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We’re in what used to be East Berlin.

Tip: If there are trams, you’re probably in East Berlin.

East Berlin had trams. West Berlin ripped them up for being old-fashioned and stupid.

They’re regretting it now and want more, but trams still mostly don’t go further west than Hauptbahnhof (Main Station).

So if you’re on a tram, you’re probably in old East Berlin.

Seeing the most incredible things…

Taking the tram yesterday, we passed a big vet (animal doctor, not war hero), and the surgery windows were plastered with pictures of animals pimping the vet’s services.

Dogs saying, “I got chipped here!”

Cats saying, “My glands were expressed here!”

And a squirrel saying, “I was castrated here!”

A squirrel.

I mean, I can understand why the vet is proud of castrating a squirrel.

It can’t have been easy.

They’re famous for hiding their nuts.

But I’ve never heard of pet squirrels before.

And I refuse to believe people are castrating wild squirrels.

Nonetheless, this vet obviously understands there are enough people whizzing past on the tram outside his window for this service to be a money-maker.

Know your audience, I suppose.

I’m still only getting to know mine.

The only thing I know for sure is that my books aren’t for everyone.

If you’re not into something a little different, something a little strange, then you won’t like them.

And that’s fine.

I’d rather write books that thrill a few people than a bland book that everyone reads… and then forgets.

So, where else can you read about a man raising the dead with a parrot, other than in The Forgotten Creatures?

Get it here to learn why!

Chat soon!

Morgan

P.S. More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

George Orwell had blue spots or circles tattooed on each of his knuckles.

Probably done while he lived in Burma before becoming a writer.

Possibly the tattoos are the reason he became a writer.

“Writing can hardly be more painful than getting my knucks tatted,” he thought. “Let’s have at it!”

The poor fool.

Here’s the thing:

What makes tattoos difficult is that you get only one chance to do it right.

What makes writing difficult is that you get as many chances as you like.

Unless you’re under a strict deadline, you can spend the entire rest of your life trying to get it exactly right.

Douglas Adams’ publishers resorted to locking him into hotel rooms to get him to finish anything.

The writing is easy. It’s the rewriting until the right words are on the page that gets you.

Writing should be called “rewriting.”

Anything else is false advertising.

My first draft of The Cat Wore Black clocks in at 129,326 words. That’s 50,000 words too many.

And 100,000 of them are rubbish.

So now I start rewriting it until it’s as good as I can make it.

The main difficulty being that it’s hard to keep reading something and remain objective.

Unless you know my simple trick.

I often need to flick back and forth to check what I wrote somewhere else, so I don’t contradict myself. After the first draft, there are a lot of times when I skim the required chapter and think Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.

But sometimes I start reading…

And keep reading. Long after I found the thing I needed.

Because I’m enjoying it so much.

I’ll know the story is ready when there are no more yeah-yeah-yeah bits, only bits I’m happy to read again, despite having read them twenty times already

Obviously, it can take a while.

And the strain on the old grey matter is ferocious. One day, all this rewriting is going to push me over the edge.

So, wish me luck.

Or egg me on by buying my previous brush with madness.

I spent two full years writing The Squared Circle, available here now!

Morgan

P.S. More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

My two favourite things are music and books.

But I recently watched mclusky on KEXP and was blown away that some people can play music and sing at the same time.

I don’t have the concentration to listen to the music and the lyrics at the same time.

When I listen to music, I’m only listening to the music.

Of course, I like a lot of growly metal, where the vocals sound like the Cookie Monster trying to eat his way out of a quarry. Good luck with those lyrics, but still.

I’ve never been interested in what my favourite bands are singing about. I make up my own lyrics.

When I want words, I read a book.

But because books don’t have music to distract me, the words have to be good.

Especially when I’m the one writing them.

I don’t just want to tell a story.

I want to tell a story that sounds good in your ears.

(You hear the words in your head as you read, too, right?)

So for me, it’s always one or the other.

Words or music.

I’m not good at paying attention.

I’m your classic Bear Smuggler.

At Tbilisi Airport, there’s a “trophy case” of things customs have caught people smuggling.

Including a full bear pelt with the whole head.

It’s massive.

And I can only imagine it’s there because some poor guy was so distracted by the hectic beat of the airport dance:

Remember your flight number,

check you have your passport,

empty your pockets while taking off your belt,

check you have your passport,

fish out your laptop while drinking the rest of your water,

wonder where your passport went, you only put it down for one second

that he didn’t even hear them talking about bears.

“Don’t smuggle a bear out of Georgia!” they said.

But he, poor fool, heard “Don’t snuggle bare south of George, yeah?”

That could have been me!

Sometimes the words are important.

So I only worked with the best in The Squared Circle, available here now!

Chat soon!

Morgan

P.S. More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

You know those Bic four-colour pens?

