We've been a bit too defensive about the European Union rules. We don't want to become protectionist and nationalist in the way we buy things but we think we could do a lot more to promote British business through procurement. ↗
Let's put it this way: if you are a novelist, I think you start out with a 20 word idea, and you work at it and you wind up with a 200,000 word novel. We, picture-book people, or at least I, start out with 200,000 words and I reduce it to 20. ↗
My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it. ↗
All I want is for people to listen to it with unbiased ears, and decide for themselves. I just don't want them to be dictated to by the media, or have preconceptions about it. If you like it, great. If you don't, fair enough. ↗
I don't think Capote loved Smith. But he did make a deep connection. It upset some people, because that had never been the approach to journalistic crime writing, to look into the mind of the killer. ↗