The Difficult Second Novel: How I Found My Process I’m often asked what my writing habits are, or what is the ‘process’ by which I write a novel. Until fairly recently, I found it impossible to answer this, and I’ve come to realise that it’s because I didn’t have a...
Swim: A Short Story In May 2017, BBC Radio 4 asked if I would be interested in writing a short story, to be broadcast as part of their ‘Short Works’ series. The only limitations were the length (around 2000 words) and the title (‘Swim’). You...
Six Months In Six months ago this week, Little Deaths was launched in the UK. It feels like far more than six months ago – and not just because January 12th was freezing and my launch party was decorated with flurries of snow, while I’m writing this in the sweltering...
On ‘Classic’ Crimes George Orwell, in his tongue-in-cheek essay The Decline of the English Murder (1946), identified a number of characteristics of “what would be, from a News of the World reader’s point of view, the ‘perfect’ murder”. Orwell’s perfect...
Ones To Watch: Other Debuts To Look Out For I have a confession to make. When I was a young and foolish Flint, I avoided reading ‘first novels’, unless I’d already read and enjoyed something else by the author. I thought ‘debut novel’ meant ‘raw and unpolished’. That...
