We reject a lot of manuscripts. We’re bound to: we’re a small publisher with an open submissions policy, and we publish far fewer books each year than are submitted. I want to share with you why we make offers on the ones we do, why we reject the others, and why you should be glad to be rejected, some of the time.

First up: even if your book is brilliant, it may not fit with a publisher’s objectives. If you have written a novel which is destined in the future to win the Booker, chances are that we at Snowbooks will reject you. We have an editorial policy driven primarily by our own entirely subjective tastes, combined with a forecast of what we think we can sell. Since we have collectively loathed most winners of the Booker for the last decade it’s unlikely that an excellent example of modern fiction will find a home on our list – regardless of whether other people would appreciate it or how many prizes it has a chance of winning. And if you’ve written something which is breathtaking in its mould-breaking originality, we’re unlikely to go for it, despite its genius. We are interested in books which we can sell – and, without huge budgets to break a new genre into the market, this often means books which are easily defined.


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How great is it when a friend gives you a copy of a book they love and want you to read? This morning I was delighted to receive Welding with Children by Tim Gautreaux, sent by my friend Lisa in the US. I had sent her a signed copy of The White Road & Other Stories, and instead of payment asked if she'd send me a book she loves. This is what she chose. I'd read the title story a few years ago in a short story workshop and been blown away. I am so thrilled to have the book! I get sent review copies all the time, I occasionally buy short story collections myself, but to have a recommendation turn up in my mailbox is the ultimate pleasure.

I will savour it - I have a lot of reading time on my hands now, J has just gone away and I'll be alone for the better (or worse) part of two months. I am open to any other amusements...

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It all made me want to rush off to Italy – or to Preston.


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Maybe it's an occupational hazard, or maybe it's because I'm becoming a monomaniac, but I've got to the point where I'm so sodden with what I do and think about, that almost anything that ordinary, boring life throws at me seems to connect with writing. This time it was sitting in the doctor's waiting room. Never mind the embarrassingly compelling agony column in a year-old copy of Women's Weekly (always good for sparking off some 'what if?' ideas for stories), or eavesdropping on the other patients (we do still have a National Health Service, and my parliamentary constituency is one of the most marginal in said nation, so you can imagine how wide the social profile is in the waiting room). On the table I spotted a special issue magazine of a Dutch newspaper: it's all in English (except for the advertisements paying the rent), it's beautifully produced, and from top to bottom it's about Rembrandt.

In another life I would have been an art historian or a photographer, and I find analogies between different arts endlessly fascinating, as anyone reading The Mathematics of Love or A Secret Alchemy will realise. Such analogies are also endlessly revealing about my chosen craft (which may be why they end up in my fiction). And among lots of other things in this magazine (okay, I confess, I decided that there were plenty of other mags on the table for everyone else...), I found the following:



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And then a little beam from the patiently orbiting star ship lateral thinking struck me. I wandered into the kitchen, picked up the long serrated bread knife and set about slicing through the cylinder of turf as if it was a giant Swiss roll but made with soil and grass rather than chocolate sponge and jam. Perfect.


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According to the instructions on the pack, today is the day I need to start ovulation testing.

I am not the sort of woman who takes tests lightly. I prefer to pass them with flying colours.

I shut myself in the bathroom and stare at this odd plastic stick I am expected to - well, to pee on. What I am aiming for is two dark purple lines. That's it. That's the pass mark, the A*, the badge that will allow me to take my place amongst the creme de la creme of fertile ladies.

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I'm proud of my heritage. Many great writers have emerged from both Northern Ireland and the Republic over the decades, including James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, WB Yeats and Samuel Beckett, many of whom are Nobel prizewinners.
And why are Irish writers so great at what they do?

Some critics jest, saying that it's so cold and wet that people have nothing else to do. Or is it because Irish folk like a good yarn, they ask? Is it because they are so repressed and that this provides the best creative outlet?
Irish writers of yesteryear were fond of penning poetry and prose about wars. From the First World War to the 1916 Easter Rising, from the Spanish Civil War, to the horrors of the Second World War, the poetic voices captured it all, in their guises of soldiers, patriots, protestors, mourners and simple observers. And the themes they touched on included patriotism, hope and regret, anger and most notably compassion.



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Well, if I'm honest, these past two weeks or so haven't been the best I've had. There's been a pretty huge amount of personal and emotional upheaval, I got ill again and there has been building work being done where I live - which has meant that instead of resting my foot I've been hobbling around an obstacle course and unable to work at anywhere near full capacity. And I needed a new laptop.

The building work has been done now. And I've pretty much managed to put everything back where it should live. I've dug out my old laptop and I'm currently transferring files to my new one. The doc has said I don't need any more medication (though I need to avoid exercise for a couple of months, hmm).

So life can start to go on. Which is just as well, because I've got plenty to do. I am looking forward to Monday.

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I have no faith in this, in any of it. My body is too unremarkable, too ordinary. Sure, for the last few years I’ve cherished it – I’ve stuffed it with blueberries and pomegranates and other magical foodstuffs guaranteed to grant me eternal life, so I could make up for the long years in which I crammed it with nothing but beer and illegal drugs. But I’ve never cherished my body as a wonder to be preserved. Hell, no. I’ve cherished it because it's the carriage that contains the rest of me, and the rest of me must go on forever.


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I was on my way home from swimming, so wasn't worried when the 185 seemed not to move away from the stop. All around me, though, passengers were like meercats, straining to see if there was a bus following, so they could change and maybe get to work on time. I even got off myself, and then back on again when the doors started beeping.


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