A Salted

Short story goodness at Brighton Waterstones

2012-01-23T12:47:00.000Z

Delicious!

Nightjar press - 4 chapbooks

2012-01-19T19:31:00.002Z

Nightjar Press is an independent publisher of limited edition individual short story chapbooks. It’s delightful to see single short stories published with such care. Each of the four stories I was sent have rather ace cover illustrations and cost £3.

It’s difficult to review short stories without being spoilerific, but I’ll give it a go:

Lexicon by Christopher Burns

My knowledge of Greek mythology is minimal and it is with a smidge of shame that I admit I wasn’t familiar with Asterius before reading this tale. I searched Wikipedia afterwards and it seems that Burns may be riffing off Jorge Luis Borges 1947 short story “The House of Asterion.” Whilst knowledge of that may enhance the reading pleasure I don’t feel it marred my own enjoyment.

The narrator is an amusing man, a self-important academic who has invited a woman to dinner. He speaks enthusiastically about the Greeks, keen to “illuminate” her on the subject. He knowingly tells the reader “I like to begin my social evenings with a little minor irritation.” Passages on Asterius are interspersed with Harry and Heather’s evening in this neat story with a dark heart.

Field by Tom Fletcher

This is a horror story in which you can almost hear a film score ratcheting up the tension as the protagonist, Tom, a forestry Commission warden, sets off to deal with a group of youths camping illegally at the edge of the lake. Irritated by his junior colleague, Sarah, yet perfectly at ease with the idea of confronting the youngsters, they set off in his Land Rover. They find the tents and sleeping bags, but where are the people?

Sullom Hill by Christopher Kenworthy

The first line immediately had me wanting to know more: “When Neil Kingsley came around, I’d hide under the window-sill and pretend not to be in.”

Three young lads, one with special needs and a mental age much younger than his years, form a type of friendship; one of those uneasy alliances that schoolboys find themselves in sometimes. Tony is a bully who loses friends with worrying regularity. Neil is a young man with difficulties who thinks of the narrator as his pal. I read with wariness, worrying about what would happen. It’s a story full of evocative descriptions, of the boys, the hill, the weather, and it ends in a particularly unsettling way.

Remains by Ga Pickin

There is an immediate and effective sense of place and I could almost feel the cold, shivery weather.

“A head wind was getting up, and it sighed against his ears like Chinese whispers. Disdaining his choice of warm clothing, its chilled breath slid down his collar and up his sleeve, between buttons and past his T-shirt, touching his bare skin.”

Brr.

This is a marvelously atmospheric and creepy story. The narrator, an experienced walker, has set out to meet friends in a holiday cottage. The light is fading and the batteries of his torch stop working. It’s beautifully written, the landscape becoming eerier as the story progresses. I raced to the end, anxious to know what would happen.

I can genuinely say that each of the stories is of a high quality and I really love what Nicholas Royle is doing for the short story here. Bravo.

National Flash Fiction day

2012-01-16T22:43:00.000Z

I think it's so cool that May 16th is National Flash Fiction Day. I heart flash and I'm delighted to be a) featured over on NFFD's site and b) helping to judge the NFFD Flash competition. Details are here but basically you have until 31st January to submit your awesome flashes of not more than100 words to be in with a chance of winning some delicious books and a whole heap of glory.

"Being Dead" - Jim Crace

2012-01-10T16:11:00.000Z

"Being Dead" Jim Crace

Celice and Joseph, a fifty plus couple, are the “dead” of the title. We witness their deaths and watch as they lay undiscovered for a few days, while being told their story. The omniscient voice here has the same kind of chilly detachment I equate with some other male literary “names.” (McEwan for one.)

There are beautiful descriptions throughout with Crace employing a scientific eye to zoom in on the decomposing bodies, and smoothly taking us to the past to watch the developing relationship between Celice and Joseph.

“She could reach high corner cobwebs with a dusting stick and spin grey candyfloss.”

“…his hand on hers, their faces rhyming…”

and many more such descriptions are evocative and vivid. The forensic detailing of decaying corpses is suitably gross. However the marriage of Celice and Joseph doesn’t convince any more than the other aspects of their lives. They are in their fifties but seem much older. Even in youth Joseph was dull but Celice was not, I don’t think. When Syl, their daughter, is introduced I hoped she would inject some energy into the novel but alas, she is just another female described in such a way that we understand that although she, like her mother before her, has desires, her sexual encounters are joyless. She has “use” of a man. Crace’s men want sex and are stupid because of it, his women want sex with men sometimes but are mostly reluctant, desperate (Celice), or do so to gain something, (a lift in Syl’s case). All the characters seem so dry and it is hard to care for people described so coldly, even when they are dead.

Despite the murders, the tragic death in their past, and the search for them by Syl, there seems precious little story. There’s no hope in the end, no resolution. They are dead, Syl lives on. Blah blah blah. I like the idea of examining a life backwards and forwards by focussing on a few key events but although Crace clearly writes well these people never came alive for me and I remained utterly unmoved throughout.

✰✰✰

End of year thing

2011-12-31T07:37:00.000Z

I feel like there should be an end of the year post but I have such a lousy memory I can't recall all the things I liked best. I listened to Nicki Minaj a lot and I have much love for her. "Did it on 'em" was a song that actually made me go "What the fuck is this? What is she saying?" and then "Oh my god, it's amazing. She's amazing. This is perfect." I'm so glad there is a woman more than equal to the top guys in the field, and that she is recognised as such.

I have sadness that there's still "top guys in the field" instead of top people. It's true all over - TV, comedy, writing, whatever. There are the successful men and then the select women who are deemed of rare enough quality that they get to hang there too. Even on twitter amongst the people who tweet about lit stuff it seems there's a boys club (with separate UK and US branches of these in the blog world too) and only a few honorary women. Anyway, a massive cheer for Caitlin Moran who somehow managed to write a clever, funny, brilliant, best selling (number one on the list for weeks and weeks) book about feminism (even if it is mainly a biography) How To Be a Woman.

Favourite novels of the year are The Canal by Lee Rourke and The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie. Fave short story collections are Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower and Ayiti by Roxane Gay. Speaking of Roxane Gay, it's been a pleasure to read her intelligent, articulate thoughts online in a wide variety of places (HTML Giant, The Rumpus, and her own blog to name a few.)

