Oonahverse is regularly updated with links to my work as they come up.

I also use the site to talk about what I write and sometimes about me...but I'm not that interesting, really. My work is, I hope.

Please feel free to browse past entries and make a comment.

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I’ve been thinking on the positive wavelength for a couple of months now, more fiercely since I watched the movie The Secret – and it’s working; I am attracting all sorts of great stuff to me! People I hardly know are offering me things; two lovely women who have recently started work beside me have offered furniture, a microwave, coffee-maker – one has presented me with beautiful baking trays, signed by Antony Worrall Thompson himself! Before that another workmate brought me in shoes that she couldn’t wear, then a lovely blouse and then a pair of lined curtains for my new flat!


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Fluffed about like madwoman on the computer today, doing anything but write. So didn't manage to look at Hallsfoot's Battle (see full post for links) before a brief Sainsbury's shop and golf. Which today proved a bit of a rollercoaster - I played some spectacularly bad shots which resulted in not one, but two lost balls. Two! Ye gods and little fishes, it's lucky I've got any to play with at all. I foresee the first item on my Christmas list for sure ...

Still, to counteract all that, I parred the third beautifully with a totally top-class chip in from way, way off the green. There was that wonderful moment when I watched it and thought: Yes, that's pretty damned close ...


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These past two weeks have just flown by. I've made considerable headway with the group anthology (up till 11:30 the other night doing it while my beloved was visiting her sis in the Big Smoke) so that's nearly done, had a small commission, which is done, and now I'm working on a poem, which is nearly done. Not bad going, I'd say.

I've also been dipping into Willful Creatures, a collection of short stories by Aimee Bender, which so far has been mind-meltingly good. The stories are deliciously surreal and are written, well, just brilliantly as far as I'm concerned.


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Cheetah's theme is sport's potentially awesome, frightening future and Beijing suggested itself as a good moment to start this blog-about-the-book – which in terms of timing my run now seems as smooth as Christine Ohuruogu's Gold medal race.
As an athletic spectacle these Olympics have had moments of wonder and some almost futuristic performances.

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We're all familiar with the red-jersey-in-the-crowd phenomenon, that once you start noticing something, the same thing seems to be everywhere. But this week I've had different things coalesce to the point where I'm thinking something entirely new. The fact that it links up with all sorts of things I've thought about for a while makes me think it might even be true (and explains all the links back to earlier posts!).

First, Dorothy L. Sayers The Mind of the Maker:

"the fact of universal experience [is that] the work of art has real existence apart from its translation into material form. Without the thought, though the material parts already exist, the form does not and cannot."

I know this one from my own experience, as I was thinking about in Bodies crying out. The nameless new novel does exist as a whole in my head.

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Was rather flummoxed yesterday when purchasing my rail ticket at Guildford Station when the woman behind the counter gave me a bright smile, was extremely helpful, smiled again and even wished me a good journey and a pleasant evening in London. Well, gosh! Not something that's ever happened before when travelling on Network South. It really cheered me and set me up for a wonderful evening (thanks, Jane W - lovely to see you as ever!). Though I have to admit my general bonhomie slid down a notch or two when I realised it was Guildford Station Customer Service Week. Ah well - I should have known it couldn't have been my own personal charisma (conspicuous as ever by its absence). Perhaps it could be Customer Service Week every week? It would certainly make travelling by train far more palatable ...


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First of all, a plug - Picnic Publishing wants to hear about your favourite picnic spots, picnic memories and recipes for a new website that will be a handy source of information about al fresco eating (if it ever stops raining).

They are looking for info on good places to picnic – not just in the UK but anywhere in the world – so go along to: www.picnicbooks.com and submit your favourite locations and anecdotes, or leave comments about the places already listed.

One ‘picnic’ place that I possibly won’t be sending in is the very chilly location where I scribbled some of the earliest draft of Kill-Grief...


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I've just realised that The White Road and Other Stories is going to be published in 11 days. 11 days. I am not sure what to make of that. I have a strange tingling, vaguely nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. And, also, I am grinning. Different parts of my body are reacting in different ways....

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Well, now that I've finally pinned down some of the difficulties of using real historical people in A Secret Alchemy, for a Vulpes Libris piece, it's got very late. I've rather run out of time and brainpower to post what I was planning here, so, sorry, that'll have to wait a day or two.

Meanwhile, Vulpes Libris are having a Richard III week. My post is called Writing Wrongs to make A Secret Alchemy and the other posts look as if they'll make a classic VL mixture of thoughtful booky talk coming from all sorts of angles.


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