Wow, I have just finished reading ‘Taming the Beast’ by Emily Maguire. Emily was our tutor during the course The Year of The Novel and I had read her book ‘Fishing for Tigers’ just before starting the course, which was a very good read.

‘Taming the Beast’ is a powerful insight into human emotions, both good and bad and how young hearts and minds deprived of proper nurturing become stuck in a life long battle of obsession, addiction and a search for love?

I don’t know if it was the taboo content or the smooth writing style, Emily’s trademark, that made this book a one night read but I would highly recommend everyone to read it.

For her debut novel it packed a powerful punch despite, as Emily said herself, an incomplete edit (I couldn’t find any flaws).

Speaking of debut novels, I was reading the Curtis Brown blog and one of their literary agents, Karolina Sutton feels there has never been a better time to be a debut novelist or as she puts it,

‘Discovery rather than debut is the operative word. A voice or a story which plays with the zeitgeist – wherever they come from.’

So perhaps there is hope for all of us, as Richard Bach said;

‘A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.’