Fave TV show was Sons of Anarchy. Compelling viewing that just kept relentlessly building. We're a season behind the US here and I am so looking forward to watching Season 4 when it airs. I also loved The Mentalist. I want to be Patrick Jane, and date Cho.

Film of the year? No idea. I saw Thor yesterday though and really enjoyed it. Home and Away boy has done good! And learned how to open his eyes. How buff? More fun than I expected too. I appreciated the Shakespearean swagger and am really looking forward to Whedon's Avengers.

Scent of the year - Amazing Grace by Philosophy. Absolutely gorgeous. Fresh, clean, non-cloying.

Meal of the year was in the Fork and Field where I tasted the best pasta I have ever had. Seriously so good that I couldn't stop smiling. It was Gratin of Macaroni with spinach, parmesan and fresh truffle and was perfection.

Book-selling hurrahs were realising we'd sold over 100 copies of Janice Galloway's Collected Stories, and selling out of Kuzhali Manickavel's Insects Are Just Like You and Me Only Some of Them Have Wings yet again, selling heaps of The Best British Short Stories, and ordering in goodies like Roxane Gay's Ayiti and Breece D'J Pancake's Collected Stories. I get a real thrill introducing people to damn good writing and I've never had anyone come back and complain about a recommendation I've given so I hope that's a good sign.

More personally, my family have struggled through hellish times this year but emerged stronger. I pack the sad, angry, bitterness down inside me and carry on. What else to do? One of my boys made up a song - "I've got an arch of love for you" - and he sings it, complete with arm gestures, to me. I congratulated my other son on how well he dealt with an awkward situation - "I model myself on you," he said. There is nothing more precious, more wonderful, than my twins. My resolution for 2012 is the same as the advice I give to my beautiful boys - "Be the best you that you can be."

Happy new year y'all.

Bookshop baloney

2011-12-14T12:00:00.000Z

This Christmas seems particularly GRRsome to me. Not sure why, perhaps it always does. At work on Saturday my irritation felt like a nagging toothache. I don't think it showed though - at least, not to the customers.

I work on the first floor and am often puzzled by how many people are surprised to hear the book they want is on a different floor above.
"You have another floor?"
"Yes, we have five floors in all."
"That's ridiculous!"
Ridiculous? Really?
Or
"On the next floor?"
"Yes."
"How do I get there?"
"We have stairs," I gesture with a sweep of my arm. "Or a lift just here."
"For god's sakes."

So many people so cross that there are more floors. The coffee shop on the third floor? Tsk. Reference on fourth? Tut. How do they cope in department stores?

Then there are the people who ask "Where can I find so and so?" I look it up on the computer and confirm that we have a copy, or several.
"On the next floor up, on the left. You can ask the assistant at the counter and they will show you."
"Right. Thanks."
And I watch them head down the stairs and out of the shop.

A man handed his book to me to scan and it set off our alarm. Deactivating the tag requires me to rub the book over the desktop where the machine beneath does its duty.
"Don't rub my book."
"I'm sorry ..."
I sympathised, I like my books pristine too. The book doesn't get damaged though. He paid the £9.99 with a £10 Waterstone's gift card. I told him he had one penny left on the card and handed it to him.
"Where's my penny?"
I repeated that it was on his card.
"Don't you dare try to cheat me out of my penny. I know my rights. Where's my one pence? I DEMAND my money."
Sigh.

A regular customer comes in. I haven't seen him for a while. He travels for over an hour on the bus to visit us but he's ill, and his illness has worsened. He's not sure he'll be able to keep coming. Then another man tells me about the disease that is killing him.

My colleague took a phone call from a woman wanting a poetry book that she thought might have a blue cover. Yup, that's totally not a bookshop myth, it's a thing that happens regularly.

A guy asked me for a Kindle Voucher. Erm… nope, not gone be selling one of them.
"That's like asking for a Starbucks Gingerbread Latte in a Costa Coffee," said another customer.

The only book to be reviewed twice on my blog: Luke and Jon by Robert Williams

2011-12-04T13:28:00.001Z

My son Dylan has been reading Luke and Jon and discussing it with me. I asked him if he'd like to write a review for my blog. He said yes, but that he was going to say exactly what he thought and hoped he didn't upset the author.

"I think Luke and Jon was very beautifully written. It had a really good mixture of chapters that go from death to new beginnings. I like the fact that Luke and his dad were in a way outsiders in a little creepy village which they had never heard of and only had enough money to buy a cheap crumbling and depressing house. Then Luke meets probably one of the strangest but loving and intelligent people: Jon. I think it’s absolutely touching when Luke and Jon become best friends. My favourite bit was when Luke and his dad adopted Jon, it really made me emotional. My only dislike about the book was the ending even though it was a lovely ending about his mum in the sea I would of liked to read more about how Luke his dad and Jon lived together but it wasn’t a let down because everything else made up for it in this wonderful book."

Review by Dylan Crowley

Tiny things

2011-12-01T13:30:00.001Z

My teeny story "Glimmer" is in a new magazine called "What the Dickens" - you can read it here, alongside words by Kirsty Logan, Angela Readman and Sandy East (amongst others).

I like wigleaf very much. It's the coolest, smartest lit kid on the block. They just tweeted "Pre-written Facebook statuses (to save people time): "I'm rich!" "I'm smart!" "I play with the big boys!" "I'm talented!" "I'm important!""
Hee hee.

I feel the need to mention Pan Am. It's clearly a Mad Men wannabe with no substance and nowhere near as much style as it wishes it had. I have to watch though because - Donna from Neighbours! Also, what the fuck is Christina Ricci doing? She seems to be channeling Betty Boop.

In other bad telly news I am persevering with The Ringer purely because, y'know, she was Buffy. It reminds me of Sunset Beach in both a good and bad way. Also it seems clear that Sarah Michelle Gellar is not so great an actress but Whedon is such a genius it wasn't a problem.

Toodles.

Vanessa Gebbie

2011-11-18T19:28:00.001Z

I'm so excited that Vanessa Gebbie will be signing copies of her debut novel "The Coward's tale" tomorrow at Waterstones, Brighton from 11 a.m. Not only that but she will also be writing personalised tiny fictions for anyone who buys it. She'll add your name, or any name you choose, and a few other unique details. A wonderful idea, and a really different Christmas gift.

