So my second book, A GIRL LIKE YOU, is coming out in a few weeks. Naturally I feel sick about it. This time last year I was in exactly the same state with THE DATING DETOX, which came out exactly the same week. My brain goes something like this: oo, book coming out soon. Goodygumdro…. [...]

I have my first ever photoshoot on Tuesday. What the sweet hell am I going to wear? It’s for the cover of North East magazine, a deliciously glossy London magazine for all the delightful people who live in Primrose Hill (where my soon-to-launch novel, A GIRL LIKE YOU, is set), Hampstead, Belsize Park, and so [...]

I just remembered Judy Blume. ‘Good Lord!’ I thought (I often start thoughts with little exclamations like that), ‘How could I have not thought about her for so long? I was obsessed with her books…’ And then I thought: ‘why, I wonder how her covers have changed over the years?’ Man, did I find some [...]

This morning I woke up early, read some of the delicious THE HATING GAME by Talli Roland, then lost Stone-Paper-Scissors with Fox and was forced to tramp down to the Coffee Plant on Portobello. And now, as I am back in bed slurping in a deliberately-annoying-but-hopefully-endearing way, all I can think is ‘this is the [...]

I’ve been thinking about dialogue. I really LOVE writing dialogue. If I ever feel stuck, I just start writing conversations between my characters. It’s like a creative enema: it unblocks everything. I love working out how characters speak; their attitude and humour and syntax and slang; how the structure of a sentence can change the [...]

I’m back from a break with Fox (aka my husband) in New York and Turks & Caicos. It was [insert your favourite positive superlative HERE], particularly since we haven’t spent more than three nights in a row together since we got married in April (he’s been working in Zurich from Monday to Friday, and I’m [...]

Seems silly to call it a ‘newsletter’ when I’m not a big company, I’m just me. But, whatever you want to call it: I send an email out about once a month, and here’s the latest. Want to get the next email? Just email gemma@gemmaburgess.com and put ‘Email me!’ in the title.Why, hello. I think [...]

I don’t post about books that often, for many reasons. There are much better book reviewers than me in the blogiverse, I read purely for pleasure and it would feel like a job if I reviewed them, and um, I’m lazy.But sometimes I read a book that makes me want to lie in bed and [...]