My daughter Lilian is a dancer. She’s curious about the human soul, insightful and intelligent. But she doesn’t read books. It’s a bit heartbreaking, and believe me, is not for want of me being encouraging/nagging/moderately unhinged about it. She is mildly dyslexic, primarily affecting the way she is able to deal with large blocks of... Continue Reading →
Ducks, Drones and Doctor Faustus
(That time I invited Sleep, Thomas Mann, Lucy Ellmann and John Milton to the same blog post and we all hung out. Heaven.) When starting my current book Salt Lick, the inclusion of a chorus was one of the first decisions I made, though it took a while to learn that it would come from... Continue Reading →
#MyDayInBooks – 13/08/19 in six books
Book 1, Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellmann Before I got up I read pages 803 - 856 of Ducks, Newburyport. This is such a wonderful book. A place to be both lost and adrift in sweet recognition. I felt so much for teenager Stacy, her clumsy, scary courage, her sullen and awkward groping for her adult... Continue Reading →
Down With Striving (I’m heading upstream)
New marketing strategies for old With drawings done by mouse as my tablet and stylus is not working. An enjoyably (for me) crude way of working! I am in the process of developing a radical new book marketing strategy. It’s so radical it doesn’t involve any book marketing at all. It goes something like this: ... Continue Reading →
See What I See?
Poetry, Visual Art and the Good Intentions of a New Year January and February feel like the lowest ebb of the year and thus the worst time to engage with a new project. It is a time for sloping about, perhaps ravelling in the tail ends of the old year. The part of the... Continue Reading →
#MyDayInBooks Part 2
23/10/18 in seven books Book 1 Today I ordered a copy of Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo. The Emperor’s Babe by the same author is in my top ten - beautiful, compelling, the language is a magnificent dream, and Zuleika is one of the best characters I know. Lover Man is more recent. I also... Continue Reading →
#MyDayInBooks part 1
10/10/18 in 5 books Today is a day when many interesting books have crossed paths, and I thought I would share them. Book 1: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly In the early hours, long after I had hoped to go to sleep, utterly gripped, I finished reading Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile. I was... Continue Reading →
Sour Fruit by Eli Allison – review
I'm very happy to review Sour Fruit the debut novel by fellow Unbound author Eli Allison. Here is the blurb: Onion is snatched. Which is proper shit because she still had nearly twenty quid left on her Angry Slut Teen Clothing gift card and now she was never going to get those flamingo-pink leather chaps she’d been eyeing... Continue Reading →
Come and meet my new book
I have just finished my second book. A well sifted draft. Parts have been ditched, pinched, pulled, turned around, thrown about, discarded and re-written and I think I am happy with it. I am deciding what to do about it, where to try and find a publishing home, and I will take a little break... Continue Reading →