More details here.

Looky looky at all the gorgeous...

2011-11-18T19:14:00.001Z

A few snapshots from Waterstones Brighton last Saturday:

Pretty darn enticing, right?

Flash fiction at The Irish Times

2011-11-08T13:58:00.000Z

It's lovely to hear that The Irish Times will regularly be featuring flash fiction, I think it's an ideal form for newspapers. I'm extremely chuffed that my tiny story "Blown Away" was published in this weekend's edition, especially as my Irish dad is proper proud of me now.

Lumb Bank

2011-11-08T09:00:00.000Z

In October I finally went on the Arvon course that I won as part of my Waterstones Bookseller Bursary. I meant to blog about it much sooner but as time has gone on I've realised that I really don't know what to say. It was an extraordinary five days. I feel I was picked up from my usual life and set down in an alternate reality. There were workshops, readings, discussions, and plenty of opportunities to talk with tutors Patrick Neate and Mark Illis. There were communal meals and lots of chatter. There was incredible scenery and lots of weather. There were bizarre moments, and hilarious ones. The strangest thing was how little reading and writing I did. I had imagined hour after hour of quietly sitting alone and pondering. Nope. It was a far more sociable experience than expected, and better for that. There were a few vital key points that I took away with me that have revealed themselves to be pretty darn important. I'm sure what resonated for me isn't necessarily what did for others and these things may seem obvious, but sometimes one needs exactly that. For the last year or so I have pretty much been a full time carer and my writing has had to wait. I wrote some flash fiction, maybe even a short story or two, but I left my novel untouched. It is too important to me, and I couldn't give it the attention I feel it requires. I am no longer a full time carer and the how to write a novel course was hopefully going to help me find my way back to Salted. We all know the saying writers write and I was told I simply have to write 500 words a day. Easy, huh? 500 words is incredibly manageable, I can't be scared by that. I was also told that until I have 30,000 words I'm not allowed to think about quality or start worrying about where it's all going. I'm obedient, sometimes, so I have come home and every weekday I have written at least 500 words. Last night I dreamt I was writing my novel which I'm guessing means my novel writing has seeped into my subconscious. Oh yeah, I am doing this thing.

Oh! And I got to visit Sylvia Plath's grave. I am a massive Plath fan but would never have made a special visit to the cemetery, however, I was invited out for an afternoon stroll with two of my fellow Arvoners (waves virtually at lovely Paul and Lisa) and we found ourselves RIGHT THERE. I can't quite grasp why people would leave plastic pens in a pot on her grave, I mean, I know she was a writer, but ...

So, pictures:

I look back affectionately, gratefully, on my time at Lumb Bank, and know that I will want to do more Arvon courses in the future. Thank you Waterstones and thank you to all the other writers for making it so memorable.

Ayiti by Roxane Gay

2011-11-01T14:02:00.000Z

Ayiti, published by Artistically Declined Press, is the debut story collection from Roxane Gay, each story concerning Haiti and its people.

The first story you arrive at announces itself with the block capitals of MOTHERFUCKERS. And wow can this small story carry a great weight. Wonderful opener.

In "Things I Know About Fairytales" the narrator says "At a dinner party once, with some of my colleagues and some of Michael's and lots of wine and music and excellent food and pretentious but engaging conversation, talk turned to Haiti. Everyone leaned forwards in their seats, earnest in their desire to be genuine in their understanding of the world. One of my colleagues mentioned a magazine article he read about how Haiti had surpassed Colombia as the kidnapping capital of the world. Another colleague told us about a recent feature in a national magazine. Soon everyone was offering up their own desperate piece of information, conjuring a place that does not exist."

I wonder if this is non-fiction as it reads so true, and I suppose I recognise that earnest desire to be genuine, and the failure of real understanding that so often accompanies it.

In "In the Manner of Water or Light" the narrator says "We are the keepers of secrets. We are secrets ourselves."

Roxane Gay may well have secrets, but she is also a fearless truth teller. Her stories work beautifully in showing us truths without screaming them. Sometimes it is that which remains unsaid that resonates strongest. Her writing is beautifully empathetic, powerful, and often painful.

In "Cheap, Fast, Filling" she makes me sympathise, despise, and then care about her character in just 3 pages. Yeah, that skilled.

And she's funny too (see "Voodoo Child" and the Primer in "There is No "E" in Zombi Which Means There Can Be No You or We" - in which she slides from amusing to disturbing ever so smoothly.)

She has an utterly distinctive voice of her own. There are many examples of her words online as she blogs, writes articles, and fictions (you can find her at I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection) and whatever she writes carries that assured, intelligent, calm, witty voice.

Two jolly good books

2011-09-28T08:30:00.000+01:00

I recently read a couple of damn fine books and made a mental note to blog about them. The problem with mental notes is that they end up muddled and mixed in with all sorts of gubbins from my mind so I am unable to offer much in the way of constructive thinking. Ho hum, no reason not to say that I really liked them is there?

The first book is Luke and Jon by Robert Williams. It's now available in paperback for only £6.99 which is a bargain. It's one of those books that was originally marketed as Young Adult and is now Adult Fiction. (It's fairly meaningless but when I read it I certainly didn't feel I was reading a children's book, equally I thought that my 13 year old boys may enjoy it. Dylan has just begun it though he's a little wary in case it's too sad as I told him it was about a boy whose mum died.)

Anyway, the story is about a 13 year old boy and his relationships with his father, in the wake of his mother's death, and his friend Jon. It's not a showy book but it's full of calm, quiet truths. I'm not over keen on the phrase deceptively simple but, erm, yeah, this is. Williams creates a wonderful voice and a story with proper depth. He's good at capturing the difficulties of being a lad at school, and he's written a novel with real heart. Oh, and it totally sucked me in and toyed with my emotions. Yes, I may have shed a tear or two.

"Eventually I got surer on my feet and looked up to see what was overhead. It was a trick I learned from my mum. She said that every now and again, walking your usual route through town or to school, you should look up as you travelled instead of straight ahead, that you would see things you hadn't seen before. And she was right. The first time I walked through our old town and lifted my head up I saw things I'd never noticed in a town I'd lived in all my life. In the forest the trees stretched high and higher into the sky, disappearing out of sight and there was only the odd glimpse of sky poking through the canopy. It felt like we were indoors; it reminded me of the church on the day of mum's funeral: ancient and powerful."

