I’m Nina Milton, and this blog is all about getting out the laptop or the pen and pad to get writing. My blogposts are focused on advice and suggestions and news for writers, but also on a love reading with plenty of reviews, and a look at my pagan life, plus arts and culture. Get all my posts as they appear by becoming a subscriber. Click below right...

Monday 30 December 2013

Wishing you a very happy and positive 2014

The photo is courtesy of Cilmeri Studio  taken at my book launch. 

The festive season has brought me a tremendous review in my local paper from Jackie Biggs, a Wales-based journalist and poet, who, I hear, really loved In the Moors. Jackie, thank you for saying such nice things…if you like crime fiction that turns pages fast and keeps your interst to the last…Nina Milton is for you… a balance of mystic dreamlike sequences set against the all-too-real horror of child abduction and murder…when a second child goes missing, the plot takes ever darker turns and as in all the best crime fiction, there is a final twist of fate that reveals the truth of the terror faced by the missing children…the second of the series is on the way and I can't wait for Sabbie Dare's next adventure!

Don't worry, Jackie, news of the follow-up book will be with you all in the new year!


Saturday 14 December 2013

Alice Munroe; Nobel Prize winning short storyist tells her story

My followers are probably used to hearing the story of how I believe I became a writer; the day in reception class we listened to an Aesop's Fable then were asked to write something ourselves, and I realized that 'real people write the lovely stories'. 



Alice Munro in 2009. (Peter Morrison / AP)

But Alice Munroe's story is even more wonderful…it involves hearing Hans Christian Anderson read aloud his story 'The Little Mermaid' himself.


During this interview which was played at the nobel ceremony for Munroe's award for literature, she is also asked some crucial questions like 'what is important when you tell a story?' and  'when you start a story do you always have it plotted out?' She is also asked some pretty clueless questions, but those get short shrift!

She tells us how her husband helped her writing because 'he thought of it as an admirable thing to do', and talks very openly about her relationship with her mother. 

Go to
 http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1973to hear the entire interview, including scenes in Munro's bookshop.

 Munro received this award in 2009; more recently she announced she is retiring from writing stories. In an interview with Canada’s National Post after winning Ontario’s Trillium Book Award, the 81-year-old says she’s “probably not going to write anymore.…When you’re my age, you don’t wish to be alone as much as a writer has to be. It’s like, at the wrong end of life, sort of becoming very sociable.”


I have always loved Munroe for her clear, simple prose and yet find her stories complex to the point of being Chekhov-like in their exploration of human nature. So, it's a sad thought that we will never again read a new story by Munroe; we will have to satisfy ourselves by re-reading all 14 of her collections - her latest being Dear Life, which came out last year.


Friday 6 December 2013

Great offers for Crime Readers and Crime Writers


You have  heard of the Crime Writer's Association; they are the ones that  give the Prize Daggers to the best crime books each year. But did you know  they have now launched a new club for readers of crime; and writers who want to get their crime fiction published? It's called the;
Crime Readers' Association

They are doing a giveaway to celebrate the launch of their new website.

This 7 day giveaway features prizes of interest to writers and readers of crime and thriller writing.


To enter click the links above and follow the instructions

Entry for these prizes (and all other subsequent prizes) will end at midnight GMT on Saturday 7th December. The winners of each prize will be notified by email within 2 working days and have 2 working days to respond with delivery details before a new winner will be drawn.

And if you are writing crime, don't forget the newsletter that comes with free subscription to the Debut Dagger Competition for unpublished writers. If you fancy a stab at crime writing, go to: http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/debut/