K.J. Charles's Blog

One of my favourite things to do when I’m writing is work out what my characters are reading.

This is one of those areas where you can do a lot in a small way: set scenes, hint at moods, illuminate character. And from my perspective as a historical novelist, knowing what old-timey classic was once the most up-to-date bestseller is one more brick in the edifice of historical vibes.

I’m going to pick out a few examples from my work to illustrate the different ways your MCs’ bedside book might help build your world and characters. Many quotations follow.

It is important to bear in mind that your reader (actual) may not have read the book your reader (fictional) is devouring, so if you want it to shed light on characters, you might have to explain.

Establishing character

There are some fairly obvious things you can do with books here. Your heroine reads erotica: okay, she’s sex positive. Or she’s a nanny who reads only horror novels: that’s clearly flagging something for later. Or the hero is collapsed on a bed reading Murderbot for the sixth time: we’ve all been there. Or she’s a lawyer who reads romances but she’s shy of anyone knowing, and then she sits next to a grumpy billionaire on a plane and he’s reading The Art of War and he looks over at her Kindle and sneers at her reading matter so they get into an argument… Etc.

But if we get a bit more specific, we can do some more fun stuff, I think. 

My Will Darling Adventures trilogy stars an ex-WW1 soldier (not from the London/Home Counties posh part of the country, common as muck) who now owns a second hand bookshop. His love interest is an upper class spy and bibliophile. It is safe to say they don’t share many tastes.

Books play a huge part in this as plot elements, set dressing, and occasionally weapons. But they can also be used to enhance character work. Take this exchange from book 2, The Sugared Game.  Here, Kim and Will have woken together at Kim’s flat.

By the time Kim returned with a tray, Will was sitting up in bed flicking through a book and feeling civilised.

“Tea,” Kim said, handing him a cup. Will took a sip. It was horrifyingly weak. “Are you reading The Waste Land?”

“No, you are.” It had been the only thing on Kim’s bedside table. Will didn’t consider Modernist poetry much of a bedtime story. “I’ve read it already. I had a copy in the shop a couple of months ago.”

“Thoughts?”

“It doesn’t rhyme.”

This is a tiny, insignificant interlude, just them making conversation while facing up to the real difficult conversations they need to have. But even so…

Kim is the kind of person who has The Waste Land (a hugely controversial, difficult and intellectual Modernist poem) on his bedside table, and is open to discussions of poetry.Will is not that kind of person, but he’s intellectually curious. When the book came his way he read it.Will has absolutely nothing to say about it, so he doesn’t try. He doesn’t apologise for it, he doesn’t try to be clever or bullshit his way through it, and he also doesn’t go on a rant about it not being proper poetry. It’s an entirely pragmatic, phlegmatic response from a man who isn’t trying to prove anything.

I think in this case you do need to know a bit about The Waste Land’s cultural impact in order to get the full value of the exchange; I chose not to explain it all because it’s such a small scene that explanation would have overloaded the significance. Some readers will skim past, no harm done. Others will rack this up as an example of the gulf between these two—and also the way they can accept one another’s differences.

That’s a small example. Here’s a big one.

A Seditious Affair is a Regency-set romance. It opens extremely abruptly with a fairly brutal BDSM sex scene between two anonymous men. That segues into them relaxing with a glass of wine and talking about a book one has lent the other:

“I finished the book,” the Tory said.

“Oh, aye? What’d you think?”

“Good. Terrifying. Strange. I can’t understand why you like it.”

“Why would I not?”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d agree with it.” The Tory gave him a wry smile. “After all, its burden is the need for man to keep in his place—”

“What?” said Silas incredulously.

“The overreaching man dares to play God and pays a terrible price. Abuses the natural order and creates a monstrous thing.”

“Bollocks,” Silas said. “That ain’t what it’s about.”

“It’s what happens.”

“No. What happens is he creates, he’s responsible for, something that should be”—Silas waved his hand—“great and strong, something that he owes a duty to. And he says to it, The hell with you. Go die in a ditch. I’ll have my big house and pretty wife. And it says, You don’t get to live in a grand house and ignore me. Do your duty or I’ll tear you down. Treat me like I’m as good as you, or I’ll show you—”

“That I’m not,” the Tory interrupted. “The creature murders—”

“Because he ain’t given a chance to live decent,” Silas interrupted right back. “You treat men like brutes; you make ’em brutes. That’s what it says.”

“No, you create brutes when you distort the rules of nature and the order of things,” the Tory retorted. “That’s what the book’s about. It’s obvious.”

“It’s not.” Silas snorted. “You think its author meant that?”

“Oh, do you know the author?” The Tory looked intrigued. “Who is he?”

“She.”

“A woman? A woman wrote Frankenstein?”

The love of books is a major connector between these two (a Tory government official and a radical seditionist; this was not the easiest romance I’ve ever written). I could have had them agreeing how wonderful Persuasion is, or similar, and used that to show them bonding or being in agreement. But it’s far too early in the book for that, so instead, I’m using Frankenstein as a way to demonstrate their wildly opposed views and experiences in action. They literally haven’t read the same book: Silas sees a condemnation of selfish rulers/patriarchs, where Dominic the Tory sees a parable about the dangers of overreaching ambition.  Even if the reader doesn’t know the basic Frankenstein story, it will be clear these two people are coming from incredibly different places, and have a long way to go before they reach common ground. 

What Oft Was Thought But Ne’er So Well Expressed

The best poetry is a simple yet perfect summation of the human condition in a few words. As such, it’s very useful if you can steal it.

I have a few books in which poetry becomes a touchstone for people who can’t necessarily express their own feelings. In An Unseen Attraction the romance is between an autistic-dyspraxic man who struggles to fit in a society that doesn’t understand, and a short, plain, bespectacled taxidermist.

Clem kissed his neck. “I love you too.”

“You said so before,” Rowley whispered. “And I didn’t know what to do. I can’t—why would you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“There’s so much about you to love. Your heart, and your kindness, and your eyes. And I’m just . . . I’m nothing special. I’ve tried to be nothing special for my whole life—”

“You failed,” Clem said. “And I’ve been falling in love with you for at least as long as you have with me, because you’re wonderful and quiet and clever and kind, but I don’t need any more reason to love you than that you’re Rowley Green. Do you know ‘My Star’ by Robert Browning?”

“I don’t know why you even ask.”

“The poet says he watches one star. All his friends are stargazing and doing astronomy and studying planets, and he just pays attention to one single star in the whole firmament, one star that’s marvellous to him, and he says, ‘What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.’”

Rowley mouthed the last words to himself. “Uh . . . I see. I think. Really?”

“My star,” Clem said, and bent to kiss him.

‘My star’ becomes their special private endearment, and it encapsulates what this book is about: the love of a person in all their uniqueness, because they are exactly who they are, and be damned to anyone who can’t see what’s so special about them. (Read the whole poem here, it’s gorgeous.)

I’m also going to quote the heavily book-bound A Seditious Affair again. Silas has introduced his Tory lover, Dominic, to the works of radical visionary poet William Blake. Blake’s hand-produced books appear as rare and valued objects, gifts, and even an alibi throughout the book. But the key, pivotal scene uses Blake’s writing to encapsulate the lovers’ emotions and provide a turning point. Bear in mind Dominic is an upright religious gentleman who is secretly a gay submissive masochist with a humiliation kink, racked with guilt and shame at his non-conformist desires. I had to quote the whole poem for that reason, because it gives voice to the things Dominic has not previously allowed himself to think or believe.