The second book is Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Oh my goodness, if you're a short story fan and haven't yet read this collection then I envy you, for you must, you shall, and it will be fabulous.

Wells Tower describes things in a gorgeously fresh way. His stories are drenched in images and unique perfect phrases. I am deeply envious of his talent. (The worst story, oddly, is the title story. It's absolute tosh and a real let down that is the last thing one reads. How strange.)

"He scrambled along the spit of rock. The wind cut the stagnant dampness of the day and dried the sweat on his face and chest. He took the salt into his lungs and savored the pure itch in his chest. He touched the long grasses waving in the water like women's hair. He crouched to observe the barnacles, their tiny feathery hands combing blindly for invisible prey."

So, there ya go - two good books (coincidentally both with brownish covers.)

Then she said...

2011-09-06T09:30:00.000+01:00

A woman came into the bookshop a year or so ago. She spoke really fast.
"You got that book about Madeleine McCann? That one about Madeleine McCann? You know, the book about the little girl, Madeleine McCann?"
We told her that Madeleine by Kate McCann was due to be published in May 2011. She returned the following week.
"You got that book about Madeleine McCann?"
The woman continued to return intermittently, always repeating the same questions, always getting the same answer. Eventually the book was published. A few months passed until the customer came in and made her usual request. Triumphantly a bookseller fetched the book and placed it in the customer's hands. She barely glanced at it.
"No, I don't think that's what I'm after."

A self-published author asked if we had her book. I was pleased to say yes and take her over to the shelf where her book is a face out with a local author sign highlighting it. She was unhappy. She said she wanted her book in the window. I tried to explain that we have many, many books. I could not have been more patient. She flung an arm out and one of her nails left a long scratch on my arm.
"I am old," she said. "You should put my book in your window. Now what are you going to do about it?"

A woman approached the counter with a book from our 3 for 2 offer.
"Have you got a copy of this book without a sticker on?"
"I can just take the sticker off?"
"I would like one without a sticker on."
I peeled the sticker off.

Being proud

2011-08-14T16:56:00.000+01:00

Brighton is a unique place and I am so glad that I get to regularly go there and work in the coolest bookshop in the country. Pride took place yesterday and Waterstone's had a rather eye-catching window display that I thought I'd share with you:

Missing from the pic are the gorgeous rainbow paper chains that are hanging above the display but I couldn't fit them in. Anyway, the rain cleared away, the sun shone, the parade, erm, paraded, and all was good.

You all know that I'm also proud of my short story section and I reckon it's time for a new piccy:

See how pleasingly orange the top shelf is, look at how scrumptious Ten Stories About Smoking by Stuart Evers is. And yes, that is Lydia Davis finally available in paperback!

Cindytalk "Hold Everything Dear"

2011-08-07T21:58:00.000+01:00

Cindytalk's new album - Hold Everything Dear - has been released. You can read reviews, and listen to sound clips here. These are beautiful, shimmering musics - ripe with melancholy and strange other worldliness. Cindytalk is Gordon Sharp, and he has a long and wondrous musical history - (here is his wiki page and here is Cindytalk's site). My dear, oh so missed friend, Matt Kinnison, contributed to these tracks in his final musical project and the album is dedicated to him, and to John Berger.

This is an album that's beautiful to have, to hold, to hear. Big thanks to Cinder. It's a truly special recording and I find myself entranced by the sounds of light smudged with dark, happy spliced with pain, and human hope. I think.

If you wish to purchase it yourself it is available here or at HMV for only £8.99.

The Canal by Lee Rourke

2011-07-22T22:21:00.000+01:00

I'm really late with this one but The Canal by Lee Rourke is a bloody fab read. I went to Bristol last weekend for the short story festival and met lots of writer chums. Inevitably the subject of books came up and I raved about this. At the bookshop we were asked to do a new bookseller recommendations bay and I said The Canal was my read of the year so far - I figured it was about time I mentioned it on my blog as well.

It surprised me. What I thought I knew about The Canal was that it's a meditation on boredom, and I didn't find that a wholly enticing prospect. I picked it up and put it down a few times before I settled to it. I always approach fiction hoping to love what I read but it rarely happens.

The Canal is good. Really good. It's not a meditation on boredom at all, although of course boredom plays its part. This is a story that builds and builds and it's a gripping, absorbing read. A man sits by a canal and thinks. His thoughts, thankfully, are interesting. A woman sits next to him. They talk. They meet regularly, the man becoming increasingly obsessive about seeing her, and the story unfolds.

Rourke uses repeated prose to great effect, giving the novel a "real life" feel and a firm sense of place. I marvelled at how he described the canal so beautifully, with many fresh images. He's skilled at creating snapshots of London life, from a woman yelling at her dog, to a group of youths whose menace crackles off the page. His writing is damn fine, and to my delight it became a novel I didn't want to put down.

Pulp event

2011-07-07T11:17:00.001+01:00

I will be reading short stories tomorrow night as part of a free Pulp Net event in Piccadilly. Details are here at Lane Ashfeldt's blog, where she is also asking for "ideas for how Pulp Net might usefully regenerate in the future, from your point of view…"
I would love to see Pulp emerge stronger than ever. And don't forget that its archives are home to many wonderful short stories which you can browse here.

Creative writing sessions at Brighton Waterstones

2011-07-06T13:50:00.001+01:00

I promised a shout out for these new creative writing workshops that will be held at Waterstones, Brighton on the first Thursday of each month. (So, yeah, the first one is tomorrow!) I'm not personally involved but it sound fun, and hey, these sessions are free!

Waterstones Writing Workshops Present ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Join us for some creative writing fun to celebrate midsummer madness in all its forms. We’ll be using playful writing exercises to stimulate your imagination. Think too much Pimms - getting lost in the woods - strange transformations – sunburn – sunscreen – lovers’ tiffs and full moon parties.

Waterstones Writing Workshops are FREE creative writing sessions hosted by popular creative writing teacher – Wendy Ann Greenhalgh – AKA Story Scavenger. Join us on the 1^st Thursday of every month 5.30 – 7pm in the Waterstones café for fun and inspiring creative writing games and exercises - all linked to a theme. We welcome writers whatever their level of experience – absolute beginners to Nobel Laureates!

