Welcome Marion Husband to the blog. Readers nominated her The Boy I Love series for a 2014 LGBT Book Gem.
When I give readings and talks about The Boy I Love trilogy of novels, I am sometimes asked why, as a heterosexual woman, I wanted to write about homosexual men. I answer that it was accidental, a way into a plot: I’d started a novel and it seemed to me that it didn’t have enough drama, there had to be more conflict, more struggle and interest. It occurred to me that if the central character was a gay man then there would be more for him to overcome and therefore more for me to write about.
Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? What to write about. I think so many books are written about murder because it’s the only thing that many writers can think of that’s interesting enough. Death and trauma are interesting – we rubber neck when we pass a car accident, we don’t watch Mr Smith parallel park his Honda Civic (although we might if he was bad at parking and in danger of smashing that Jaguar’s headlight – this would be comedy, I suppose). I knew I didn’t have it in me to write a crime novel, but I was in love with this character I had thought up, Paul Harris, and I really, really wanted to write about him and how he survived the First World War. So, here is Paul in his lieutenant’s uniform and he is very handsome and troubled and he wants only to be left in peace – but that peace has to be disrupted – disruption is drama – as Henry de Montherlant said, happiness writes white. Peace and contentment? No story. Peace and contentment might be the ending of the story, but Paul has to go on a journey to reach that happy-ever-after. [Read more…] about The Boy I Love
In between going to the 
Some authors prepare meticulously when they begin to write a new book, knowing in detail from the outset precisely what will happen to whom and in what order. Personally, I find this approach dampens creativity, and I prefer to take the journey alongside the characters; I will usually know something about the people and their story arc before I start a book, but the way it develops can often surprise me. It’s also usually the case that I have to wait until I’ve finished a book before I can look back on it objectively and say with any hope of certainty exactly what the story is about!