The marvellous CL Rose at Filles Vertes Publishing has just put up on her blog a Q&A she did with me a short while ago, to tie in with the publication of Fifty-One.
Here’s a short extract:
Q: What is one piece of advice you would give to aspiring authors?
A: I’ve spent most of my life thinking the great SF writer Robert Heinlein had three rules of writing, and I’ve tried to follow them. I remembered them as:
1. Write
2. Put it on the market
3. Keep it on the market.
Recently I discovered he actually had two more – finish what you start, and don’t rewrite except to editorial order. I’m glad I didn’t know about that last one: I think rewriting is hard but important.
Raymond Chandler
Q: If you could meet any author, dead or alive, who would you want to meet and why?
A: Raymond Chandler. His prose style is often imitated but, while it seems simple, it’s deceptively hard to do well. Although he lived in California, he went to school in south London, so we’d have things to talk about other than Philip Marlowe.