Find out more about Wendy Ann Greenhalgh at www.storyscavenger.blogspot.com

Or if you have any questions you can email: storyscavenger@gmail.com

She Was Glitter and Shine at Beat the Dust

2011-06-24T20:35:00.001+01:00

Thanks to Melissa Mann of Beat the Dust for publishing my story "She Was Glitter and Shine" this month. There's hardly any dialogue as the main character hides herself away and has little contact with the world, which is a tad tricky in fiction as it makes for clumps of reported prose. Anyway, it's there if you fancy a read. As is the splendid "Fade to Black" by Jo Mortimer, and plenty more cracking words too.

Oh, and I had such fun choosing my dream 5 Glasto acts. I was going to be more classic and go for Janis Joplin, Faith no More, Elvis, Billy Bragg and Bunty Chunks but instead went for what I'd like to hear right now.

Dogsbodies and Scumsters - stories by Alan McCormick and illustrations by Jonny Voss - review

2011-06-08T17:03:00.001+01:00

Dogsbodies and Scumsters is a new short story collection from Roastbooks - a publisher that designs interesting and gorgeous books (Nik Perring’s ‘Not So Perfect’ for example.)

If I understand correctly, the Dogsbodies part refers to the longer stories, written by Alan McCormick, and the Scumsters are illustrations by Jonny Voss which McCormick has responded to.

McCormick has an easy way with language. His characters sound believable even when they are doing unbelievable things, and they feel like the people we glimpse as we go about our lives. Maybe we warily keep an eye on the angry looking bloke in the pub, or cross the road to avoid that nice enough woman who seems a bit odd. Here McCormick gives them a voice.

“Real Mummy” was, in my opinion, the most potent story here, and the narrator’s innocent voice recalling how her daughter was taken away from her is very powerful. I was glad to revisit the character in “Granny ♥ Terry Wogan” where her relationship with a taxi driver -

Mister Haji - rings true.

“...when you’re sixty all the streets look the same: dirty and full of ugly people with unwashed hair, clutching carrier bags and babies.”

“Howl” describes its main character, Eddie, a terrifying alcoholic bully, in such a simple, effective way that he remained in my head long after the story was finished. In “Deal or No Deal” Brenda’s kindest exchanges every day are not with her family but with the polite Mr Patel in the corner shop. It’s the plausibility that makes some stories so damn sad.

I didn’t get much out of the Scumsters parts. I like the illustrations, they are a fun way of letting some air into the book, but the accompanying prose seems a little throwaway in comparison with the Dogsbodies. They reminded me of writing exercises, but fans of the absurd will enjoy how McCormick has interpreted Voss’s drawings.

Link love

2011-06-01T12:39:00.001+01:00

Two very different interviews and approaches - both enormously comforting to read -

David Vann at Helen Heath (Thanks to Emma Martin for drawing my attention to this.)

and

Jennifer Egan at Speakeasy

Highlights for me are pretty much everything Vann says, and this from Egan :

I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.

Matt Kinnison

2011-05-07T20:30:00.001+01:00

Matt died three years ago today. It seems a long time and no time at all. I have a glass of bubbly wine and I am toasting Matt and all who miss him. His friend Andie posted this track on her facebook page in memory of him - it's a track that Matt wrote for Cindytalk and, as far as I know, the instrumentation is Matt's and the vocals are Gordon Sharp's. (If anyone knows different please let me know.)

Want to know my favourite short stories?

2011-05-06T16:39:00.000+01:00

Well, you could always head over to Dan Powell's blog and read his interview with me.
My Life in Short Fiction.

Bookseller notes

2011-05-02T17:55:00.001+01:00

The first customer of the day asks me where the book he has ordered is. I tell him it has not yet arrived. It has only been a day since the order was placed. He is furious, he yells, repeatedly points at me, yells some more. “You are my target,” he shouts. “You are my target.”

A customer asks if we have a novel by Vernon Little - something about a dog? I ask if possibly she means a book called Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. She is adamant that is not it. It is by a man called Vernon Little. It’s about a dog. Could it be The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time? I ask - knowing how unlikely that is. No. My colleague goes to the shelf and brings Vernon God Little over to the counter. That’s the one she says. No thanks, no apology.

A man is dragging his toddler down the stairs.

“Deal with it,” he says. “Get over it. That’s life.”

A woman asks for a book that may help her understand why three of her kids have attempted suicide. I don’t think there’s a book in the world that can do that. I recommend contacting CAMHS or MIND. She asks me if I can meet her for coffee as I’m the first person who has shown her any kind of understanding.

A young, beautiful couple come in and ask if we have a biography on a particular British actor. The man tells me he is a huge fan of the actor in question. I notice how he dresses like him and has similar stubble. Yes, a new biography is available and we have a copy on our third floor. The couple are elated. The man punches the air.

“I knew it,” he says. “I dreamt this would happen.”

“He does that,” his girlfriend says. “He has dreams that come true.”

She Smiles at Corium Magazine

2011-04-04T12:29:00.000+01:00

Corium Magazine's first anniversary issue is now live and features some pretty damn fine words. Please check out Donna D Vittuci's story In The Good Light.

I am chuffed to have a tiny fiction there: She Smiles.

Review of Insignificant Gestures by Jo Cannon

2011-04-01T19:10:00.000+01:00

Jo Cannon “Insignificant Gestures” published by Pewter Rose Press

The old advice to stick to what you know in writing is often ridiculed for its restrictive nature. I think, however, that Jo Cannon may well have written what she knows in her debut collection, Insignificant Gestures. Fortunately for the reader it appears that as a GP who works in Sheffield, who has worked in Africa, and who is a sensitive, intelligent woman, Jo Cannon “knows” rather a lot.

The collection opens with the title story “Insignificant Gestures” which begins:

“When I returned from Malawi I retrained as a psychiatrist. I never wanted to smell blood again, or the sweet nail varnish odour of starvation.”

I thought I knew where the story was heading as the fictional doctor remembers Celia, the girl who worked as his servant and “came with the house that came with my job.” I was wrong, there is so much more to this than I expected, layer upon layer creating a whole world of connections, regret, devastation, ruin and death in just over 7 pages.

