Here’s something I’m not meant to tell you: my first novel, The Last Treasure Hunt, isn’t really my first novel. It’s my debut – but it’s not the first book I wrote. Though it’s rarely acknowledged, there’s nothing unusual in this: a 2010 survey found that the average number of novels an author writes before being published is between three and four. These ‘practice novels’ are sometimes published later on in an author’s career, but more commonly they’re relegated to a dusty box-file or a forgotten Word document…

I wrote this post on developing storytelling skills as a guest blog for for Literascribe – head over there to read the rest.