At least once a year, I pick up my tattered copy of Stephen King's "The Stand" and re-read it. The love I have for this book (and all things King) is one of the defining factors in my goal to be a writer.

I want to give people the adventures that King gives me. I want to transport them to the places he sends me. And I want to give them the inspiration that I get from him.

While "The Stand" was the novel that fully cemented my love for his works, it's his short stories that influence me most today. When I'd completed my first flash fiction (which isn't particularly good, I now realise), I showed it to a few friends. One of them, also a King fan, gave me the greatest compliment anyone ever could - "It's kinda like a Stephen King story."

The way he can take a simple idea and twist it into something that is so much more, so disturbing, and yet so real. That's what I want my writing to be like. I want people to come away from my stories with the same goosebumps that I got the first time I read "Firestarter" or "Insomnia".

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The pile of stuff at the bottom of the stairs by Christina Hopkinson


‘You don’t see how much I do. And how little you do.’
‘Like what?’ he says, finally.
‘I don’t know, it’s not like I keep a list,’ I said.
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Maybe I will.’
(Page 3)

Mary is a 35 year old part time worker, full time mother, and what feels like full time house cleaner and maid to her three boys, husband (Joel) and two adorable children (Gabe and Rufus). Mary decides that in a life where she has very little control over the small every day things, such as tidying up the pile of junk at the bottom of the stairs, or picking up the dirty clothes from the floor that she needs to take some sort of action. Her stress levels are going through the roof as her temper is taking over all other emotions, but she can’t find a way to make Joel understand. So she decides to make a list over the course of six months outlining all the things that Joel does or doesn’t do, or messes up around the house.

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The title says it all. Well, nearly all.

The other bit is that I’m still trying to take in the fact that I’ve been offered a contract with this wonderful women’s press:

http://linenpressbooks.com/

- and I have a few months to revise my novel.


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“It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.”


In Lena’s world love has been classified as a disease, one that her mother succumbed to years previously, which has since tarnished her name and ultimately led to her mother’s untimely death. Lena lives in a society that is heavily regulated and that the ‘cureds’ those that have already underwent through the Government enforced procedure of being cured from the disease of amor deliria nervosa (or love) lead content structured lives. Where everything, from who they marry, to how many children they have, to what job they do has already been predetermined for them by a selection committee. The cure is the ultimate birthday gift on the day a teenager turns 18 and starts their real life, until then there are a lot of curfews and rules in place to limit most activities. In her daily life Lena is content, until the day her life gets turned upside down and she meets someone that is worth breaking all the rules for. Instead of the cured life she had been looking forward to, free from the prospect of the disease of love, she can no longer bare to think about giving up the love she once feared.

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Perhaps it's the existential pessimism of the stories that mark them as modern. The cruel tricks of fate and the futility of human efforts to avoid them is a dominant theme. A modern outlook discards the certainties of faith and a confidence that virtue will be rewarded. In 1880 that was a shocking realisation that marked out Maupassant for criticism. In 1893, after a very troubled life, he committed suicide in a mental asylum

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In Alarm Bells and Coughing Fits I was exploring how, and why, it might be better to think in terms of sacrificing darlings than murdering them, when you're revising your work. You resist cutting something which you know you should cut because it's good ideas beautifully written; or it says something you want to say or includes facts you'd love to include; it cost you a lot in time or feeling or effort; it's funny or touching or evocative. These are all good things to be doing with writing, but here... it just doesn't fit. It slackens the tension or spoils the pace, it breaks the frame when it shouldn't, it preaches at the reader or dumps info. You must get out the knife.

Sometimes you can just cut a sentence, a paragraph, a character or a setting and, like your appendix or your tonsils, the surgeon-writer does a few little stitches and the body of the novel can do perfectly well without it. But sometimes it can't. Sometimes, when you cut a piece which you don't want to cut but you must, you also lose stuff which you do need.

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I know, no posts from me in ages, and then two almost at once :)

My question for you all (if indeed there is actually anyone reading this blog, otherwise it's more of a rhetorical question), is what do I write as an author bio, when I don't yet have anything published?

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To make the trailer for THE CLEANSING FLAMES (yes, I made it myself), I had to burn a copy of the novel, which was a particularly hard thing to do, as it doesn’t exist as a book yet.

Alex, my tireless publicity maven at Faber, came to my aid and created a mock-up using a print out of the cover wrapped around another book. The book she used was… well, maybe on second thoughts I shouldn’t disclose which book she was suggesting I should burn. Suffice it to say it was another Faber author’s. I’m sure she picked it because it was roughly the right size to fill out the cover she’d printed off. Not because she had anything against the author in question. Still, discretion might be the order of the day here.

It didn’t matter anyhow because I didn’t feel it was right to burn another author’s book, and besides it was one I hadn’t read and quite fancied, so I decided to save it from the flames. I wrapped the cover around one of my own copies of A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK and burnt that instead.

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I thought Quango 93 was a great example of experimental theatre and I'd like to see more of the group's productions. They originated in Newham, a borough I used to teach in.

The upside of reviewing for Remotegoat is having the website managers forward requests to the event managers. The downside is having to learn the site protocol and deal with the automated submission/request system. After a couple of date mix-ups, though, I've arranged a couple of future events, one local and one in the West End.

'Once a month is enough', said Roy. 'You don't want to become stressed.'

But I think once a week, with the following morning free to write the review, will be fine.

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