By Penny Reeve Do you know the most important characteristic of a writer?  Yes, that’s correct. They write.  Without writing there is no book, no poem, no blog, no review, no article, no story. Writers need to write, it’s what we do. It’s our craft, our skill, our work and…

By Penny Reeve I’ve been de-cluttering lately. Possibly because I find sorting things a strangely therapeutic feeling, and with the whole family learning, working and studying from home, I’ve been in need of some of that! But also because the decluttering is long overdue! My ‘dump-everything-here’ cupboard was nearing the…

By Penny Reeve There is a character in my young adult novel Out of the Cages, called Purna. For the majority of the novel she does not speak. Despite being a young woman, she behaves like a child. She rocks and cowers and watches the world with wide frightened eyes.…

By Penny Reeve A number of years ago, when I was just learning how to blog, I wrote a series of posts called ‘Whatever is lovely’ in which I made a deliberate effort to seek out, notice and write about the things that defied brokenness to represent the essence of…

By Penny Reeve I remember it clearly, the day I gave up. The day I ran my hand over the top sheet of my children’s fiction manuscript, shut the folder and slid it out of sight. It was a good book. It had tension, heart, pace and great chapter hooks.…