Dominic stopped at random on an illustration of a severe, kneeling monk, and read aloud.

I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not, writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds
And—

His voice cracked. Silas finished the poem, with unusual gentleness:

And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

“That,” Dominic said. “That is . . .”

“Aye.”

“Have you met him? Blake?”

“Few times. Bit odd.” Silas coughed. “He, uh, reckons he talks to angels.”

Dominic could well imagine it. If he could write like this, draw like this, think like this, he would probably believe he had been touched by God too. He turned a few more pages, needing to keep handling this lovely, wild thing, to be sure he owned it. “Anything he’s written, any of these illustrated books, I’ll take them. Can you get them for me?”

“Dare say. They get odder.”

“I’m sure they do.” He had read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell over and over again since Silas had given him a copy. Half of it made no sense, and what he did follow he mostly disagreed with, and the whole thing made him quiver with a sense of terrible possibility. A whirling cloud of madman’s words, ringing with half-understood notes of something that resonated within.

The enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity.

“Thank you for this,” he said quietly. “For the books. For Blake. For the ways you have changed me.”

Historical…ness

Books in books don’t always have to have big metaphorical impact. Sometimes they’re part of worldbuilding, and this really helps in historical novels especially. In the 1890s-set Any Old Diamonds, Alec is reading on a train.

“Are you enjoying that?”

“I wouldn’t say enjoying, precisely.”

“Your face has suggested as much. What on earth are you reading?”

“It’s a new thing. The King In Yellow. Good in its way, but I don’t know if I like its way. Weird and macabre and feels rather like an opium dream. It’s about a play that induces madness in anyone who reads it.”

Jerry slanted a brow. “Sounds like the author’s been at the St. James’s Theatre recently.”

One of the businessmen guffawed, and added, “I beg your pardon.” Jerry waved a graceful hand.

Alec hid behind his book again, feeling rather self-conscious. Jerry’s remark had been an allusion to The Importance of Being Earnest, a smash hit earlier in the year, until the author had been arrested for gross indecency. Taking his name off the programme and advertising hadn’t saved the box office from the taint of scandal, and the play had closed. Wilde had only been in prison two months, the scandal had yet to fully subside, and Alec was rather conscious that The King in Yellow had a similar sort of atmosphere to Wilde’s work. Perhaps he should have broughtsomething less decadent. Perhaps Jerry was angry he’d given them away.

This is here to serves as a reminder of a few features of the era—the brutally homophobic atmosphere, the shock of Wilde’s fall and the vulnerability of queer men, but also the fin-de-siecle mood of decadence of which Wilde had been a part and which now feels more dangerous. It’s an added reminder of Alec’s precarious situation, personally and within his era.

Less grimly, in The Duke at Hazard (out in July!) our heroes are both fans of “the Waverley author”, ie Sir Walter Scott, who was still publishing anonymously at this time. Scott was a very popular historical novelist, and wrote a book, Kenilworth, set in the time of Elizabeth I. On the face of it, this is in here because reading Kenilworth causes the Duke to visit Kenilworth, thus putting some plot in motion. But it’s also part of a larger atmosphere, in that this is a road trip book in which we see that the UK’s historical tourism industry was already an established thing. (Stratford upon Avon has been shamelessly milking Shakespeare for at least 250 years and they are not planning to stop.) I find this delightful, in the same way it pleases me to point up to my reader in 2024 that they’re reading about people in 1821 who are reading about people in 1575.

Another useful historical element: literacy. In Jackdaw, Jonah is profoundly dyslexic, so his lover Ben reads Dickens aloud. This is part of their romance arc, but it was also entirely standard: a literate person would read the latest number to any amount of people who couldn’t access it, and families sitting together at their own occupations while one person read was a very common entertainment. In The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, baronet Gareth wants to give the working class Joss a book as a gift but is unsure if he’s able to read well enough. That was a fact of life for a lot of people, whether they lacked education or had learning difficulties of whatever kind, which would of course go unsupported. It’s worth acknowledging.

_____________

You can use what your characters are reading to illustrate all kinds of things about them, or their era, to show their similarities or differences, to make them relatable or otherwise to the reader. In this spirit, it is not unknown for contemporary romancers to have their heroines reading actual contemporary romance novels. I think this is a fourth-wall-breaking mistake, personally. And I have never got over the book where the author had her heroine not only reading one of her own books, but also commenting approvingly on how good it was. Like. Madam.

_______

The Duke at Hazard is out 18th July.

Thanks to Lola Pecciarini for the inspiration!

A quickie blog post today, inspired by Benjamin Dreyer’s entertaining rant on the distinction between eponymous and titular (it’s in footnote 1 for a clearer explanation than I am inclined/able to provide), and also by the fact that one of these sneaky little bastards nearly got me in a recent book.

So. An eponym is simply a word taken from a person’s name. Obamacare is an eponym, so is Reaganomics. If you hoover your carpets, the verb comes from the eponymous brand of vacuum cleaner. (We do not use the capital letter, no matter what the Hoover corporation may think: that ship has sailed, as demonstrated by the fact that I hoover with a Dyson.)

If you write historical novels, eponyms are one of those damn things. They tend to be extremely and usefully specific in meaning, but they are also extremely specific in dates, meaning you can’t rely on the old “well it was probably around for decades before it made it into the dictionary” line.

Here for your advisory is an incomplete list of eponyms that may trip you up, depending on period.

Boycott

The name comes from 1880 (Ireland, Charles Boycott, a shitty land agent who was socially and economically ostracised). The practice is older: there was a widespread boycott in the UK of slavery-produced sugar starting in 1791, during which sales plummeted by something like 40%. It is totally historically plausible to have a consumer or personal boycott in your Georgian or Regency novel, but you can’t call it a boycott for several decades more

Chauvinist

Named for a French vaudeville character. Meaning ‘blinkered nationalist’ it dates from 1840; you can’t use it for a male pig until 1960.

Fedora                                                                                                         

The hat beloved of men who spend too long on the internet getting angry about Star Wars sequels actually used to be a symbol of female liberation and cross dressing. Comes from the 1887 play Fédora starring Sarah Bernhardt.

Fuchsia

You will be able to spell this if you remember it’s an eponym for Mr Fuchs. The flowers are so named in the UK in the 1750s, the colour not till the 1920s. Do not put your Regency heroine in fuchsia, is what I mean.

Maverick

Supposedly from a US cattle owner, Samuel Maverick, who let his calves run wild. 1880s US at the very earliest, more probably 1930s. Yes, that is irritating.

Mesmeric

He may have compelling eyes but they ain’t mesmeric before the 1860s. The hypnotist Mesmer flourished in the late 1700s, giving us mesmerism (hypnosis); mesmerise wasn’t a verb till the end of the Regency, and even then it still meant ‘to put into a hypnotic trance’.

Sadistic

Marquis de Sade, as you already know, but NB that sadist/sadistic aren’t in general use till the 1890s or so when sexology got going, along with masochism (also an eponym).

Sandwich

1762 since you ask.

Silhouette

The outline picture is named for French finance minister Etienne de Silhouette. Used in France from 1760. However, despite there being a craze for silhouettes in England, the actual word didn’t come here till the mid 1820s, which is sodding annoying if your novel about a silhouette cutter happens to be set in 1819 I’M JUST SAYING.