It’s a powerful story to follow.

Human suffering hurts wherever it occurs, and that seems to be at the heart of this collection. Characters are displaced, or searching. Pain and grief are expressed without sentimentality.

That’s not to say there isn’t much needed light and levity.

Aunty Doris is a wonderful creation who looms large in Evo-Stik and the Bigamist.

“Subsisting on jam sandwiches and syrupy tea, she grew fat. Her legs like two elephant trunks, wrinkled and veiny, were permanently raised on a pouffe.”

And “New Look” features a protagonist whose sense of mischief helps highlight her own search for place.

In “The Alphabet Diet” Mick, the obese main character, loses weight in an extraordinary way. It’s a daft tale, probably necessary as contrast, but again is underpinned by a serious issue.

Some characters are created so deftly that the reader believes in them.

Rosa in “Staying Power” says:

“Wherever we go, we’re too many. In small spaces the children seem to expand, filling every corner.”

“No building contains us, we spill over. Other houses in the street hold three or four people, ours twenty or thirty.”

I saw Rosa, and her assortment of relatives. She is magnificent and I am glad that her story ends with hope.

Random observation - People run, a lot! I imagine that Jo Cannon must be a runner herself because it features so often.

Jo has won many competitions with her stories and it has just been announced that “Insignificant Gestures” is on the long-list for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize (alongside Polly Samson, Vanessa Gebbie, Nik Perring, Susannah Rickards and Helen Simpson amongst others. Full list here.)

Female book reviewers and so on

2011-03-22T15:43:00.003Z

I've recently read a few interesting articles on the subject of female book reviewing. The first was on Suzi Feay's blog: "Where are all the female reviewers?" which was a response to a Guardian article by Benedicte Page on the dominance of male writers in the books world. The second was by The Independent's Literary Editor, Katy Guest, who repeated Feay's question here, which led to Feay posting a useful guide to being a "Great Reviewer".

I do wonder if men have more confidence in putting their views forwards. At the risk of generalising I think most men I know wouldn’t see being called opinionated as insulting whereas perhaps some women would see that as a negative? Amongst people I know "in real life" there are several film bloggers and several music bloggers, only one of whom is female. Does that mean anything?

I feel a little hesitant when I review books. I feel unqualified to offer my opinion as anything other than an amateur and despite being paid to review it has genuinely never occurred to me to offer a review to anywhere that has not asked. I used to imagine that as I am rather opinionated I would be unafraid to write the truth. Turns out that I hate the thought of offending anyone. If I read a book I loathe I prefer to keep it to myself. Or rant to friends. It goes against the grain to be so coy, my *thing* is truth. If I think a book badly written, poorly plotted and so on I tend to think, oh, it's utter shit but someone spent time writing that and I wouldn't want to upset them. What's up with that? The younger me would scoff at this soggy old me. I even went so far as to set up an anonymous blog so that I could be honest secretly, but couldn't even commit to that.

I have written gently negative reviews. Once an editor asked me to change one saying that they preferred to show more support for new writers, and a couple of times a different editor asked me to make a review more positive. Yesterday I read a brilliant review by Steve Finbow at Bookmunch. What a terrible review, how refreshing to read. I could never. Is that a gender thing or an individual thing?

I did once write a review here on my blog in which I stated that a particular book was such dreary toss I couldn't comprehend how it was published. The author turned out to be good friends with a group of my online writing pals. I felt embarrassed and a little silly. Why?

I'm wary of gender based assumptions but I believe that more women read men than men read women. Certainly in the bookshop a female customer is often more receptive to being shown recommendations from either gender than some men are. Does that translate to men not taking female reviewers seriously? Then we're back looking at the whole industry which does not revere its serious women writers in the same way it does its men. Those literary heavyweights are always blokes, aren’t they? McEwan, Amis, Rushdie, DeLillo, Roth et al.

Leyla Sanai reviews for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday:

"I do think some men are, perhaps subconsciously, more dismissive of female opinions and female novelists. There was an interesting thread in a book forum I used to belong to where people discussed the male: female ratio of the books they read. I was one of the few who had pretty much a 1: 1 ratio, I seem to recall, and I still do - not because I consciously strive to seek out books by women but because I can't imagine not wanting to read books by women. It's always myopic to generalise but I think some male readers - and reviewers - aren't much attracted to books that aren't dynamically plot-based, or don't play with language or meta-fiction or explore 'great' philosophical themes in life - sex, death, and so on. This has always amazed me: while many female novelists may not ostensibly tackle these major themes, many of them are just as (if not more) insightful in their writing about everyday life: family dynamics, relationships, parenthood, ageing parents, love, hate, and so on.

That sounds like a gross generalisation because of course many women don't write about these themes, and many men do, but I suppose people tend to write more about what they have direct experience of, and like it or lump it, many women do experience more of the interior of family life than many men, who have traditionally worked away from home. I just don't understand how any reader, male or female, could fail to be blown away by the writing of authors like Maggie O'Farrell, Tessa Hadley, Julie Orringer, Rose Tremain, Hilary Mantel. It's funny how the latter two only seemed to gain major acclaim when they tackled more 'male' themes - yet their books have always had that richness and depth, the insights, the wit and fabulous prose."

I suspect that a woman is expected by some to only be competent in reviewing women's books. Dismissed. Like Leyla, I read a mix - it's what appeals, what's good, etc, not based on gender of author. My favourite writer is a woman. That does not mean I'm not blown away by wonderful male writing too. Everything Leyla says rings true except my choice of strong literary women would differ from hers, showing what wealth of talent and variety of styles are available because...guess what...each woman is an individual.

Leyla Sanai says "Some (but not by all means all) men tend to dismiss any novel based around family life as 'women's fiction'. Of course there are many women who don't like 'domestic' fiction, and that's absolutely fair enough too. Personally, I get uneasy about categories: I used the term 'domestic' fiction in a Hadley review recently but made sure to use inverted commas because I was being semi-ironic - although her plotlines have been criticised by some reviewers as being too small in scope, I think what's important is the writing, and whether a writer can bring a subject to life and make reading a joy. I have read some very poor family/relationship orientated fiction as well as much great stuff, just as I have read many brilliant novels based around intricate plots/adventure/action. Categorising is the enemy; some men won't read books by women because they think 'mothersandbabies/singlegirllookingforlove'. And that's just so myopic. Personally, I wouldn't read half of the stuff on bestseller lists in Smiths, and they probably include as much lightweight chicklit/'domfic' as they do inane action thrillers like Dan Brown. What I was trying to say is that I don't judge books on the gender of their author, nor on subject matter, but on the quality of the writing and the ability of the author to be intelligent, insightful, perceptive, smart, funny and original, and to bring characters and situations to life so that I'm completely immersed.

