My very short story, The Boy Who Wished He Was a Cloud is now live over at Lit Up.

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Advertising and propaganda – two words to describe the same thing? Yes and no.


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I’m not usually given to tantrums, but I almost threw a novel across the room the other night. I even had a brief fantasy involving the temperature 451 degrees Fahrenheit, until I got a grip of myself and remembered the Nazis. The book was a highly acclaimed novel by the recently deceased author John Updike. It was littered with reviews from Important Literary Figures and there were as many uses of the word ‘genius’ on the cover as there are glittery stars on a Katie Price.

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The new issue of Prick of the Spindle is up and I'm proud to be a part of it with my flash, Flood Plain. This was a difficult piece for me to write because my village was one of those affected by recent flooding. I subbed the piece and then withdrew it. I sat and looked at it, wondering what to do about it. I put it in a dump file, but I kept thinking about it, seeing the original image around which the whole piece was constructed.

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Yay, I finally have a place to write in, a room with a door I can (almost) shut! Yup, I'm in our cellar. (The shed idea didn't pan out, many boring reasons why not. Mainly because Israel ain't really a shed culture.)

Here is the illustrious entrance to my domain:


Bend your head a little, it's a low space...

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I can’t be doing with Mother’s Day. I find it at best corny and at worst painful.



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1993 : Sitting by myself, wearing white leggings and big T-shirt; bare feet up on the opposite seat, boots under the table and a pile of library books in front of me. I’m watching a man with dark hairy arms, in the seat next to my feet. He has a pinky ring on his left hand and a sturdy beard buried in The Scotsman. Long hairs seep out of the neck of his cotton shirt. I wonder about his hands, how the long fingers would feel on my neck, tangled in my hair. Men like women with long hair. The glint of gold on his collar bone brings me to my senses;

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To celebrate my father's birthday yesterday (Happy Birthday, Dad!) we went to see The 39 Steps at the Criterion Theatre in Piccadilly Circus.

With a mere four actors playing 139 characters in 100 minutes, the show promised to be funny, fast and furious. And, happily, it kept that promise. Inventive, clever, entertaining, amusing - in many places, laugh-out-loud comical and jaw-droppingly creative - there are an absurd number of adjectives that I could use to describe this production, but I shall attempt to restrain myself!


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I was surprised at the weight of the ashes.

The funeral parlour had given them to me in an understated but nevertheless attractive cardboard purple bag with lilac swirls and matching silk cord handles. The canister itself was inside a further maroon plastic bag and, as I peeped in surreptitiously in the checkout queue at the Co-op, I was thankful for their discretion. After all, it's quite possible that some shoppers might have been put off by the thought of standing next to the cremated remains of my deceased great uncle as they paid for their packets of cheese and tea and milk and eggs.

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To celebrate Small Press month, the March issue of The Short Review is entirely mainstream-publisher-free. We review nine single author collections and one anthology - and a bumper NINE author interviews to go alongside them. Check it out now.... and for the first time we say: Go buy a book and support these short-story-publishing heroes!


And over on the Short Review blog, author, blogger and Short Reviewer Sarah Salway interviews Larry Dark, founder and director of the $20,000 Story prize, America's richest prize for a short story collection and a passionate lover of the short story. He says:

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