Sweet Fanny Adams

This UK usage originally referring to something no good, now often used as an alternative to ‘sweet FA/fuck all’, came in from 1869 and cannot be used before 1867. You really don’t want to know where it comes from but here if you must (be warned, it’s genuinely grim).

Thug

Originally from India. Used to describe the Thuggee (as Brits then called it) sect from 1810. Didn’t become generalised to all violent lowlifes till 1839. You can’t be assaulted by thugs in a Regency unless they are actually Thugs.

Trilby

Another hat your Regency gentleman can’t wear. Comes from George du Maurier’s mega hit Trilby published 1894, which also gave us svengali (the name of the baddie in the book).

Feel free to add to this in the comments, there’s always something!

Death in the Spires, my Oxford-set historical murder mystery, is out now. The silhouette book, The Duke at Hazard, publishes in July: more later!

Today is the official publication date of my very first murder mystery. Obviously I have written many (many) murders, some of them mysterious, but this is my first genre murder. Which is to say, it’s not a romance novel. Do not go in expecting a HEA, okay?

Death in the Spires is very much a book of my heart. It is, in fact, the book I was discussing with Mr KJC one summer afternoon in the pub about eight years ago, just before I told him that I would rather eat out of bins than keep doing my then job till Christmas as planned, and he said, “Put in your notice tomorrow.” So I did, and moved to being a freelance writer/editor, and then a full time writer, and you can thank/blame Mr KJC for the thirty-odd novels I now have under my belt.

If you’re wondering about ‘eight years ago’: I wrote it, and it didn’t quite work. Couldn’t put my finger on it, so I shoved the MS to one side for five minutes because I was building my career in romance, and then Brexit, Trump, pandemic, before you know it six years have elapsed. But then last year I sent it to exciting new publisher Storm, and they liked it. A terrifically brutal/brutally terrific edit by Kathryn Taussig and Natasha Hodgson later, it did work, and here we are.

It’s a mystery starring an intense group of friends whose glittering Oxford and future careers are abruptly cut short when one of them is murdered…by one of them. Ten years on, scholarship boy turned drab clerk Jem sets out to discover who did it.

It’s running at an average five stars on NetGalley, which is nice. A few review quotes:

One of the best books I have read so far this year. The people and places all feel so real. Even though the setting is historical so many of the issues are ones that are completely relevant now just with a slightly different slant.

This is a mystery story but it is also a beautiful love story. I loved the character of Jem and was with him every painful step of the way

This is, in my humble opinion, the absolute best book K.J. Charles has written so far

A great, satisfying mystery. I read the whole thing in a day

KJ pivots toward a more classic murder mystery, but still gives us strong, nuanced characters in whose emotional lives we can’t help but be invested. As always, her eye for detail and twisty plotting result in a brilliant story that will keep readers breathlessly barreling toward the satisfying conclusion.

Why yes, I do have my usual K.J. Charles book hangover. Thanks for asking.

Clicky for content warnings. Again: not a romance. Available in print and e, and audio read by Tom Lawrence.

Buy links here!

The title of this blog post is © my grandad Spike Marlin, a remarkable man. (I should here add that since Spike, my family is made up of his descendants who adhere to this principle, and their life partners who helplessly splutter BUT FIVE MINUTES AGO YOU SAID.)

ANYWAY. I just went to lunch with my dad and am half a bottle in, so it feels like time for a free association blog post.

As it happens, I was at another boozy event the other day, a friend’s 50th birthday party. There I met up with my mate, the poet Natalie Shaw, and as frequently happens we took a deep dive into craft, specifically on the topic of finding what you’re trying to say.

Take a moment here. Natalie writes poems, often at sonnet length. She takes an idea and encapsulates it in maybe 14 lines of precise and scintillating language. I write historical romance novels. I spend eighty thousand words telling a love story while flailing around in historical facts, emotional conundrums, and any amount of knotty contradictory thoughts. You might think we are not the same.

Natalie takes a concept (idea, image), and refines her method of expressing it until it’s cut like a crystal. I start telling a love story, splurging out the words on a far bigger scale, and find the themes emerging from the murky depths of the first draft much like Godzilla. And yet, we agreed, we both find out what we think when we hear what we say. That may look like sharpening 14 lines, or like redrafting 80,000 words, but in both cases, we agreed, the meaning emerges from the process.

Interestingly, I received a question a while ago from reader Lindsay Hobbs that said:

Your books always touch on something deeper and/or bigger than the individuals. I’m thinking particularly about The Society of Gentlemen series, with its inclusion of class/wealth inequality, or the Sins of the Cities series, with its themes of neurodivergence, gender identity, and grey areas of morality. (I could go on listing things for all of your books, but I’m sure you get the gist!)

I love how this provides a way for your characters to get very deep with one another and reveal their moral codes and belief systems, and I also just love the representation of these larger issues and ideas in general.

I’m wondering how you work this into your stories, at what point the bigger/deeper ideas come to you when you are drafting, and any tips for writing related to this that you want to share!

I’ve been sitting on this for a while because I had no idea how to answer it. I don’t generally set out to write Big Issues. I tend to start with one character and a setting, think of the worst possible love interest they could have in the circumstances, and let fly, and the context kind of rises up around me. My mother has a saying that everyone’s career makes sense in retrospect. Certainly, my books make a lot more sense in retrospect than they do when I’m writing them.

Thus, I have just written, on request, a Gothic-type romance. Big scary house, dark family secrets, woman in white dress running away, you know the drill. Because me, I decided to mine the first wave of Gothic novels (1760s-1820s) as well as the 1970s style. That was the entire plan when I started.

And I wrote the first draft, and I brought in a Gothic novelist very like the real Gothic novelist William Beckford. Who was incredibly rich because he was a plantation owner. And that made me think about the very current struggle in British culture of coming to terms with how much of our cultural wealth is stolen from the labour of enslaved people. And that made me think about what it means for a people, a descent, a family to have tainted wealth and refuse to acknowledge it. Which in turn made me think about the fundamental Gothic trope of the cursed family rotten at the core. Which then made me think about themes of things that are said and unsaid, and about family secrets that are shameful vs the ones that are treated as shameful, and…

And anyway, now it’s a book about a guy with undiagnosed ADHD, among other things, and if you say “So why did you decide to write a character with ADHD?” I will gesture at the preceding paragraph and cry.

Look, you can take a single lump of rock and chip away everything that isn’t a diamond. Or you can take a meaty bone, and keep adding things to it until it’s a rich and flavourful stew. There is no right way to do this writing malarkey.

But if you want to know what you think?

I don’t know any better way than to hear what you say.

 It’s time for my annual round up! Other book lists are available.

This year I have stuck religiously to four books per category, but the categories have gone feral.

Romance

Show Girl by Alyson Greaves

A somewhat daft premise turns into a truly delightful fairytale trans romance full of warmth, love and uplift.

The Sign for Home by Blair Fell

A young DeafBlind guy and his interpreter set out to find his lost girlfriend. Fantastic, fascinating descriptions of the interpretation process and a huge heart.  

The Five-Day Reunion by Mona Shroff

Second chance romance with a consciously absurd premise but a great deal of heart, dealing with the real issues of a couple who married too young. Very enjoyable.

The Oak and the Ash by Annick Trent

Super late entry for this year’s best in that I read it yesterday, which just goes to show you shouldn’t do these posts too early. Georgian m/m with valet and doctor, with really well done social milieu, class, and politics, and a lovely romance. Heavy on the realism but with enough hope to lift it.

