent writing tips to help get you started…
Family
Her first storybook – Parrots Don’t Live in the City! – launched this summer. We talk to full time mum and debut children’s book author Lucy Reynolds about her own childhood, creativity and reading with her eight-month-old son…
Work Life
Debut author Caroline England was introduced to “raw, human emotion” while working as a solicitor. “Whether dealing with crime, divorce or professional negligence, a solicitor is like a counsellor,” she says. It was this that inspired her novel Beneath the Skin – out tomorrow…
Work Life
“I absolutely hated daytime television and I wanted to do something proactive with my brain,” says author and mum-of-two Katerina Diamond. So with a toddler in tow, she began writing crime fiction novels…
Work Life
“In 2007, divorced and a single parent, I had my first international bestseller published under the pseudonym Cathy Glass. Since then I have written a further 25 books.” Lisa Stone – mother, foster carer and author – on writing in the very early hours…
Family
For the mothers (and fathers) who’ve found a sudden rise in productivity levels since kids came along, Annie Ridout has it all worked it. Here’s why you are a whole lot more productive now than you were pre-children…
Family
What’s it like to raise a seven-year-old daughter singlehandedly while writing and editing novels? We talk to Marcy Dermansky, author of critically acclaimed The Red Car, about writing, motherhood and being a single parent…
Mornings
Morning is the start of a new day but can also allude to the beginning of life. In Sylvia Plath’s emotive poem Morning Song, she describes the arrival of her baby and those tender early days as a new mother…