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...

After the build up to Christmas and the day itself, my family and I are having a few days at home together. It's all very relaxed and with no real plans to keep to. Late nights, family games and good company. My husband and children are taking advantage of the lack of routine to have lie-ins so I'm usually first up, enjoying the quiet with my morning coffee. It gives me time to think and reflect on the year that's almost over. It's been generally a good one, in some ways quite magical, and definitely a year I want to remember. Back in January, I posted my 2015 reading list and my goals for the year . I didn't do very well with the reading list, only completing three of the fifteen (even worse than in 2014). I must read more next year. I did better with my goals. I revised and polished my novel and began the search for an agent. I returned to the partial first draft of my second novel which now requires a massive rethink because of changes to the first novel. Du...

A few days ago, I heard the sad news that Sir Terry Pratchett had died at the age of 66, after an ongoing battle with Alzheimers. The news stopped me in my tracks.  There are some writers who you never really get to know - you remember their books (perhaps) but the writer stays in some hazy focus. This was never the case with Terry Pratchett. It wasn't that he was a publicity whore, although he never shied away from that visibility either. It was more that when you read one of his books, you read a little bit of him - his humour, his amazing talent with words and his slant on life.  I first came to his books at a time in my life when I was searching - for a writing style, for my place in life, for an identity that felt right. I don't even know how I happened on The Colour of Magic . I didn't know of any friends reading his books at the time (although they may well have been). I was attracted by the cover design and the genre. I had no idea of the joyful, magica...

A friend recently self published for the first time and one of the most interesting (and exciting) elements of what I saw of the process (beyond the actual writing) was choosing a book cover design. She commissioned several artists, used a 'vote for your favourite' as publicity for her debut novel and went through a lot of previously unconsidered questions as to what she wanted. You can read more about her adventure here . As writers, we can concentrate so much on the words on the page, creating and honing, that we often forget the importance of book cover design. To a browser in a book store, the look of a book is the thing that will first catch their eye. If they pick up our book, they'll probably turn next to the blurb, but that initial capture is purely visual. The kind of book covers I like personally are very diverse. I find the covers of the Dark Towers novels by Stephen King to be quite eye catching. But then I also like the simple design of Carlos Ruiz...

"The meadow in which he sat spread away before him in a carpet of muted greens, blues and pinks, a mix of colours he had never seen in grasses. The clover was white, but touched with crimson spots. The meadow dropped downwards into a sprawling valley which rose again miles distant in a wall of mountains that formed a dark barrier against the sky-line. Behind him, the trees of a forest loomed blackly against a mountain slope. Trailers of mist hung over everything." from Magic Kingdom For Sale/Sold by Terry Brooks "By now the whole of downtown Morpork was alight, and the richer and worthier citizens of Ankh on the far bank were bravely responding to the situation by feverishly demolishing the bridges. But already the ships in the Morpork docks - laden with grain, cotton and timber - were blazing merrily and, their moorings burnt to ashes, were breasting the river Ankh on the ebb tide, igniting riverside palaces and bowers as they drifted like drowning fireflies towards t...

I've been reading a lot of Hallowe'en related blog posts about everything scary recently - carved pumpkins (that's ours on the left), costumes, recipes and films - but I was surprised how few mentioned books. So I've put together a short list of reading suitable for this night of ghosts and ghouls. I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett This is the fourth Pratchett novel about Tiffany Aching, reluctant witch and the noisy but loyal Wee Free Men. Tiffany is just settling into her new home and witchly community duties. She's doing her best but things get complicated when an evil ghost fixes its eerie sights on Tiffany. http://www.terrypratchett.co.uk/ The Witches by Roald Dahl My children love books by Dahl but I've kept this one back for now as I find it quite frightening myself. The High Witch plans to rid the country of children by turning them into mice (and if that isn't bad enough, she's placed a large order for mousetraps). Thankfully...

It's the second day of July and the sun has returned. Not only that, but it's also Friday. Having drastically reduced my sleeping hours this week to get the Murdering The Text website finished, I think that today I deserve a break. I still have school runs and housework to do but just for an hour this morning, I'll treat myself to a book in the garden. After yesterday's rainy day reading, I feel like something different today. I want something optimistic, upbeat and funny. On my bookshelves, the first book that jumps out at me on this sunny Friday is Julian Clary's Murder Most Fab . Clary's fictional character, Johnny Debonair (TV's Mr Friday Night) reveals his rise to fame and descent into infamy in his revealing memoir, taglined 'You'd kill to be that famous'. It's delightfully wicked, as naughty as Clary's TV persona and very funny. My next purchase will be his second novel, Devil in Disguise Poetry is a skill that evades me but I sti...