Fantasy/SF

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Enthralling, beautifully written story of a messiah’s not-the-chosen-one son. Staggering world-building, utterly immersive, properly magical.

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu

A wildly exuberant mash-up of top-class storytelling, gleeful mockery, and thoroughly human characters, and the most fun I have had with SF in ages. Delightful. Read it.

The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi

Haunting fable-like fantasy set in alt-African country. Wonderfully written and deeply felt. This one will stay with you for a while.

The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Marvellous SF about our hamster-wheel society and divided society. A mosaic novel rather than one with a driving plotline, which didn’t impinge on my enjoyment in the slightest.

Romance AND fantasy AND horror

The Shabti by Megaera C Lorenz

Debut romance with an Egyptologist and a fake medium. Thoroughly enjoyable pulp fun with the best haunting motive of all time, plus a nice understated queer romance between middle aged leads. (This isn’t actually out till next year, I got an ARC. Sorry.)

If Found, Return to Hell by Em X Liu

A truly marvellous novella of demonic possession or found family or possibly both, along with modern work and queerness and what ‘society’ really means. Absolutely lovely.

The Helios Syndrome by Vivian Shaw

A necromancer who investigates airplane crashes. Gotta love it. A novella with terrific atmosphere, scares, and heart. The merest smidge of a romance, but it lightens the whole thing wonderfully.

Even Though I Knew The End by CL Polk

1930s Chicago noir with sapphic romance, deals with the devil, occult murder, and the endless battle for queer love and women’s personhood underpinning the struggle over souls. Great historical setting.

Angry Women

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

Pitch-dark humour and satisfying revenge fantasy make this book about abused Indian village wives into a gleefully enjoyable ride.

Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen

A darkly fun read about a Chinese-American woman who gets duped into becoming part of a counterfeit handbag operation…or does she. Twistily told and razor-sharp.

Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Filipino domestic workers in Singapore solving a murder. Powerful, humane, extremely angry, and massively entertaining too.

A Crime in the Land of 7,000 Islands by Zephaniah Sole

A police procedural set between the US and the Philippines with a ferocious FBI agent determined to nail a child abuser, told partly in a dreamlike folklore way. Marvellous, if hard to describe, and super compelling: really do not miss this one. If I had to pick one single book off this list as my book of the year, it might have to be this.

Fucked-Up People

The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley

A genuinely stunning novel about a Black lawyer in New York getting caught up in a survivalist group. Whip-smart satire and real feeling. Terrific.

Gigantic by Ashley Stokes

A look into the mind of a true believer. Kevin is a cryptid hunter as an escape from his many many failures, but also because there’s something in his soul that longs for wonder. Funny and tragic.

The Trees by Percival Everett

I read a lot of Everett this year but this is the best: a brutal and astonishing book about US racism and the corruption at the country’s heart. Gut-wrenching dark satire.

Grave Expectations by Alice Bell

A lovely female Randall and Hopkirk Deceased premise (live woman and murdered-in-her-teens ghost bestie investigate murder in bonkers country house), exuberantly told but not shying away from how extremely fucked up that is. Genuinely funny.

Non fiction

Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera

Tremendous overview of British colonialism: what it did, how it feeds into the current British character, and why we’re quite so deliberately amnesiac about it. A terrific read, with lively engaging style, very personal, and dealing with tough subjects in a considered way.

Lost Realms by Thomas Williams

An attempted history of some of the kingdoms that rose and fell in Britain between the Romans and the Vikings, some of which have been almost entirely erased, or possibly never existed. Bleakness, fear and yearning sweep the pages in true Old English poetic style.

Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken

Oh boy you will not want to eat ultra-processed food ever again after reading this. Ooooh boy. Could have listed it under horror, tbh.

The Three Emperors by Miranda Carter

A history of the run-up to WW1 themed around the monarchs of Britain, Russia and Germany, culminating in the cousin King, Tsar, and Kaiser who presided over the mess. Terrifically written with deadpan humour, and it conveys the family structures and shifting politics extremely well.

Why would you start here, you fool

Paladin’s Faith by T Kingfisher

Book 4 of the saga of the paladins of the Saint of Steel, aka Much-Decapitation-on-the-Marsh. Utterly charming. You could read this as a standalone if you absolutely insist, but why.

System Collapse by Martha Wells

Book 7 of the adventures of an incredibly relatable killer cyborg who just wants to watch media. You need to read Network Effect first as the bare minimum (honestly, glom the lot).

A Christmas to Remember by Beverly Jenkins

Book 11 of the ongoing soap opera of a tiny US town with romance, family, shenanigans, and giant hogs. Don’t even think about starting here. Go directly to book 1 and be consumed.

A Knife for the Juggler by Manning Coles

Book 16 of the Tommy Hambledon post WW2 spy series with which I am still weirdly obsessed. It doesn’t actually matter what order you read these in, or indeed if you read them at all.  

So I did a class on character building for a writing conference recently, which was an interesting experience, especially since it forced me to think about what I do instead of just doing it. (Which, as regular readers will know, ends up being the root of all my advice anyway. Think harder, look deeper.)

As one exercise, I took the opening of a book I wrote and did a deep dive into analysing how it builds character. (I don’t use my own work for examples because I think I’m all that as a writer, by the way. I do it because I’m lazy and can’t be bothered to type long passages out from scratch when I could just copy paste my MSS.)

Anyway, it was a really useful exercise (for me at least), so I’m going to reproduce it here.

Okay. So the thing is, people often think of character as a collection of traits. (“My hero is a recovering alcoholic who has tragically lost his wife. He’s half Swedish and collects Ottoman pottery.”) But that isn’t character. Character is how that person behaves, including how they speak because speech is an action, and how they think in a book where we have access to their thoughts. That behaviour/speech/thought is influenced by their past, their traits etc.

And therefore, when we’re trying to convey character, it has to influence, and thus seep into, every aspect of the book—dialogue and narrative. You can’t just reserve chapter 4 for character development. Every sentence in a character’s POV is an opportunity to show character, and so is every sentence about them.

To demonstrate what I mean, I’m going to reproduce the opening of Slippery Creatures here. I’m then going to break it down line by line with what I think is pretty much every piece of character work in the passage.

And then, for your delectation, I will provide you with a version from which I have stripped out all the character work, so you can compare and contrast.

Note: this is very far from the only way to build character, and this example is specific to writing in deep 3rd person (that is, where we are inside the character’s head). This is incredibly far from a be-all and end-all. But it is a close work exercise that I found useful even though I’d written the damn thing in the first place, so I’m sharing it for what that’s worth.

OK. Here’s the passage. You might, if keen, want to write down any character notes you pick up as you go along. I found 16.

Will Darling was outnumbered by books.

It hadn’t always felt this way. When he’d first visited his uncle at Darling’s Used & Antiquarian, he’d simply thought, That’s a lot of books, and when he’d started helping here, they were just work. As he took over the running of the place in his uncle’s last illness, though, he became increasingly aware of them looming around him, full of knowledge and secrets and lies. So much that, when Uncle William had died, Will remembered an ancient piece of lore about bees, and he’d cleared his throat and told the books, “He’s gone.”

