genre writing | Sophie E Tallis - Author/Illustrator

A terribly sad day, as another great writer passes. A prodigious talent and by all accounts, a thoroughly lovely chap. Iain M Banks will be greatly missed by many. 😦

Joanne Hall

Yesterday brought the saddest of news. Iain M Banks, author of The Wasp Factory and creator of the Culture novels, has passed away shortly after being given a terminal diagnosis of advanced gall bladder cancer. He was 59, which is no age at all, really.

I was lucky enough to meet him a few times, at Newcon, where I ran into him outside the toilets and managed to blether something about how much I’d loved Excession, and at Forbidden Planet, where I mentioned Bristolcon to him and he took a handful of flyers from me and handed them out to everyone who got a book signed, urging them to come along (he wasn’t even a guest, and I didn’t ask him to, he just did it. That’s the kind of guy he was.)

The last time was a Q and A at Waterstones in Bristol, where he talked for an…

View original post 65 more words

Making it real, no matter what genre you write in… 😀

Hard Ink Café

If your imaginary world is rich in geographical detail, at least in your mind’s eye, you need to get out there and soak it up in order to transfer the experience to the reader. Sophie E Tallis was already travelling when she started to think about writing her epic fantasy adventures.

You may be the writer, stuck at your desk – but the reader can be anyone, anywhere in the world. And if you’re imagining any part of the world that your reader knows, you need to impart knowledge and inspire empathy. If the reader doesn’t recognise the Oxford Street that they pass through on the way to work every day, because you’re writing about it from your cul-de-sac in Bexhill-on-Sea and the closest you ever got to Central London was Tunbridge Wells, then perhaps a one-day travelcard wouldn’t go amiss in your research.

Even if your world is invented…

View original post 143 more words