It’s always a pleasure to have visitors, so today I’m excited to introduce a friend and fellow Booktrope author, February Grace, talking about her new novel, Wishing Cross Station.

The Story Only I Could Tell

When Jonathan asked me to write a post about what makes my writing stand out—what makes it different or unique—I stared into my coffee cup for some time; watching the powdered creamer swirl in it, making all sorts of fantastical imaginary shapes… is that a unicorn I see?

Maybe it was the caffeine talking.

Or maybe I was just procrastinating.

This is going to be a tough post for me to write.

In fact, of all the guest posts that I have been graciously invited to write this month, this one might be the most difficult of all.

Why?

Okay, time to buckle down and churn out another deeply riveting blog post. I have to admit it’s always a bit of a challenge coming up with something fresh to say. Makes the old brain strain a little and puts a bit of sweat on my brow. Makes my face frown and grimace with the stress of it all.

Mind you, you’d expect that to be pretty much par for the course for we writers. After all, we’re a pretty grim bunch aren’t we. Dressed in gloomy black, we huddle in cafes, sipping black coffee and taking on all the ills of the world.

I think I’ve mentioned before how I have emerged from a scientific background (I even have a science degree to prove it). While my life seems to have come a long way from there, there are times when I still like to apply scientific principles to the things I do. And one of the major things that I do (of course) is writing, so that’s where I’m most likely to try and follow some sort of scientific method.

We all have our heroes, and in the world of science, one of my heroes is Charles Darwin. I can’t think of any scientist at any time who changed the world as much as Darwin did. With his theories of evolution and natural selection, he revolutionised the way we think about the natural world, and our place within it.

One of the things I enjoy most about being a writer is the sheer joy of making things up.

I love to close my eyes and imagine the world in ways that it’s never actually been. I love to invent and create and come up with all kinds of things that nobody’s ever thought of before. I like to think that reality is no barrier, and that I’m free to redefine it in whichever way I choose.

Something hit me the other day.

I was trawling my brain to come up with an idea for something wise and witty (or maybe even both) to throw out on Twitter – another example of the Champagne Twitter I talked about last week. One of the ideas I had was that through my writing I felt like I’d made a mark, albeit a rather odd-shaped mark, on the world.

So I chucked it out onto the heaving mass of Twitter. I few people saw it. Some actually favourited it. I might even have gotten one or two retweets. Can’t really ask for much more as far as Twitter is concerned.