Fact.

I'm a bit obsessive about detail. When I'm writing a story, I don't like to get factual details wrong. I will spend a lot of time on the internet while writing a story just ensuring that the things I'm putting into it are correct. It is terrible for a procrastinator like me because sometimes pursuing the correct detail (what colour exactly is a bar of Lifebouy soap? Precisely how long does it take to taxidermy a hamster? Can you buy top loading washing machines for doll's houses? When was the whetstone invented? Did people in 1917 have an awareness of natural satellites?) can lead you into the most fascinating tunnel of distractions and you find yourself an hour later a million miles away from the original small query.

Often the internet or reference books cannot readily and reliably answer your detail query. I have been writing a story set in 1917, in Arras on the front line. I managed to put together the bones of the story using the facts from a selection of books, archives, websites and general reading. But I had got to the point where I was reading through my complete story feeling a little anxious about fine detail. You hope people will read the story. You hope people will be absorbed by the tale and not trip over inaccuracies. You hope you haven't blundered rough shod over the truths of history and that you've been respectful to the real life event in the construction of your fiction. But with this story I've found the precision of certain detail hard to nail down.

I am really lucky to know an amazing writer who specialises in military history who was able to help me. Bryan Perrett has been writing historical fiction and non fiction for years. His work covers a wide range of military and naval warfare. If you have children, they will have read his books, in the Scholastic 'My Story' series, where specific historical events are told through the eyes of a young person. Bryan is brilliant at making history accessible, understandable, but most of all alive and very engaging.

We spent a lovely morning going through my story. Bryan highlighted historical inaccuracies and was able to add detail that I would never have thought about. I realised how even the most careful of internet research can let you down - I'd spent ages trying to pin down what sort of helmet soldiers in 1917 would wear, and I'd confidently called it a Brodie. This was not only wrong, but the character in my story, at rest in a trench dugout, would in fact be wearing his balaclava not his helmet (which would more often than not be placed protectively in his lap during rest periods.) And who knew that shells make a noise like tearing fabric... I'd sort of assumed it would be a whistling sound. It's the kind of detail that begins to capture a visceral reality. Bryan was able to help me with so many detailed points from army commands to war time church etiquette.

We spoke about prescience, too; an uncanny and surprisingly common phenomenon where people going into battle often have a particular sense when they will not make it back and remark upon it.

Many thanks to Bryan, for being such a brilliant historical consultant, for sharing my excitement in the story and for the sort of attention to detail that I love. And to all experts who help us writers with getting the details right and keeping things authentic.

Beta-Life: Short Stories From an A-Life Future

At the moment I'm working on a story for the Comma Press Beta-Life project, in conjunction with TRUCE. I've been invited to do a short reading at Edinburgh Science Festival 2014. I will write more about the Beta-Life project, and how it works, soon.

For now, suffice to say I'm so delighted to be involved with this fascinating project. And it's a great privilege to be part of this Edinburgh Science Festival event with Comma Press editor Ra Page, Professor Martyn Amos and writer Robin Yassin-Kassab; all of whom I admire hugely.

If you find yourself in Edinburgh this April, do see the website for details of all the fantastic events happening over the course of the festival.

...from the master of suspense...

This week, I read this. It is trashy and brilliant and lush. It is the antidote to heavy high brow lit. Yet, because it's old (dated Feb 1973) and has Alfred Hitchcock's blessing, it feels vintage and worthwhile.

I bought this in a bookshop in Porto Alegre in Brazil when we travelled through a couple of years ago. It was a heady combination of an impulse purchase. I love Hitchcock, films, biog... all associated links, I was desperately thirsty for all/any reading material (I'd even sunk to the desperate depths of swapping a book I'd read for the only English title in a hostel in Sao Paulo; Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons which I destroyed after reading - horrible, hateful, lazily written, nasty, self-absorbed, sexist, vile novel that it is) And I have a massive crush on anything mid century.. so this just ticked a lot of boxes. I didn't actually get round to reading it all at the time (found a copy of brilliant Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible) - but managed to secret squirrel Hitch away in my rucksack and bring it back home where it belonged. It is pure pulp fiction. And I love it.