Gillian Philip

  You made it here! Welcome to Very Bad Wolf, and to the UKYA Easter Egg Hunt. I’m Gillian Philip (in case you haven’t met me before) and I write… well, a whole lot of things, but my books include fantasy (the Rebel Angels series), dystopian fiction (Bad Faith), contemporary crime (Crossing the Line, The …continue reading.

Hey, I thought it was supposed to rain all the time in Seattle! You know, with all the sparkly vampires and everything… But the Cullens must have been in hiding for my visit, because the sun was out and shining the whole time. I reckon you’re kidding me about the grey skies 😉 My first …continue reading.

  Yet more unexpected weather conditions in Portland, Oregon – it was gorgeously sunny and warm! The plane there was packed, and I’m not surprised – I loved Portland. I only knew it before from the series Grimm, and I remember reading that the producers chose the city for its fairy tale atmosphere. They were …continue reading.

  Well, I thought I was heading for more snow when I set off for Boulder, Colorado, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I arrived at night but by the time I woke up in the morning, the sun was high and the air was warm and people were already basking in t-shirts on …continue reading.

I just knew I was going to enjoy Dayton, Ohio – I had such a terrific time when I visited Cincinnati a few years ago (for Survivors 1: The Empty City – it seems like yesterday). So it was fabulous to meet my lovely media escort Annette, who used to work at the amazing Joseph-Beth …continue reading.

The Storm of Dogs Tour has well and truly started. I flew into Boston on Sunday! I’m writing this with an exclamation mark because – Boston! On Sunday! My flight was (of course) cancelled due to the incredible amounts of snow, but the brilliant Olivia at Harper Collins arranged for me to take a train …continue reading.

I can hardly believe it’s been a year since my last Survivors tour, for The Broken Path – and that the Storm Of Dogs Tour is right around the corner. Tomorrow (Sunday) I’ll be flying out to Alexandria, Virginia – and I can’t wait! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I …continue reading.

Dear Digifest organisers, Yesterday I flew home to the north of Scotland with two devastated teenagers. Oh, it could have been worse, and I was shaking more with relief than with anger as I boarded the plane. But I’ll get to that part later. I can’t begin to describe how excited my daughter and her …continue reading.

These are always fun (except when I realise just how organised other writers are). The reason blog-tag-tours are kinda interesting is because you find yourself having to examine something you take for granted in your day-to-day writing life. In this case, we’re invited to answer four awkward questions about how we write – and then …continue reading.

[This is an article I originally wrote for the newsletter of the Society of Authors in Scotland. When I brought up this subject at a committee meeting of the SOAIS, it turned out we were all concerned about the tendency of both authors and publishers to view the editing process as some kind of “optional …continue reading.

Fezzes are cool. Bowties are cool. But it was not always so. Last century (I don’t know if I love saying that, or hate it) I was just a young Jedi, hanging out at the Science Fiction Bookshop on West Crosscauseway with the other deeply uncool geeks. So I wrote about those days, here, over …continue reading.

I wrestled for a long time with the points of view in Bloodstone. Characters changed from first to third person with every rewrite, and the viewpoints themselves were not always easy to choose. Some of them even altered between the first edition (UK) and the second (US). When the Little Red Reviewer asked me to …continue reading.

Thanks to the gorgeous people at Tor Publishing, I had a chance to do some rewrites on BLOODSTONE before its publication in the US (today! The 19th!). One thing I wanted to do was take Seth to a war zone (how unlike him, I hear you say) to see him encounter a certain character – …continue reading.

A big thank you to the lovely Julia Williams, who tagged me in this meme. Some wonderful writers have been answering the questions, then tagging others… check out the bottom of this post for my tagged authors, who all come highly recommended. What is the working title of your book? The working title has been …continue reading.

Don’t hate me, don’t. Because I didn’t hate this movie; actually I liked it a lot. It’s just that I wanted to love it so much more. I saw the first trailer for BRAVE – well, it feels like years ago, but Google wants me to believe it can only have been in summer 2011. …continue reading.

  No, it’s not a spelling error. It’s a DELIBERATE VERB, I tell you. Because it does. The clink of teacups, the wind in the trees, the scrape and clash of sword blades. A book without them would be like a silent movie, but without even the piano soundtrack. The thing is, though, I want …continue reading.

I’m not a plotter. I’m a pants-er. I didn’t even know these terms existed till recently, but I did find out (belatedly) that there are two kinds of writer in the world: the kind that plot in beautiful detail and the kind that open a document, plunge in and hope for the best. (That second …continue reading.

  I don’t quite trust myself to update this blog as regularly as I should; I’d better say that upfront. I’ve kept meaning to start a blog of my own. It’s just that I kept worrying that I wouldn’t be able to think of anything to blog about. And then I considered my Twitter account and my Facebook …continue reading.