Author: Paula Hillman
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Chapel Field is on its way.
My fourth novel, Chapel Field, will be released at the end of March, 2024. I have to take a step back sometimes, and remember that I’ve only been a published author for a year, though I’ve been writing for nearly five. I wrote Chapel Field in the autumn of 2022. It was the first novel…
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Blackthorn Wood is on its way!
My third novel, Blackthorn Wood, is now available for pre order, and will be officially published on 27th November, 2023. It was the first novel I wrote after leaving my teaching job, so it’s had four years of editing. This is the blurb: What happens when bullying becomes lethal? Every workplace has its dark corners,…
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Backstories from The Cottage… part three.
To make sure a character’s story arc works, I paste its parts into another document and read it on its own. The Jay/John story arc was very over-written, so I cut a lot of it and also changed the perspective. Poor old Jay had such a sad back-story, I had to tone it down! Here’s…
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Backstories from The Cottage…part two.
When I had the first ideas for The Cottage, it was going to be a gothic Victorian/modern day timeslip ghost story, believe it or not. I unzipped Jay and Evie’s story and it became the The Cottage. What I left behind was the ghostly time-slip story, which I haven’t done anything with. This is the…
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Backstories from The Cottage…part one.
What I have found really interesting about the reviews coming in for my second novel, The Cottage, is how much expectations of the story differ from the reality. The novel is emotive and character-driven and quite dark at times, and is definitely NOT about a cottage in the country with ‘roses around the door’. That…
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Rabbit Hill
I wanted to give historical writing a try while I was studying for my MA. I used this chapter in a conference. It is only a chapter… It’s not from anything I’ve written since, but I just wanted to get a feel for how historical fiction might be to write. Rabbit Hill and Gradwell exist,…
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Crow Murder!
The first thing I wrote, after I left teaching, was this strange little story as an entry to a newspaper competition entitled ‘Murder‘. I took my inspiration for it from a scene of carnage I’d seen while walking at Furness Abbey: the devastation of a woodpigeon by some kind of predator, probably a sparrowhawk. The…
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Seaview House…out-takes, part four.
I wrote this scene to show an interaction between Jill, Stoney and Annie Brownstone. I cut it in the end, because it wasn’t needed, and replaced it with one sentence: ‘And when he’d fished in his pocket for money to buy her an ice cream, she’d wanted to weep.’ (p. 59 in the book). I…
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Seaview House… out-takes, part three.
Here’s a short scene from early in the story, when Jill is waiting to take the bus to her new house on Walney. Most of that part of the story didn’t make it into the novel- there was no need- but there are some funny moments, none-the-less. I’m sure everyone who has ever stayed for…
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Seaview House… out-takes, part two.
This was a London scene that didn’t make it to the final novel, even in draft form. I was playing around with how I could show Jill’s despair at the way her university life had turned out. I also wrote the one with her and Bonnie, at the same time, and that did make it…
Paula Hillman, author 