Some writers can make ironing hilarious, others render murder tedious."

True, yes?

I suppose what is important is that opinions are expressed with spark and integrity. We need to be honest in reviews to inspire trust. I do think we need a variety of voices, male and female, so that we have a choice of reviews. It's good to hear dissenting voices if there is a reason for that dissent but if it's just ego wank it's pointless.

Thoughts?

Edit: Thanks to Jane Bradley for this pertinent link to an article she wrote at For Books Sake.

This is the bobbins part

2011-03-14T09:45:00.001Z

Life is... challenging. Super challenging. It keeps getting shitter. It is heartsmash right now. Instead of gazing into the hell of it I am going to shine light on a few things that have made me feel a little less broken:

I am appreciating the blackness of the black finepoint Sharpies. It is difficult when the ink goes through to the other side of a page but the satisfaction of the deep black letters it forms is good.

I am enjoying way too many extra strength ibuprofen tablets. The ones I have are like Smarties: round, sweet candy for my near ever present headaches.

I love to hear anything from Kuzhali Manickavel because she is so much cooler than you/me/us. Her latest blog post includes this quote:
"Special salute to the lady assholes out there that remind us that misogyny is not a dude thing, it's an asshole thing and just because you have a uterus does not mean you can't be an asshole."
Damn tooting!

I like how things are shaping up at HOUSEFIRE.

I'm reading the new Ali Smith novel. (Showing off.)

The Mentalist is back on. Hurray. Cho is by far my favourite character. I like his deadpan everything. Jane is aces too but Cho time is the best.

I have to mention that I've been entirely obsessed with Eminem's Recovery. I am a feminist, unafraid to state that, and yet I've been listening to Recovery like I'm an addict. It's hard to square that with myself so I don't. I respond to the thrill of his speed, clarity, truths, wordblends, pain, melody and so on. It's inspirational - he's so, so good and I want that for myself. Whenever he appears with other rappers he seems to totally be better than them. All of them. And intensity - whooooo.

No love is awesomeness. From 3 minutes in Eminem builds and builds and I love it just as much every time I hear it.

Things are coming back to life in my garden. I bought a tree last year. Well, it will eventually be a tree, I hope. Right now it's a rather weedy looking couple of sticks but I can see teeny buds on those bare arms and I'm anticipating something hopeful.

I have a bird party tree in my front garden. Throughout winter I've put up fat snacks, peanuts, and seed feeders, and now it's definitely a hang out. I like the sounds.

One thing vs. another vs. another.

2011-02-20T17:21:00.001Z

Heavy demands on my time this year mean I don't get to participate in online groups and discussions in the same way I have in the past. I do still google read many blogs but it's easier to whizz through and kid myself I'm keeping up than stop and comment. So, I'm a lousy blog pal but I do still read, and I comment when I can.

A few posts recently interested me. One from Vanessa Gebbie's blog entitled: The Thorny Issue of Writers and their Muses, and the Sex thereof...

I did write a lengthy response on Vanessa's blog but it got eaten up not once but twice. Darn.

She's a skilled writer so I assume she made deliberate word choices here.

Ethel Rohan recently put a call out for women writers to be more supportive of each other.

And Suzi Feay asked women writers to perhaps "...(take) one for the Sisterhood" over at her blog.

Interesting reading.

4 things

2011-02-14T15:45:00.001Z

I read my new story - "The Mothers" - at Sparks and it is now available to read here.

I am chuffed to have a story in the second issue of Fractured West. It's a delicious publication - cute but with bite.

This is how gorgeous my short story case at Brighton Waterstone's looks:

And this is what's in my new "Brief Live's - Unforgettable Words" case. (I prefer to call it Dead Brilliant but yeah, that's probably bad taste.)

The First Time at HOUSEFIRE

2011-02-05T22:52:00.000Z

I received an invitation to write a story for new magazine HOUSEFIRE. They had specific instructions about what they wanted:

"Your story should be called "The first time". Your story should involve romance in some way. The story can be absurd, or surreal, or structurally unconventional. It can not involve violence, or popular monsters (vampires, zombies, et cetera). It can not have anything to do with drugs. It can not have anything to do with food. It should not mention dogs or children. Nothing conventional."

If you'd like to see what I came up with please read The First Time.

Thanks to Riley Michael Parker for asking me. I'm glad to be part of this and amongst some pretty darn cool writers.

Ethel Rohan

2011-01-23T09:08:00.001Z

One of my favourite stories of Ethel Rohan's is Shatter at FRiGG. Maybe it's because the main character feels so real. I recognise her and am touched.

"She chewed harder on the side of her thumb. Maybe she should call her husband back and tell him to forget the chips. Hardly any of her clothes fit anymore. Her mouth watered. What was living if she couldn’t have her few treats every evening, some chips with wine before dinner after a hard day’s work. She thought to phone her mother, but felt too tired. She really should call her sister, too, one of these days. They hadn’t spoken in months."

I appreciate Rohan's skill at conjuring with reality and the ache of life, saying so much in a clean, crisp, concise way. That the title of her collection of short stories is Cut Through the Bone seems incredibly fitting as that is exactly how she works her words. It's a must read book as far as I'm concerned. Congratulations too, Ethel, for being one of The Story Prize's "Notable 2010 Short Story Collections"

Notes To Keep a Life Going at Metazen

2011-01-10T22:22:00.000Z

My story "Notes To Keep a Life Going" has been published at Metazen. The story originates from the weekly Flash Factory challenge at Zoetrope where the remit was to write a story using list form. My (absent) character felt very real to me and it was fun to try and convey her in this way.

I like how it looks up at Metazen too.

Emma Forrest - "Your Voice in my Head" review

2011-01-06T23:03:00.004Z

Wow, Emma Forrest is just so fascinating. Truly. Mesmerising. Heartbreakyachey. Gorgeously sexy. I was greedy for this book, guzzling down her terrible sadness like it was some kind of delicious. Which makes me what? A disgusting voyeur? An empathetic reader?