He was dead, and Will, his sole heir, had inherited Darling’s Used & Antiquarian: the premises on May’s Buildings off St. Martin’s Lane, the goodwill such as it was, and the stock. He was master of an entire building with a shop floor, two upstairs rooms, and a cubbyhole at the ground floor back which was all the space his uncle had allowed for human life. He’d have Uncle William’s savings too, once probate had been sorted out. And he owned a lot of books, although just now and then, when it got dark and the shelves loomed over him, he got the feeling that they owned him.

He occupied some of the extremely long periods when nobody came into the shop by trying to calculate how many volumes his uncle had stuck him with, and had concluded it could easily be forty thousand. He had yet to find an inventory, and was increasingly convinced the old bugger had kept his records in his head. So here he was, at the shop desk with books double stacked in the floor-to-ceiling shelves that turned the room into a maze, books piled on every flat surface and against every vertical one, books half-obscuring the windows. Bloody books.

The place reeked of old paper over the fainter odours of damp, dust, and rodents. He’d put down traps, checked the walls, and taken a broom to what floor was visible as well as to the accumulating cobwebs on the fog-stained ceiling. It had had very little effect. He’d probably get used to the smell of second-hand books one day, just stop noticing it, and then he’d be doomed.

On that gloomy thought, he swung his feet up onto his desk and leaned back in his chair. Uncle William had spent good money on this chair once, and though the red leather was cracked, it was still comfortable. That was good enough for Will.

He was damned lucky to be here, even if he lived in danger of being crushed by a book landslide. Will had gone to the War at eighteen, and come back five years later to find himself useless and unwanted. In Flanders he’d been a grizzled veteran, a fount of professional expertise who knew the ropes and had seen it all. Back in Blighty he’d become a young man again, one with little training and no experience. He’d been apprenticed to a joiner before the war, but that felt like decades ago: all he was good at now was killing people, which was discouraged.

OK? Right. I shall insert a separator in case you need a moment to think and then give my breakdown.

Here we go.

Will Darling was outnumbered by books.

‘Outnumbered’ is an odd word choice for books. It’s adversarial: we gather Will is an ‘us and them’ kind of guy. But obviously he’s not at war with books, so there’s a suggestion of humour in his response.

looming around him, full of knowledge and secrets and lies

This isn’t the response of a bibliophile. ‘Looming’ feels slightly threatening. We deduce Will isn’t an intellectual: he’s no Belle whizzing happily around on her rolly ladder. (We might also suspect foreshadowing in the books full of ‘secrets and lies’.)

Will remembered an ancient piece of lore about bees

Why does he know obscure folklore? It hints that he’s not a modern city type.  

he’d cleared his throat and told the books, “He’s gone.”

There’s a sense here of Will doing the ‘proper’ thing with the throat-clearing. Ceremony, a sense of doing the right thing, or superstition?

goodwill such as it was

A dryly amused thought: along with ‘outnumbered’ we’re building a picture of his sense of humour.

a cubbyhole at the ground floor back which was all the space his uncle had allowed for human life

We get a sense of the uncle living in a hole among the books, and deduce that Will is not of his ilk.

he owned a lot of books, although just now and then, when it got dark and the shelves loomed over him, he got the feeling that they owned him

Will has an imagination which tends to the sinister. ‘Loomed’ again, which might be a deliberate echo to amplify the sense of oppression, or might be an unconscious repetition the author failed to pick up before now, who can say. 

He occupied some of the extremely long periods when nobody came into the shop by trying to calculate how many volumes his uncle had stuck him with, and had concluded it could easily be forty thousand. He had yet to find an inventory, and was increasingly convinced the old bugger had kept his records in his head. So here he was, at the shop desk with books double stacked in the floor-to-ceiling shelves that turned the room into a maze, books piled on every flat surface and against every vertical one, books half-obscuring the windows. Bloody books.

Will is a man very much out of his depth, aware of it, and perhaps slightly worried about the viability of his new business.

He’d put down traps, checked the walls, and taken a broom to what floor was visible

He’s practical, doing the necessary stuff.

then he’d be doomed.

Dark imagination again, and the same half-joking sense of ‘us and them’ as in the first line: Will in battle with life.  

On that gloomy thought, he swung his feet up onto his desk and leaned back in his chair

The casual action doesn’t match ‘doomed’ or ‘gloomy’. Despite the preceding paragraphs, Will isn’t letting the oppression of books get him down.

and though the red leather was cracked, it was still comfortable. That was good enough for Will.

Not a man of exacting standards as long as things work.

He was damned lucky to be here

He does in fact have a sense of proportion about his situation. He has also sworn twice in a short passage of thought, which may or may not be noteworthy.

even if he lived in danger of being crushed by a book landslide

His sardonic/gloomy sense of humour again, which we may now be seeing as characteristic

Will had gone to the War at eighteen, and come back five years later to find himself useless and unwanted. In Flanders he’d been a grizzled veteran, a fount of professional expertise who knew the ropes and had seen it all. Back in Blighty he’d become a young man again, one with little training and no experience.

And here we see what his dark humour is characteristic of, as well as his adversarial cast of mind. He’s survived the First World War (quite possibly in the trenches because Flanders) and had his entire adult life shaped by it; he’s now adrift and disconcerted by his experiences, not quite fitting in with peacetime life or normality.

all he was good at now was killing people, which was discouraged.

An important piece of information about Will’s particular skill set, which you may suspect is likely to come up in the plot. Also another touch of his sense of humour in the sardonic word choice ‘discouraged’.

Now, obviously nobody reads the opening of a romantic suspense novel that closely. The reader isn’t scribbling down character notes. The vast majority of people, asked what they have learned from that passage, will say, “Well, he’s an ex soldier who owns a bookshop,” and a few more will add “and he’s not super happy about it”. Some people will be more like, “I don’t know, is he a beekeeper?”

But. But.

But readers do take this stuff in, even if they don’t realise they’re taking this stuff in. (That’s not a snark. Critical analysis is a learned skill: we can be affected by things without knowing how.) And it works by accumulation: you keep on drip feeding the information, infusing it through the book. When we see him stubbornly going toe to toe with a criminal gang and the War Office even though he’s completely outnumbered, we won’t find his attitude surprising.

We can show that people take this stuff in by seeing the response when we take it out.

I now present the opening of Slippery Creatures with exactly the same information and text but without the character notes. Read carefully. See what you think.

Will Darling had a lot of books.

He hadn’t always noticed. When he’d first visited his uncle at Darling’s Used & Antiquarian, he’d simply thought, That’s a lot of books, and when he’d started helping here, they were just work. As he took over the running of the place in his uncle’s last illness, though, he became increasingly aware of just how many there were.

Now his uncle was dead, and Will, his sole heir, had inherited Darling’s Used & Antiquarian: the premises on May’s Buildings off St. Martin’s Lane, the goodwill, and the stock. He was master of an entire building with a shop floor, two upstairs rooms, and a cubbyhole at the ground floor back where his uncle had lived. He’d have Uncle William’s savings too, once probate had been sorted out. And he owned a lot of books.

He occupied some of the periods when nobody came into the shop by trying to calculate how many volumes his uncle had left him, and had concluded it could easily be forty thousand. He had yet to find an inventory: he doubted his uncle had made one. So here he was, at the shop desk with books double stacked in the floor-to-ceiling shelves that turned the room into a maze, books piled on every flat surface and against every vertical one, books half-obscuring the windows.

The place smelled of old paper over the fainter odours of damp, dust, and rodents. He’d put down traps, checked the walls, and taken a broom to what floor was visible as well as to the accumulating cobwebs on the fog-stained ceiling. It had had very little effect. He’d probably just get used to the smell of second-hand books one day, and not notice it any more.

