Nice news to wake up to: Cinnamon Press has accepted my flash story, Straight Up, for their microfiction anthology. This same story was the European winner of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association's short story comp last year (you can listen to it here), and was just commended in Aesthetica magazine's's Creative Works comp.


It's always funny/weird to win something, to in some way "beat" other writers - a horrible attitude, I don't think that way - ....

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I have never read a book about creativity by a non-writer, so renowned dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit was a real revelation to me. So refreshing to hear from someone who deals in something other than words - an artist in her 60s who has choreographed over 150 dances - and to see so clearly how I can learn from her in terms of setting myself up to be creative on a daily basis, something I sorely need. It has been years since I was last in that kind of routine - not since my MA in Creative Writing. I just haven't managed, as a writer of short and very short stories, to set myself up properly, and as a result I feel highly unproductive, uncreative, dissatisfied..........

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By yet another of the coincidences that have happened since I arrrived in Spain, Carrie´s 'host' English teacher , Belen, has a connection with me. We´d never met, but we´ve exchanged homes.

For some years Roy and I did home-swaps via an Internet company, and once went to stay in Salamanca for a week. By chance,Belen saw my name on an email I sent to Carrie and said ´I know that person´.



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The e-book remained something of an enigma to me, until recently. I decided it was time to ask Santa for one. So I wrote my note and posted it to the North Pole, and made a mental note to leave a glass of milk for the thirsty reindeers for their festive visit to number fifteen.

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Strictly Writing had an interview with Gavin James Bower recently. If you left a comment you could win a copy of his book, Dazed and Aroused. I was the lucky recipient!

Here is the blurb from Bower's novel:

Dazed & Aroused
Gavin James Bower
For six hectic months, season to season in the High Fashion calendar, twenty-something male model Alex hurtles between London, Paris and Milan, absorbed in the ruthless world of the catwalk. His long-term girlfriend, Nathalie, is desperate to rekindle their love; his oldest friend, Hugo, though regarding Alex’s so-called career as frivolous, continues to urge fidelity; while his father, reduced to a voice on an answer machine, nevertheless persists in seeking his estranged son’s approval. As his stock as a model soars, Alex is increasingly drawn into a world of predatory sex, drug-induced infatuation and a growing bewilderment with the alluring, seductive shallowness of all he sees around him. The centre cannot hold ...

The novel is based on Bower's own experiences as a model. He has also worked as a journalist, and a screenplay and second novel are in the works. As I am guessing he is still only in his mid-to-late twenties he is only just getting going.
Watch out for this one!

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Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 Aesthetica Creative Works Competition: Shadric Toop (Artwork), Louise Beech (Fiction) and Sally Spedding (Poetry). They will be published in the Creative Works Annual, available in Borders (and, I hope, elsewhere given the bad news about Borders that broke this week).

I was lucky enough to receive a Commendation for my entry. The editors sent a lovely email: "Your work was highly commended by the judges. This year we have done something new in the Annual, and created a Commendations List. Your name and the title of your piece The Pheasant Feather Hat are listed on this page. There were only 50 commendations per section, so this is a great honour."


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The next installment in the series of interviews with writers about giving up their day jobs features Nik Perring. Nik is the author of I Met a Roman Last Night, What Did You Do? which can be bought from all good book shops as well as from Nik’s website . Incidentally, Nik says if any of my readers contact him via his website, quoting my blog, he’ll send them a signed copy of his book for £4.50 (UK only). He also writes short stories, many of which can be found on his own blog.

MT: Hi Nik. What day jobs have you done?

NP: I delivered the Manchester Evening News and two huge and very heavy bags of Sunday papers when I was at school.
I’ve worked at a couple of places as a waiter.
I helped out at a solicitor’s office.
And the last proper job I had was working for a VW franchise as an Account Manager (I sold cars.)

MT: Anything in those day jobs that has inspired your writing?

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The ever-admirable Litlove, of Tales from the Reading Room, asked me this in the comments on the differently fascinating Dirty Sparkle blog:

As a writer you've had a great deal of external validation for your work, more than most writers are fortunate enough to have. How will you feel when you get some really stinking reviews? I mean,I hope it never ever happens, but you're going to have to have some solid core of trust in your own work to withstand that, and it can only be developed (I would think) by committing in the act of writing to doing what pleases you first, and others as a delightful second.

It's certainly true that I've been very lucky with the quantity and quality of external validation, from the wholly commercial, such as Headline Review taking the front and inside front cover of The Bookseller to advertise The Mathematics of Love to the trade, to some terrific print and blog reviews (not excepting Litlove's own for The Mathematics of Love). But I've had some very curate's-eggy ones in print, and some pretty rude reviews on the blogs too, not to mention passing comments: the one-star ones for A Secret Alchemy on Amazon give you the idea. No doubt some day, and probably soon, the print reviewers and the well-respected bloggers will read something of mine which they hate, and make no bones about saying so. After all, there's very little point in publishing a really bad review of a debut novel by an unknown, but once an author's an existing, if tiny, plant in the book world, they're fair game.

So, how do you cope? How do I cope? With the proviso that I may well rescind all this when a respected reviewer explains, in detail, in public, just why a book of mine is so very bad, here are some thoughts, in no particular order.

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Lidia plays the violincello, as it´s called here. Last week she took the 'cello to the school. The children were still enthusiastic following the visit to a special concert in Vallalodid, so she wanted them to see the 'cello close up. She was feeling nervous about it, though. ´Did they damage it?´I asked her on the way home. No, she said, but she´d misjudged the width of a doorway and managed to break a string all by herself!


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