Beth Miller

From the back you’d really think he was Bowie. My friends and I nudged each other excitedly, though we knew it wasn’t really him. Small venue, inexpensive tickets: no way was it him. But on the other hand, it REALLY looked like him - his frame, the stance, the way the jacket hung down.

The band tore into the opening bars of Jean Genie, and the main man finally turned round to face us. Fro...

 
Pixie Haircut set two mugs on the counter. One was a straight-up-and-down piece of white china emblazoned with a Scrabble letter P. The other was a fancy thin thing, its twisted briar handle inspired by the pattern on the cup – a blossoming of unlikely purple roses – rather than by comfort and ergonomics.

“I’d like that one please,” I said, pointing to the Scrabble mug.

“That’s mine,...

‘May you live in interesting times...’ Damn you, apocryphal Chinese curse, I want my uninteresting times back. When you’re slap bang in the middle of interesting times, all your usual certainties vanish as fast as my interest in The Archers now they’ve gone monologue.

Living in the maw of uncertainty causes a great many problems, large and small. But none are as small as the issue of when to s...

Everyone over a certain age – and some under it, too - has a David Bowie story. This is mine.

My first proper gig was on the Serious Moonlight tour, in the badlands of Milton Keynes. It was 1983. I was too young, alas, to have seen Bowie in Ziggy times. Here’s what I remember. The horrible crush outside the Milton Keynes Bowl; an uninspiring support set from The Beat, who’d I’d been keen on up till then; the thril...

On 28th August 2014, my first novel was published. Even now, I can scarcely believe that I can type that, or rather, I can scarcely believe that when I type it, it’s not a lie. But it is so. In fact, there is only going to be one lie in this post, and one mild inaccuracy. And I’ll point them out when they come, so you aren’t left wondering.

So, my novel was published, and I was very excited and did all the new-writer thing...

I finished the first draft of my difficult second novel, and showed it to my esteemed agent. The novel has three main characters. Let's call them A, B and C (it's that kind of experimental novel, where people are just, like, not bogged down with the baggage of names). Well, said my esteemed agent, I think Character B is upsetting the focus of the book and it would be better if he wasn't in it at all. Even as I started to protest, I knew she was right. That's why she is esteemed. We talked so...

A: About eleven-and-a-half years.

The first book, When We Were Sisters, took about twelve years to write. Well, I wasn't writing solidly for twelve years. I took a few breaks, had some children and jobs and things, and a lot of cups of tea. But from the moment I wrote the first sentence, to the moment a publisher said yes, was about twelve years.

I started the second book - working title: The Good Neighbour - in September 2013, and finished th...

Publisher's edits - tick.

Copywriter's edits - tick.

Feeling like it was all going nice and smoothly - tick.

Oh yes I did. I just signed my contract from my publishers. My PUBLISHERS.

I never particularly wanted to be able to say 'my hairdresser' or 'my gynaecologist' or 'my plumber.' But I did always want to be able to say 'my agent' and 'my publisher.'

The reason this sounds so smug is because I am writing it whilst wearing a big shit-eating grin.

Continuing in the pattern of posting once a year, in March, here I am. Since this time last year

• I have sent the book off to three or four agents, all of whom hastily rejected it
• I've been taken under the wing of The Literary Consultancy, whose reader really liked the book, and they have sent it off to three or four agents, all of whom hastily rejected it
• I have sent it to ...