He put his feet up onto his desk and leaned back in his chair. Uncle William had spent good money on this chair once, and though the red leather was cracked, it was still comfortable.

Will had gone to the War at eighteen, and come back five years later to find himself useless and unwanted. He’d been an experienced soldier, but back in England he was starting again, with little training and no experience. He’d been apprenticed to a joiner before the war, but that was a long time ago: all he knew how to do now was kill people, which was illegal.

I mean, that could have been written by AI. We learn that Will is a soldier turned bookseller and that he’s practical but inexperienced, and that’s your lot. There is very little in the writing to interest or detain us, no depth of personality. It has, in fact, no character.

(It is possible to write entire books like this on purpose, of course, giving the reader only surface facts and letting them infer the character from the actions. Don’t let me stop you. It’s not going to fly in romance, though.)

But if you’re actively trying to build character? Remember it’s there all the time, and let it percolate throughout the whole book—action, speech, infodumps, description, to build up to a whole.

Slippery Creatures is available from all the usual places. Note for romance readers that it’s the first in a trilogy and you don’t get the HEA till book 3.

It’s finally here! A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, the second in my Doomsday Books duo, is out at last. Featuring a soldier-turned-earl with a temper, a smuggler-turned-secretary with a secret, a lot of sneaking around ancient manor houses and playing around with droit du seigneur, Gothic novels, probably too many references to the Angevin dynasty, and some serious angst.

“Masterfully crafted, deliciously adventurous and so, so horny”–BookPage

If you’ve read The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, you will recall Luke Doomsday (Goldie), a snotty adolescent with an abusive father. Luke goes through a lot in that book, and this one, set thirteen years later, is partly about exploring the aftereffects of that damage (aka ‘just how bad is it to be a secondary character in a KJ Charles romance novel? Oh, that bad.’).

Fortunately, Luke meets his match in Rufus, a nobleman in training with no tact, a tendency to shout, and the kindest heart on Romney Marsh. Have some Luke and Rufus.

“About the matter of you going to London. Is that your plan?”

“Of course not. Can’t stand it, stinking filthy pit. What the blazes would I do there?”

“I think you’re intended to court ladies at Almack’s.”

“No,” Rufus said firmly. “Damned if I’m going, even if they’d let me in.”

“Why would they not let you in? You’re an earl.”

“Wouldn’t do me any good. I’ve heard about that place. Fancy manners and no trousers.”

Doomsday spluttered. Rufus pointed a warning finger at him, grinning. “I meant, you have to wear black silk knee-breeches and dress up as though it was the last century. Drink ratafia and mind your language. Bugger that. And how am I supposed to take charge of the estate from London?”

“Well, you couldn’t, that’s the point. And it doesn’t have to be Almack’s; the purpose is very much the courting of ladies. You are the earl, and, well, heirs.”

“I couldn’t give two shits for that,” Rufus said, once again forgetting he was an earl, although in fairness, the most foul-mouthed of his fellow officers had been a marquess’s son. “And I’m not courting anyone. Wouldn’t know how to start.”

“You could court!” Doomsday said with a touch of indignation. “Perhaps not in the most conventional manner, but you’d have no trouble.”

“I would. I never learned to dance—would you believe that’s all but demanded of officers? Bloody ridiculous cavalry twiddle-poop.” As a proud member of the 54th Foot, Rufus had views on cavalry officers. “And I’ve no idea about fine words or wooing, and I’m cursed if I know what one’s meant to do. If you want me to continue the d’Aumesty line, Christ knows what for, you’ll need to give me a list of instructions, or find me an etiquette guide or some damn thing.”

“A nobleman’s guide to courting a countess? Step one, take the lady’s hand and praise the delicacy of her skin with a salute.” Doomsday adopted a decidedly effete upper-class voice for that, simultaneously turning his hand and arm in a wonderfully elegant manner, offering Rufus his palm just like a lady.

Rufus took it, bowed over it, and kissed it.

He hadn’t intended to do that. It was just a joke, spur-of-the-moment, continuing the banter, except that he’d kissed Doomsday’s hand, not just the hand but the sensitive palm, had pressed his lips against warm skin, and even as he stood bowed over it wondering at his own incredible stupidity, he still held that hand in his. “Uh—”

“That’s very good.” Doomsday’s fingers rested lightly in Rufus’s, so that all Rufus would need to do was close his own fingers on them and pull. His long eyelashes were lowered modestly, as part of the joke. His voice sounded a bit constricted. “Perhaps a little forceful, but flattering enthusiasm is very hard to resist.”

“I’m glad it meets your approval,” Rufus managed. Play along, he told himself. Banter. “What’s step two?”

“That would be a compliment on the radiance of her complexion, or perhaps the lustre of her eyes.”

“Madam, your eyes are as brown as, uh. I don’t know. Bread?”

Doomsday’s downswept eyes swept right back up. “Bread?”

“I couldn’t think of anything else brown. Hot chocolate? A good beef stew?”

“Stop talking now,” Doomsday said, extracting his hand. “And by that I meant, Maybe I should send for an etiquette guide, my lord.”

Out now, have at it!

Goodreads

Buy links

So I was looking it up the other day and my first book, The Magpie Lord, was published on 3 September 2013. It’s free right now, should you not have read it: help yourself.

I have been (in Lawrence Block’s immortal phrase) telling lies for fun and profit for ten years. Gosh.

I’m mildly stunned. In that time I’ve written thirty novels, which have been translated into eight languages. I’ve worked with seven publishers with an eighth coming. (Check out this gallery of Magpie Lord’s many incarnations, it’s really quite something.) I’ve gone from publishing to self publishing and back again. (I’ve also gone from having two adorable small children to having look let’s just say two teenagers and leave it there, lived through a pandemic, and watched my cat become too old and lazy to murder. Time is weird.)

And, mostly, I’ve had the immense good fortune that people have bought the damn books, thus allowing me to keep doing it.

I quit my job three years after my first publication with the intention of writing backed up by freelance editing. My uberboss at that time, head of a large chunk of a major publisher, laughed when she heard I wanted to make a living by writing and sarcastically said “Good luck with that.” I bring this up a lot because authors really ought to know that publishing does not expect or even intend you to make a living by writing.

But, for now, I am making a living, which means I get to keep on writing. I am well aware this makes me one of the luckiest people on earth and I am doing my best to earn it.

Ten years. Crikey.

So, I should clearly do something to celebrate. I did think about elaborate plans but let’s be real, I have deadlines queued into 2026/infinity and am going quietly hatstand over here, so I think it’s going to be a giveaway.

So! I have a new book coming out 19 September. It’s the second in my Doomsday Books duo.

Book 1 is about Joss Doomsday, smuggler, and Sir Gareth Inglis, baronet, getting mixed up in all sorts of shenanigans on remote Romney Marsh. Book 2 returns to the Marsh thirteen years later, where Joss’s little cousin Luke is now secretary to the new and chaotic Earl of Oxney. Both of them offer family feuds, dark deeds, cross-class, and other alliterative joys. Published by Sourcebooks; the gorgeous cover art is by Jyotirmayee Patra.

I’m going to give away three sets of print copies (ie both books) to three winners. I will sign both copies as you wish: personalised dedication, rude comment on the last page to startle your friend, marriage proposal (that would have to be on your behalf, I’m already married). Postage to anywhere in the world.

