Fi Phillips

My bookshelves are overloaded to the point of collapse with all the reading material my family have collected over the years. With each new purchase, I rearrange them a little. With each house move, I cull a percentage of them but that always makes me want to buy more. My children devour books so quickly that every birthday and Christmas present list includes at least one new book for them. There are some books though that I will never part with, however full the bookshelves become, because they're tied in with my life journey and soaked with memories. They're keepers. 1. On Writing by Stephen King As a writer learning the craft, I'm drawn to discovering how successful published authors have arrived at that point in their lives. I don't fare very well with instructive 'how to' books on writing. Sharing a writer's personal journey is the best way for me to learn. I've read several books of this kind but the best I've come across so far has be...

Writing can be a lonely business so I was very interested to find out about the latest Writers & Artists video series, 'Write With'. It kicks off with writer, Cesca Major as she begins the second novel in her current series. 'Write With' Cesca Major - Week 1

I have an old, battered copy of this novel that belonged to my mother. She loved a good murder mystery, in a book, on stage or on TV. Maybe that's part of the reason I write murder mystery plays for a living. I have always found Agatha Christie's writing to be very readable: entertaining, clever and involving. She doesn't force feed you her detective work (as I've seen some murder mystery writers do) but instead draws you in paragraph by paragraph. In Curtain , Poirot's last case, we find ourselves at the scene of his first case, a  country house called Styles, and his companion, as it was then, is his old friend Hastings. Poirot is elderly, his familiar black hair and moustache augmented by a wig and dye. He is seeing out his final days doing what he has always done, investigating a murder. The inside cover description reads, 'Styles is now a guest-house, and Poirot one of the guests. He invites his old friend Hastings to join him there, and confides th...