A blue and white pen with four clicky buttons to choose black, blue, green, or red ink?

They’re still around, and Bic is still selling millions.

Back in the day, they were a minor status symbol in school. Either you were one of the cool kids with a Bic 4 Colour, or you were a lug. Unable to attend parties and other social occasions because you were too busy hauling four separate pens around.

I want one.

I still want one.

I hadn’t thought about them in years before internet research dangled one under my nose, and I’m only slightly exaggerating when I say I can’t think about anything else.

You remember them, right?

That strange click when the chosen colour clicked into place.

Do you remember that the top of the pen was a ball?

They added that for dialling rotary telephones, and it’s the only bit of the pen that’s changed in all these years. They replaced the ball with a hole for a lanyard.

Here’s something you already know:

Those pens would never win style awards.

But when you’ve got a Bic 4 colour, people are aware.

Those pens have character.

What writers call “voice.”

For me, that’s the most important part of a story.

If I don’t like the “voice” – the way the writer writes – then I can’t read the book.

And if I love the book, I don’t care what it’s about.

I just want to hear the story.

And I like to think my writing has a pretty unique voice.

You might not like my books.*

You might say they’re badly written.**

But you won’t mix them up with anybody else’s books.

Even though mix-ups are a huge part of the reason Professor de Glube and Mrs Sniffacre find it so difficult to get together in The Squared Circle, available here now!

Chat soon,

Morgan

P.S. More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

*Help me out. Buy them anyway.

**They’re not. Even the mistakes are deliberate, probably.

Terry Pratchett taught me that names have power. In doing so, he put me right off a lot of fantasy.

Specifically, high or epic fantasy.

Because I can’t stand the names.

You know, like K’rniluf the Doomswerver.

If I’m reading a book with a name like that, I’ll look at it once and never read it again. I’ll just skim it, relying on the shape of the word to get me through.

Part of it is laziness.

How do you pronounce K’rniluf? And why do I have to work it out, when the author couldn’t be bothered?

(I would guess it’s pronounced “Korny-love”, but could be wrong.)

And although the author must have thought it looked cool, it’s just a muffled wet sneeze to me.

But the main reason I dislike those names is the lack of history in it.

Every Smith you meet is (at least historically) descended from an actual smith.

The same for Carters, and Wrights and Baileys, and so on.

One occupation sadly missing from the list is Taxi-dancer.

These weren’t people who danced in – or with – taxis.

They were mostly women who charged per song when men wanted to dance with them.

Big at the beginning of the twentieth century, when they emerged around San Francisco’s Terrific Street (and isn’t that a terrific name), there aren’t many now.

So you’re as likely to meet a John Taxi-dancer as a Billy the Doomswerver.

The point being, I feel strongly about getting names right, and put a lot of effort into finding the right ones for my characters. Names are descriptions.

Take the Reverend Gresstart, for example. I spent ages looking for the right combination of syllables. The petulant, sniffy “Gress-“ and the fussy, old-fashioned “-tart.” Together hinting at a previously well-to-do family, now somewhat come down in the world.

That’s what I think, anyway.

Make up your own mind by reading The Squared Circle here now.

Chat soon,

Morgan

P.S. More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter

Have you ever thought about mind control?

Because this week I realised I have none.

As Georgia prepares to leave spring behind, we’ve had huge changes in the weather from day to day.

Which means migraine headaches for Morgan. On Thursday, they were terrible. Because I got them at night, and my mind, it seems, couldn’t get enough of them.

I spent most of the night in a doze, at the mercy of my own mind.

Here’s a reconstruction of the crime scene:

Let’s say I was dreaming a duck was hammering railway spikes into my brain.

I’d start to drift awake to go get a paracetamol.

So, to stop me getting a paracetamol, my mind would change the dream so the duck was hammering melted chocolate into my brain. Softer, you see?

To make me think the pain wasn’t as bad, and my gullible brain would drift off again.

But the pain wasn’t getting better. So I’d start dreaming that Einstein was throwing encyclopaedias at my head.

Start to wake.

My mind would tell Einstein to throw triple-ply toilet paper at my head. Toilet paper is softer than encyclopaedias, so they tell me.

Drift off to sleep again.

Start to wake, etc.

So I have to wonder why?

Sheer masochism? Or does my brain work for someone else?

Who?

That’s what the people of Hawkinge-By-Hythe want to know when the town’s statues start sneaking about on some mysterious mission of their own.

Who’s behind it all?

You can find out The Squared Circle!

And there’s never been a better time to buy. That good news I teased? I’ve dropped the price of The Squared Circle from 4.99 to only 3.99!

​Get it now, before I change this damn mind of mine…

Chat soon,

Morgan

P.S. More Morgan? Get 2 of my books free here: morgandelaney.info/newsletter