Author

Joseph Delaney

I was inspired by Tolkien and wanted to write like him. I failed miserably and lost count of the many […]

Source of Inspiration

What Shapes the Writing of a Book? My Spook’s books are shaped by many things. Firstly, there is the original […]

Location

The Haunted House The Spook takes all his apprentices to a haunted house in Horshaw and tells them to go […]

Writing Process

I am often asked about my writing process. What routines and rituals do I have? I was once asked if […]

My Biography

For years, I wanted to be a writer but from about 1990, when I was first taken on by my […]

School Visits

This is what one Librarian had to say after a visit from Joseph: “The visit was a huge success and […]

If you want to be a writer, keep a notebook. You need to jot down every idea for a story that comes into your head. Don’t think to censor your ideas either! The idea is new and you are too close to it to judge its value. Ten years later it may strike you in a totally different way. I estimate that out of every thirty ideas I jotted down into my notebooks, twenty-nine proved to be worthless. The thirtieth had the potential to be developed into a novel or short story. The bad news was that quite often I found out that somebody had written something similar already!