Jenny Morton Potts was born in a smart,
dull suburb of Glasgow where the only regular excitement was burglary. Attended
a smart, dull school where the only regular excitement was the strap. Worked in
smart, dull sales and marketing jobs until realising she was living someone
else’s life.
Escaped to Gascony to make gîtes. Knee
deep in cement and pregnant, Jenny was happy. Then autism and a distracted
spine surgeon who wanted to talk about The Da Vinci Code, wiped out the order.
Returned to wonderful England – and unlikely ever to leave again – Jenny, with
assistance from loyal hound, walked and swam her way back to manageable health.
Jenny would like to see the Northern
Lights but worries that’s the best bit and should be saved till last. Very
happily, and gratefully, partnered for 28 years, she ought to mention, and
living with inspirational child in Thaxted, Essex.
5 Books Recommended for Aspiring Authors
Well, this of course
will depend on the kind of writing the author wants to do. But let us suppose
that the author has not yet decided:
For structure
approaching perfection, you could do no better than an early Jeffrey Archer.
For example, 'Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less'. The sheer talent of
story-telling is there too, as well as pace and full denouement satisfaction.
Now let's turn to
artistry. Margaret Attwood would be my choice here. She's simply the best. As a
sentence maker, she can't be beaten IMHO.
Dialogue? You could do
worse than turning the clock back a few decades and leafing your way through an
E M Forster. 'A Room with a View' is a dialogue delight. And Forster is very
funny. They say, don't they, that humour can be a problem. I can tell you that
this great author never felt that.
Now, what about a writer who ticks all the boxes, with all the bells and
whistles and any other metaphor I can chuck in there. David Mitchell. The man
can go to any location, with any characters, in any era, and write with genius.
And finally, I'd like to include a Russian. Writing is a serious
business and the Russians do serious extremely well. As do the French of
course. I could choose Kafka or Dostoevsky. But instead I plump for
Solzhenitsyn and his reality. His 'Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' had such
a profound effect on me and I'm sure, in consequence, my writing. So I conclude
with that.
A gripping psychological thriller with
chilling twists, from a unique new voice.
Keller Baye and Rebecca Brown live on
different sides of the Atlantic. Until she falls in love with him, Rebecca
knows nothing of Keller. But he’s known about her for a very long time, and now
he wants to destroy her.
This is the story of two families. One
living under the threat of execution in North Carolina. The other caught up in
a dark mystery in the Scottish Highlands. The families’ paths are destined to
cross. But why? And can anything save them when that happens?
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