Let's not dwell on the heat, which is all-consuming, distracting... oops, there I am dwelling. No, it is just here, it is only heat. Enough.

The niceness of the day is summed up by both a lovely new review on my Amazon UK page and by the astonishing fact that I sent three flash stories and a poem to a lit zine yesterday and they'd like to publish all of them! Well, very nice. Will post the links as they happen.

Third nicety is the discovery that the great and wondrous Margaret Atwood is coming to speak in Bristol, our soon-to-be new hometown, so tickets have been booked for that, how thrilling. Very very few of those sorts of names come through Jerusalem, be they writers, artists, musicians, and there is always a big hoo-ha when they do. I am looking forward to being in a place where these kinds of events happen more than once every few years. Where I might actually participate in something, too. Not with Ms A of course, although I have been invited to the 11th Conference on the Short Story in Toronto next June (can I plan that far in advance??) and she is scheduled to be there too, with some other wonderful names, so, well, there you are.

I haven't done any writing today, but writing-related things. ...

Read Full Post

Do you keep a writing journal? Or are you more a ‘morning pages’ sort of person? For anyone who doesn’t know, morning pages were the brainchild of Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way. The idea is that you take time every day – preferably first thing in the morning – to write anything that comes into your mind. You do it in longhand and don’t show anyone what you’ve written. This way you allow your brain to spout any old nonsense it feels like and in the process [the thinking goes] it frees up your creativity.
My mornings are more about wrestling boys into school uniforms and stopping them from killing each other over the Weetos than sitting at my window and writing in my beautiful leather journal [if I even had such a thing]. Plus, I can barely handwrite a shopping list these days. But I like the principle.

Read Full Post

I'm really pleased to be able to interview another writer I admire a great deal here on the blog. This time it's the brilliant Niki Aguirre, author of the equally brilliant 29 Ways to Drown.


So. Niki Aguirre, what is 29 Ways to Drown?

29 Ways is my first collection of stories published in late 2007 by Flipped Eye Publishing. It took me roughly a year and a half to complete. I started writing some of the stories while I was doing my MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck.



What was the first story you had published?

I was seven when I wrote my first book - a stapled mess of construction paper on which I scribbled poems, stories and stick people drawings. I made it for my grandfather who was in hospital. I think it was called something like 'Why God doesn't want you in heaven.' He thought it was the most hilarious thing ever and showed it to all his nurses and visitors. I only wish the book was meant to be funny. I was so traumastised, I didn’t publish anything again until university. My poetry workshop took me seriously and never laughed at my poems. Come to think of it, those guys never laughed at anything.


Read Full Post

'I have people queueing for returns in the shopping centre', said the box office assistant, waving towards exit right.

I don't know the form at the Donmar, not having been before. It's a victim of its own success, going by the attitude. 'Oh, how will I know if there are any returns?' Cold stare, then, 'We'll come and tell you'.

Welcome back to London, Sheila.



Read Full Post

I’m suffering. From acute PSM. No, that’s not a typo. I do mean PSM not PMS, though PSM does share similar symptoms to those of that other well known nasty acronym. For example, at the moment, my mood swings vary from elation to manic panic. Elation, when I manage to convince myself I’ve written the best novel possible and then immediate manic panic when the word ‘deluded’ comes to mind and I think of what must come next. I’m mildly irritable and want chocolate. I have stomach cramps. My long suffering husband can see my red aura of oversensitivity and knows not to offer an opinion, unless I ask for one.

For those of you who are afflicted by this debilitating condition, don’t despair – it’s actually a common condition, almost exclusive to the male and female writing fraternity.


Read Full Post

It was not a great day. It started off hot, like all the other days recently. And the forecast says only: "Hotter than average", and "getting hotter." Outside is doing its impression of an oven. Dazzling sunlight. Not conducive to work. Not conducive to focus. So... after dealing with bureaucracy, trying to phone, trying to get people to reply, I retired to my cellar. But still, despite the several-degree-temp-drop, I still couldn't get down to anything.

Faffing ensued. Much faffing (phaphing?). I assembled some prompts for myself, odd phrases from poems and things like that, to kick start me. But - nothing. Just frustration. More Facebook, more online scrabble. And much, much less writing.

Ok, I decided to abandon it all and watch an episode of Eureka, a wonderfully odd sort of sci-fi series from the US. ...

Read Full Post

The second most frequent question I get asked about Kill-Grief (after “how long did it take to write?”) is “Did you have to do a lot of research?” Sometimes people say this in a tone of voice that implies research is a right pain, and poor brave historical novelists somehow manage to slog through the nuisance of it as a means to an end.

But this suggests that research is all school-like note-taking in chilly libraries. It isn’t – a lot of the time it means going to exciting places, which is what I did on Saturday when I visited Wilton’s Music Hall in London’s East End...


Read Full Post