James mentioned having title fomo with regards to the ten finalists which got me thinking about the importance of titles. Sometimes simplicity speaks volumes such as Lolita, Rebecca, Night, 1984, Dune and Stoner. The wonderful Mr King is particularly adept at minimal word titles; It, Misery, Cujo, Carrie and Christine to name just a few. The job of a title is to arouse intrigue and an excellent title will lodge in your memory. So many times I've wanted to recommend a book and I've faltered because I couldn't remember the title. Some of my favourites: The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller. Some of the best titles almost didn't happen, for example 'Gone With The Wind' was almost titled 'Tote The Weary Load' (I kid you not) and 'The Sound and the Fury' was almost called 'Twilight'. What are some of your favourites?

Having lost most of my body weight in sweat I started thinking about the effect weather has on characters and mood. There is a wonderful term for this, Pathetic Fallacy, which basically means the mood of a character or the tone of a scene can be beautifully captured when human emotions are ascribed to weather and seasons. Poets love using this method but authors can also benefit. I'd love to know if anyone has any examples of this or books where weather and seasons are masterfully described and crafted. I think Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath describes the dust bowl so well its advisable to have a cool glass of water on standby before reading. Mary Shelly also utilises the environment beautifully by presenting humanities coldness in scenes set in the artic.

I've no doubt that each of us here has varied reading tastes and habits so feel free to answer in broad or general terms. Do you happen to read/write the same genre or do you create and consume stories in different spaces? If the latter is true, what elements of your recreational reading influence you in your writing?

Hi all, just wanted to post a nudge that the Cheshire Novel prize is upcoming and closing for entries on the 1st of July. It costs £29 ($38 ISH) and every entry receives feedback. If last year is anything to go by they also run a lot of social media, sharing snippets of people's books and getting discussion going.

We had over 540 entries this year. Quite a small number were highly commended, and those who will be sent to the critics and win will be selected from this list. Around 250 entrants were commended. A commended list of that size can look surprising at first glance, so it's worth explaining how it's arrived at. Every entry was read blind — judges had no idea whose work they were assessing — and scored against a fixed editorial rubric set before reading began. This involved meeting a basic standard of literacy and originality and then being marked on characterisation, use of language and making the reader want to read on. Commended isn't a capped list or a quota handed out so that everyone goes home happy. It's the mark for work that genuinely cleared a real editorial bar. The reason the list is substantial is simply that the standard of entry this year was high, and a great many writers met it. That's a fact about the quality of the field, not a softening of the standard. Being commended is a real achievement. Feedback, for what it's worth, is entirely optional and quite separate from the result — it exists because writers asked for it, and it has no bearing whatsoever on whether a piece was commended.