Click to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is brought to you by seeing a series of posts on Facebook that demonstrated how many authors don’t understand rights. It’s long and boring and about contracts. Read it anyway.

Right. There’s been a rash of posts about the T&Cs of Apple’s new AI narration service whereby they offer to create a machine-narrated audiobook with no upfront cost to you.

I’m not here to talk about how, when you’re offered something for free, that usually means you’re the product. Or about how authors who throw voice artists under the bus will get zero sympathy from me when the flood of AI novels destroys Kindle Unlimited. Or how come so many people apparently haven’t seen Terminator 2. If you need my stance on AI, I’m insisting in anti-AI clauses in all my publisher contracts (human narrator for audiobooks, no AI on the cover, you may not feed my books into the maw for machine learning) and am prepared to walk away from a contract that doesn’t include them.

But we’re not talking about AI in this post. We’re talking about how to read a contract.

Here’s the text of one of the many posts I’ve seen on the subject of the Apple contract, all with a ton of shares with ‘Watch out!’ and angry face emojis. I picked this one out to quote solely because it was the first one I saw this morning. I’ve messed around with the text to prevent searching because I really don’t want to pick on an individual here: it’s just one example of a widespread misapprehension.

Apple are offering authors their new audiobook generator. It’s FREE! They’ll make and sell an audiobook for you! FREE AUDIOBOOK! They’ll even make you an AI cover if you don’t have one!

Here’s their contract:

“By using the service (Apple Books Digital Narration), I acknowledge that Apple owns all rights, title, and interest in and to the audiobooks created by Apple Audio AI, including all worldwide copyrights and other intellectual property rights therein.”

Did you pay attention to that, or were you just looking at MAKE A FREE AUDIOBOOK? Let’s look at it again.

“Put your ebook into our AI software for an audiobook that we will own all rights to. All rights.”

They don’t even have to pay you royalties. They probably will, for the first while, so you spread the word about their AI audiobook offer. But they don’t have to, and there’s no reason for them to. And when they stop paying–or pull back previously paid royalties–you have no legal grounds to protest, because you signed away all the rights. And if they choose to keep selling their audiobook, maybe after you decide you’d rather sell a version by a human narrator, I guess you should have thought of that before giving them all the rights.

This person is spot on about not trusting this offer (as well as their points about the ethical bankruptcy of how AI has been trained, which I didn’t include). They are entirely wrong about the meaning of the clause.

We’re now going to talk about Grant of Rights. First a story I have told before, several times:

At a conference contracts panel

Me: Hands up who isn’t clear what “Grant of Rights” means in a publishing contract.

[most hands go up]

Me: Keep your hand up if you’ve signed a publishing contract.

[most hands stay up. Embarrassed laughter.]

I’m side eyeing all of you.

The Grant of Rights in a standard contract might go:

The Author hereby grants and assigns to the Publisher, during the full term of copyright in each country comprising the Territory and any renewals, continuations, and extensions thereof, on the terms herein set forth, the exclusive right to publish, print, distribute, license and sell the Work in any and all formats licensed herein, in the Licensed Language(s), throughout the Territory. The foregoing grant of rights includes, without limitation, the exclusive right to exercise all rights in the Work referred to in Paragraphs 3B and 3C hereof. All rights not expressly granted to Publisher pursuant to this Agreement are reserved to the Author.

My God that’s boring. But if your eyes glaze over this in your own contract you’re making a very big mistake because this is where the crucial stuff lies.

First thing to note: your book is not called a book here, it’s called the Work. This is important because the process of publishing might sell your story as a paperback, an ebook, an audio book, a print and audio version in French, the basis for a movie, and the inspiration for a line of amusing mugs. The Work (your manuscript) is the basis of all those books and book-related things. We’ll come back to this at the end.

The grant of rights is the basis on which publishing is built. It defines what you let the publisher do with your Work, and it does so in the following areas:

Term (how long they have the rights for)Territory (what countries they can sell it in—it’s not always the whole world)Format (what formats they can sell it in eg print, e, audio)Language (what language they can sell it in—just English or more?)Subsidiary rights (using the Work in other ways beyond the main publication, eg the film and the mugs)

If you grant rights “during the full term of copyright in all languages and all formats throughout the world”, that means the publisher basically controls everything till after you’re dead (subject to any termination clauses). They can publish in all languages, formats and territories themselves, or they can license rights to other publishers. They can, for example, sell the paperback and ebook themselves, but license audiobook rights to Tantor, and hardback rights to a publisher that does those cute special editions with the sprayed edges (format rights). They can sell US English print and e publication rights to a US publisher, global French translation rights to a French publisher, and Spanish translation rights in two separate deals to Spain and to the US (language and territory rights). Those rights might be licensed for a limited period, eg five years, after which the agreement would need to be renewed or terminated (term of rights). If you’ve allowed it, they might also be able to license the Work to be published in comic book form, or turned into a radio serial or a blockbusting movie (subsidiary rights). For all of these, your contract will specify how the money is divided between you and the publisher.

You don’t have to agree to such a sweeping grant of rights. You might sell a publisher English language print and e rights for the UK and Commonwealth only, perhaps on a seven-year term. If that’s the case, you can make the USA publication, audiobook, and movie deals separately, and the first publisher gets none of that money because they have none of the relevant rights.

Remember: All rights not expressly granted to Publisher are reserved to the Author. (This phrase needs to be in there. Check for it.) You can reserve a variety of subsidiary rights even if you’ve granted full term rights for all languages/formats/territories–for example, you might insist on hanging on to TV and film rights. This can be very upsetting for the publisher if, to take a totally random example, they publish an insanely successful seven-book children’s series by a future TERF but the film and TV and merchandising rights are all reserved to the author so the publisher don’t get a penny for any of it.

Got that? Rights are everything in publishing, so a publishing contract is, basically, all about spelling out who has what rights. This is why they are so very long and dull.

Back to Apple!

OK, let’s look at that clause again. Bear in mind:

It is one clause in a contract that will be a lot longer.You haven’t seen the rest and nor have I. I chose not to look at it before doing this post because I’m not here to defend Apple’s contracts: I’m here to tell you what to look for when you see a post like this.

Let’s repeat the claim in this post, which is roughly what all the other posts I’ve seen have said:

“Put your ebook into our AI software for an audiobook that we will own all rights to. All rights.”

They don’t even have to pay you royalties. They probably will, for the first while, so you spread the word about their AI audiobook offer. But they don’t have to, and there’s no reason for them to do it. And when they stop paying–or pull back previously paid royalties–you have no legal grounds to protest, because you signed away all the rights. And if they choose to keep selling their audiobook, maybe after you decide you’d rather sell a version by a human narrator, I guess you should have thought of that before giving them all the rights.

And here’s the clause again:

“By using the service (Apple Books Digital Narration), I acknowledge that Apple owns all rights, title, and interest in and to the audiobooks created by Apple Audio AI, including all worldwide copyrights and other intellectual property rights therein.”

What does this clause cover? Here’s a hint: it’s a format-rights clause. See the bold.

“By using the service (Apple Books Digital Narration), I acknowledge that Apple owns all rights, title, and interest in and to the audiobooks created by Apple Audio AI, including all worldwide copyrights and other intellectual property rights therein.”

This clause specifies rights to the machine-voice audiobooks Apple will create. It says that you, the author, do not own the machine-voice Apple-generated audiobook. Apple own that, so if your contract with them terminates, you can’t keep on using their HAL-voice monstrosity afterwards: it’s theirs, not yours.

