Last week I read Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s Nude, and I really enjoyed it – more than I thought I would to be honest. It’s a collection of short stories about art, nakedness and, well, sex (of sorts), and not the thing I’d normally go for. But I loved it, loved that the stories are stories in their own right and very, very good at that. It’s great being exposed to new things and finding out that I really like them.



And it’s with great pleasure that I welcome Nude’s author, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, to my place to answer some questions...





Welcome to the blog, Nuala. Can you start by telling us a little about your latest collection of short stories, Nude?

Thanks Nik, I’m delighted to be here. Nude is so-called because each of the stories features an unclothed body, mostly in the world of art but sometimes as a lover. The stories are set in Ireland but also Paris, England, Austria, India, Spain...I like to travel as I write; writing about exotic locations keeps me interested.

Read Full Post

Fiction writer and stand-up comic A L Kennedy's blog posts on the Guardian are always a great read, but this time I found her words even more poignant and hitting-home (is that a phrase?) than usual. She's talking about reviews, apropos her new short story collection, What Becomes, which comes out on Aug 6th and which I am eagerly awaiting! She says:


[B]ook reviews are odd things. They emerge months, if not years after the book is done with, so they're not that much use to the author. If the book's a car crash, it's already happened and we've walked or crawled away long ago. They are usually written (and should really be written) for readers, but may on occasions wander off and end up being about the reviewer's idea of the author, or a literary theory, or even some kind of personal issue the reviewer is working through. (This seems to be quite common in US reviews.) Yes, I personally want feedback on my work, but I get that from my editor and my agent (who used to be an editor) and from readings of work in progress and (extremely) occasionally from people upon whom I inflict sections of whatever heaving mess I'm wrestling with at the time. I get opinions from people I trust whose judgement I know and understand.

I rather like the point she makes at the end, that she doesn't look to reviews to give her feedback on her own books, she has people who do that. She continues...

...

Read Full Post

I spent the day on the beach yesterday, building sandcastles, eating chips (with sand in) and trying to finish reading Let The Right One In. About fifty pages from the end of this 500 page novel, I mentioned to my wife, 'I think I've just realised, I don't like this book.'
She looked at me as though I was stupid. 'It's taken you that long?'
'It seemed okay at first.'

Read Full Post

Is it acceptable to tell another writer that you enjoyed their work when, quite frankly, you would rather be trapped in a lift with Barney the Dinosaur singing I Love You than ever have to read another sentence in your entire life?

The opinion frequently crops up on the web that undeserved praise is wrong, not only because it involves lying (which we would never do in any other situation), but more importantly because it doesn't help the other writer to improve. What's the use of family and friends falling at our feet and telling us we're the next Emily Brontë and they can't see a single flaw in the entire 250,000 words? And that the twist at the end, where the narrator turns out to be a cat, is pure genius!

Read Full Post

Find some air conditioning if you're in temperatures like mine (sorry to those of you in the southern hemisphere, don't mean to make you feel bad - stay warm) And then grab yourself a book. Want some reading ideas? The latest issue of The Short Review has plenty:

First, we have not only a review of Chris Beckett's Edge Hill Prize-winning short story collection, The Turing Test (written by me - I loved it!) and an interview with Chris about the book, but a special interview with Chris on The Short Review blog, where he talks about his 20 year relationship with UK science fiction magazine, Interzone, whose "constructive rejections" spurred him on - something all writers wish we had, eh?
.........

Read Full Post

It’s April 1968, and a stormy night in Memphis, as ‘Preacher’ King prepares an address to protesting workers the following day. He worries about his family back home and the possibly violent outcome of the march. Sassy maid Camae, with a cigarette pack in her garter, agrees to keep the insomniac leader company, for reasons of her own. As they review the self-doubting activist’s career, a shocking connection between the wildly different characters is revealed. More astute audience members no doubt guessed Camae’s identity long before I did.


Read Full Post

Which 3 writers, alive or dead, would you invite to dinner?
Anthony Trollope (because he really loved and wasn't alarmed by strong, independent women); Scott Fitzgerald before he became a hopeless drunk (because he was so good at having a good time) and Barbara Comyns (because she was devoid of self pity, and so unexpected and original in every way and would have livened things up no end).

My advice to an aspiring author of Women's Fiction would be...
Write with passion and don't flinch at the reality of our physical and emotional selves (as you understand them). And avoid mush and cliche and safe linear plots. Take a few risks with your characters and write about what you love. And read and read and read... sounds obvious but a surprising number of aspiring writers don't see the need.

Read Full Post

The most difficult chapter of my PhD's critical commentary has been the one on voice. I don't see how you can write about the practice of historical fiction without tackling it, but as I've talked about before, it's both the most crucial and the most un-pin-downable aspect of writing. It's effect is simultaneously micro - a single choice of word - and macro - the thing which creates the world of the novel: the thing which makes the characters live and breathe for the reader. Different voices are central to the way that both The Mathematics of Love and A Secret Alchemy work, and are probably the thing which both readers and reviewers most consistently like.

Of course, there's always the option of writing a novel with a historical setting in a completely modern voice.

Read Full Post

Hi Guys

This has got to be one of the most supportive websites!! I have received a lot of support for my writing and the comments have been very helpful. All I want to do is really try and write that novel!!

‘Words fly at me like meteor showers’ and ‘America only knows what to think when I have my say’ pronounces the shambolic hero, in a terminal state of writer’s block but happy to re-imagine the hell-raising youth evoked by Rex. The play offers no real insight or portrait of the action-hero writer. The actors did their best with a poor script and some banal and unmelodic songs



Read Full Post