The Future Bookshelf Blog

Step inside Perdido Street Station, and the wonderful world created by China Miéville.     China Miéville doesn’t exactly conform to the image of a writer that I have always had in my mind. And neither […]

Why you shouldn’t rely solely on memory and other people’s experiences when writing a novel – advice from The Prime Writers‘ Sarah Vaughan.   There is a painting in Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, by the seventeenth-century […]

What were our favourite reads this month? Read rave reviews from Team Just Write.   Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin Set in the re-imagined aftermath of a Second World War won by the Nazis, […]

Where are the well-rounded, three-dimensional working-class characters in fiction? Sarah Kennedy writes about why Pig Iron differs from the norm.   When I was little, there was nothing more exciting than perusing the children’s fiction department […]

In honour of Independent Bookshop Week (#IBW2016), we’ve selected our favourite independent bookshops. Chorleywood Bookshop is a marvel. It’s packed to the gunwales with everything you’d expect but its events are why I love it. […]

Every month we’ll reveal what we’ve been reading, and perhaps you might feel inspired to try something new.   The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf I read The Arab of The Future by […]

Melissa Bailey from The Prime Writers explains how she researched history and mythology of the Scottish Islands in order to write her second novel.     My second novel, Beyond the Sea, is set in […]

Nick Hornby: a writer with something important to say.   I discovered Nick Hornby as a wide-eyed 13 year old, devouring A Long Way Down – perhaps too young – and feeling shaken to the core […]

In anticipation of the Man Booker International Prize announcement, we’re celebrating a fascinating writer of often-surreal novels: Haruki Murakami.     Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through […]

A new feature for Just Write – find out what the team have been reading!   Being a budding writer doesn’t mean you shut out the writing of others. On the contrary, most advice given to […]

What happens when you lose the thread of where your writing is going, and how can you get it back again? Peggy Riley from The Prime Writers gives her advice.     Picture this.  You […]