And that, folks, is literally all it says.

This clause does not say:

Anything about audio rights in general. It does not specify that Apple take all audio book rights, or that you are unable to release a human-generated audiobook. I don’t know what the rest of the contract says, but this clause is solely about the machine-voice Apple-generated audiobook.Anything about royalties. I don’t know what the royalty split is in the rest of the contract. But this clause doesn’t affect royalties in the slightest. If they agree to pay you elsewhere, this clause does not allow them to stop.That they can “pull back previously paid royalties”. I…what?That “you signed away all the rights”. I hope it’s now clear that you didn’t.That “if they choose to keep selling their audiobook, maybe after you decide you’d rather sell a version by a human narrator, I guess you should have thought of that before giving them all the rights.” This is about term and exclusivity, neither of which are mentioned in this clause. How long can Apple sell their machine voice version for? Are you able to sell a competing version with a human narrator at the same time? How can this contract be terminated? These are all excellent questions you should ask, but you’re not going to find the answer to any of them in this clause.That they can continue selling their version indefinitely. They can keep selling it only for the term of their licence. Of course, that licence might be a very long time, so you’d want to check that very carefully. But that should be spelled out at the beginning of the contract; this clause doesn’t alter it.

Again, I am not defending Apple in any way. For all I know, the rest of this contract is written in human blood and grants them your soul in perpetuity. All I am saying is, you the author need to be able to read a clause like this and work out what it means, and indeed what it does not mean.

Another post I saw on this clause suggested that it grants Apple the film rights “if someone listened to the audiobook and wanted to do a film based on that”. This is based on a misreading of “all worldwide copyrights and other intellectual property rights therein” in this clause which, again, applies only to Apple’s machine-voice audiobook.

Remember how we talked about the Work at the start of this? (Go back and reread if you’ve been stunned into amnesia: it’s important to understand this.) Subsidiary/other rights to the Work are not automatically included without being specifically agreed. If a right isn’t specifically granted in the contract, it’s reserved to the author. (This is why you don’t allow language like “in any format not yet created” because that’s literally the publisher trying to grab unspecified rights. No. Bad.) The publisher of a machine-generated audiobook can no more grab film rights to the entire Work in a sneaky unspecific licensing clause than can the people who license rights to cute sprayed edges hardbacks, French language editions, or mugs.

Term. Territory. Format. Language. Dig them out of the contract verbiage and you will understand what you’re selling, licensing, or giving away. And don’t sign a contract until you understand them. There are some really bad contracts out there, with wildly overreaching clauses, and if you can’t grasp the normal language, you won’t stand a chance of spotting the dodgy stuff.

A more general post on contracts here.

I am not a lawyer and if anyone sees anything I’ve got wrong I will gladly correct it. However, I worked as an editor for twenty years in various publishing houses and am now a full time author so I have read a lot of contracts (and signed a few terrible ones).

My next book is A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, out in September. You probably want to get book 1, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, while you wait.

If you comment here on the topic of AI or that terfy author I’m just going to delete it: this is about contracts and rights.

I’m reading a lot at the moment. If you are looking to stock your shelves for the summer, here are some recs for every mood. I say ‘every’: some of them are probably quite specific moods. Whatever.

All links go to Goodreads.

If You Read All Of Murderbot Twice But Still Need More

If Found, Return To Hell by Em X Liu is a deeply loving, comforting story of miserable bureaucracy and demonic possession. Absolutely lovely queer found family with marvellous magic and deep humanity. A delight. Written in the second person present tense, but you won’t care. Trust me on this, okay.

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu also falls into this category but isn’t out till October, sorry. Put it on your list.

If You Want a Deep Dive Into a Different Life

A Sign for Home by Blair Fell is about a DeafBlind guy, written by an interpreter for DeafBlind people, and it does a phenomenal job of conveying life for the DeafBlind and how communication works. It’s being marketed like a romcom for whatever reason (see cover), but it’s not; it’s a coming of age story for Arlo and a ‘find your spine’ story for his interpreter. It’s a little overlong in the backstory but keep going, you will not regret it.

If You Got Obsessed with the Whole Submarine Thing

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant does good deep sea horror. I had some niggles but it has the absolutely correct mixture of abyssal monsters and terrifying isolation with the vibes of a quality Jason Statham movie.

Honorary mention: The Helios Syndrome by Vivian Shaw, which does the ‘terrifying isolation and monsters’ but on a plane rather than in the sea, and is delightful with it.

If You Just Want Out From The World

The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar by Indra Das is a delightful, strange, beautifully written novella about a boy whose family are…not from here. Dragons. Memories. Strangeness. It’s unclassifiable and lovely and queer and entirely absorbing.

If You Need an Outlet For Your Rage

Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal is a terrific mystery set among the immigrant domestic workers who serve Singapore’s elite. It’s a magnificently angry book about how people treat others, a cathartic howl of rage, but it’s also a really entertaining story with engaging characters and a very satisfying resolution, plus there’s a touch of queer romance. Highly enjoyable.

If You’re Profoundly Alienated By Our Modern Dystopia

The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley is about a Black woman struggling to survive in her hideously competitive law firm, whose apparently perfect new boyfriend turns out to be a survivalist. It’s a marvellous look at this very weird group in a way that makes perfect if demented sense, and it’s also a very funny as well as deeply bleak satire of modern US life and its fears and disconnects. (Ignore the frankly bullshit Goodreads rating. You listen to me, not to Goodreads.)

The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan is a marvellous dystopian story set in future Bangalore where everyone is scrabbling to stay in the top 10% and out of the bottom. Hugely engaging, and wonderfully told.

There is also a sort of evil catharsis to be found in the neat short Everything’s Fine by Matthew Pridham, in which corporate workers desperately try to deflect noticing the Lovecraftian apocalypse by talking about reality shows.

If You Want a Romance That Doesn’t Hold Back

You Made A Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi goes head on into a lot of places most romances don’t go, and is all the better for it. If you like your characters flawless and making good decisions, sit this one out. Personally I rolled around in the mess like a dog off a lead. Lovely writing, genuinely moving, huge fun.

If You Want A Punch In The Face

The Trees by Percival Everett is a frankly astonishing book about US racism, corruption, and lynching. It’s brutal gut-wrenching stuff, with satire as dark and bitter as coffee, but an absolute must-read. (Then read Erasure by the same author. Oof.)

Give Me A Break KJ, Can I Just Have A Couple Of Unstressful Romances

The Five-Day Reunion by Mona Shroff is a hugely entertaining second-chance romance set around a divorced couple who have to pretend they aren’t divorced at a wedding. It entirely leans in to the silliness of the premise and we all have massive fun.

First Time for Everything by Mina V Esguerra is a forty-year-old virgin heroine and her chosen first partner, an old friend, carefully working out how they fit into one another’s lives. Quiet, heartfelt, mature, and angst-free.  

Hen Fever by Olivia Waite is a sapphic Victorian romance of healing, kindness, and chicken shows. Delightful.

Bisclavret by KL Noone is a soothing delight: a queer novella based on medieval legend, with loyalty, love, slow burn romance, and joy. And werewolves (but the medieval kind, no gore).

If you want gruff, unexpectedly ennobled earls, scarred scoundrels with issues, gloomy Gothic mansions, screwed-up families and/or a sequel to The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, my next book is A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel, out in September.