Andrea Montgomery's Blog: Andrea Montgomery's Blog

T he Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern opens a world of magic, illusion, rivalry and love into which you gratefully slide, happy to be enfolded in its fantastical embrace.

I do my reading at the end of a working day. I sit down in my big, comfy, red armchair, open a book, and lose myself in its pages. Inevitably, at some point my eyes will start to droop and I’ll nod off, seamlessly blending the book’s narrative into my dream. With The Night Circus, when I came round and resum...

O lder learners are slower to learn but retain their learning more effectively.

That was what I was told in my ITTM (Instructional Techniques & Training Methods) course when I was promoted to Regional Staff Trainer for the Department of Employment (now the Department of Work & Pensions) way back in the 1980s.

And on the whole, I found that to be true, although it didn’t take into account the impatience and sometimes derision of younger learners who were being forced to learn ...

T he arguments for self-publishing vs partnership publishing, and indeed traditional publishing, have been raging for many years now. The topic was a prominent feature of the London Festival of Writing which Jack and I attended this summer, and it’s a decision that looms constantly for anyone hoping to publish a book.

I have been talking about self-publishing vs partnership publishing for The Banana Road for the past couple of months and yesterday afternoon I had an email fr...

F or me, maintaining my writing discipline goes (literally) out the window when the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the air temperature rises.

Consequently, given the glorious summer that we’re still enjoying, my writing has not so much stalled, as ground to a halt. And just as it was about to cross the finishing line in what I hoped would be a blaze of glory but was probably destined to be more like a quiet flicker of satisfaction.

I cannot believe I’m saying this but,...

I  first encountered visioning back in December 1997 in another life.

I attended a 2-day workshop led by Jack Black, the motivational speaker and founder of Mindstore, who has coached over half the FTSE 100 companies. Jack Black claims his techniques:

‘improve mental wellbeing, taking you to a new place where anything and everything can be considered possible.’

The workshop I attended was being run by Rolls Royce in Crewe for their workforce. As a business consultant work...

L ady MacBethad by Isabelle Schuler, was adapted from a screenplay written by the author, into her debut novel. Unlike Lady MacBethad’s illustrious eponymous forerunner, I imagine very few people (me included) are even aware that she actually existed. Women’s histories have tended to be overlooked by male-dominated historians and chroniclers for centuries, and it’s both fascinating and gratifying to see the current trend reversing that situation.

Coupled with the mysticism an...

The opportunity to have two 10-minute interviews with literary agents about our current W.I.P (work-in-progress) was undoubtably one of the most exciting parts of the London Festival of Writing which Jack and I attended at the end of June.

There were ten literary agents attending the festival and 320 writers, all seeking 10-minute slots with them. Appointments filled up fast.

My natural inclination was to choose agents who had a particular ...

Having spent the weekend at the London Festival of Writing, Jack and I returned on Sunday evening, exhausted and with heads ready to explode with all we had seen, heard and read.

Now it’s time to reflect on what lessons I took away from the weekend.

The weekend was organised and staged by Jericho Writers, the online writer’s support group, and was attended by some 320 writers from across the globe (we sat next to the delightful Ramona from Oklahoma...

Over the past few weeks I have been preparing for meeting a literary agent but realistically, what can I possibly hope to achieve in a ten-minute meeting with a total stranger who just happens to be highly influential in the elite world into which I am endeavouring to find a foothold?

In speed dating terms (Google AI tells me) ten minutes is two to four minutes longer than the time you’re allotted to decide if you want to see someone again. But there’s a high element of attra...

There’s an Italian saying: See Naples and die. After driving in Naples, that idiom has a whole new meaning.

A tour of Italian gardens had been on the cards since 2020, but as our departure date drew near, so too did word of a highly contagious disease that was spreading through Italy. The pandemic arrived; the holiday was cancelled, and we’d been threatening to rebook ever since.

A couple of weeks ago, we finally flew into Naples (Napoli) for the first leg of...