Emma Forrest was a journalist in the Sunday Times when she was 16. I read her in my parents paper, already older than her and envious. I couldn’t have written anything then - I have needed to exist for years before my words could carry any weight. Ms Forrest was friends with Julie Burchill back when I could imagine nothing cooler. More importantly, it seemed she could write effortlessly.

I read one of her novels - “Namedropper” though I can’t recall anything about it, then she dropped off my radar. When I got this proof I read the blurb at the back which says if you loved “The Bell Jar” and “ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” you will relate to this. Why yes, I do love both those books. Hmm.

Forrest has had a life full of pain. Literal pain, where she cut herself or allowed men to hurt her, and mental pain, where suicidal impulses torment her.

Her memoir is a book of grief and loss. She mourns the death of her psychologist and the death of her relationship with a man she believed to be Mr Right. We don’t need to know who this guy is, we know (well, most of us) what it is to believe in a relationship and have it end without our understanding. The fact that her guy happens to be a super famous movie star only adds an extra frission to the voyeurism.

We can accuse her of self absorption but she’s got there already. If you hate her, well, she’s already hated herself harder. When she’s with the movie star his fans bitch about her online and she finds herself drawn to their insults. The message seems to be that you can’t hurt her more than she can hurt herself.

She writes her way, dazzlingly, through the grief, and emerges, I can only hope, healed.

I read this book at a very pertinent time and appreciate her openness about mental health. This paragraph helped make things click into place regarding someone dear to me:

“Mania flows like a river approaching a waterfall. Depression is a stagnant lake. There are dead things floating and the water has the same blue-black tinge as your lips. You stay completely still because you’re so afraid of what is brushing your leg (even though it could be nothing because your mind is already gone).”

I also adored her descriptions of her parents. Her mother’s anxiety chimes with me. I too am able to turn something calm into something very worrying.

It’s not Plath nor Eggers, it’s Forrest, and it’s very, very good.

Order from Waterstones online or available in stores. (Use your Waterstone's stores people...don't lose 'em.)

And watch this interview with Ms Forrest.

Salted 2010 - more random than ever.

2010-12-31T23:25:00.000Z

I do this annual best of the year with salt thing. Well I did. It's a random collection of good things from the year and I think I've written one the last five years maybe. This blog is my writer/reader/reviewer/lit blog. I no longer keep a personal journal though I hand-wrote a diary from 11 until 31ish. I like to get my old diaries out of the cupboard occasionally and re-read. There are some familiar passages, many deeply cringey parts, and some unexpected forgotten details that suddenly blaze a path to my past self. This blog will never be like that; I am myself here, only I rarely discuss truly personal things. That's why this year I have been so quiet.

My role as mummy has dominated a year of crisis. I've had people I thought were friends drop me and my family from their lives. I've been stung by judgemental attitudes and ignorant assumptions. I've had to prove myself over and over. I've lost heart, faith and patience. I've been told I'm not alone and then been left alone. I've been told help was coming only for it never to arrive. I've watched those I love fall apart and break. I've tried to patch them together. I've been ill and been told that stress won’t help. Ha! At one truly dark point I lost hope. Oh, there were several truly dark points actually.

In the midst of this turdy year there have been flashes of shine. Old friends have reappeared, new ones have been made. Unexpected people calmly accept situations and apparently see it as no big thing to offer friendship and support. Out of the blue an email arrives and sparkles. A phone call, a smile, a text, a blog comment - these things matter when you're hanging on by a thread. Thank you to all who have helped get me through. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Time for writing has been rare but some words have been written. I am most proud of being published in PANK, wigleaf and Neon this year. I made the final 10 in The Glass Woman Prize. I was on a few longlists/shortlists.

Other good things include being a first reader for PANK - something I view as a privilege and invaluable learning experience - and working in a fantastic online writers group.

So, bests of the year? I really have no idea as the year is one big mash in my noggin. I've loved the Mumford and Sons album, and Eminem's Recovery. I've enjoyed watching Sherlock but can't remember much other TV. I've read thousands of short stories. Stand outs are from Kirsty Logan, Roxane Gay and Susannah Rickards. I discovered Breece D'J Pancake (and named my rescue kitty after him.) I bought the much fetéd Lydia Davis collection but have yet to crack its spine.

I had to cancel my Arvon trip and in the whole year I doubt I wrote a single word of the novel. In my mind it twists and changes. It can't have the ending I originally planned, can it? Short stories swim and blur. Flash fiction became a necessity. I need to write to stay sane but I have no time.

I wish for 2011 to be a year of kindness. I hope to write. I readjust my goals with the reality of my life. I wish you well.

Three things.

2010-12-12T23:06:00.000Z

1) Vanessa Gebbie has signed a deal with Bloomsbury for her novel "The Coward's Tale" to be published in hardback in November 2011 and paperback 2012. This is simply wonderful news. Vanessa is a hugely talented writer: uncompromising, determined, and inspirational. Many congratulations, Vanessa!

2) In other news there's an interesting discussion at Jane Smith's How Publishing Really Works blog about the Brit Writer's Awards and their recent invitation to apply for a chance to join their publishing programme (where for a fee of £1,795 fifteen writers will be guaranteed to be published with a "...top publisher before Christmas 2011"). Hmmm.

3) I have deemed myself the anti-fest. Truth is that it's been a shitty year and I'll be glad to see the back of it even though I can't see things changing much in the new year. Whilst I'm glad of the break from school/work grind I find it hard to participate in something I view so warily. Christmas seems a pacifier to the workers, a time to kick back and indulge in too much of whatever it is you want to indulge in. And at the same time we prop up our capitalist society by spending way too much money on stuff in a bid to show those we care for that we love them. So, the most festive I'm going to get is by sharing this awesome video with you (cheers to Big Adam for bringing it to my attention.) It's Slayer, it's Reign In Blood, it's Christmas lights, it's amazing!

A post.

2010-12-12T22:34:00.000Z

Some sad news this week that Cami Park has died. I didn't know her but we were facebook friends and she was a writer that I saw and admired around the internet. She blogged here and I recommend you read her words and I send my sincere condolences to her family and friends.

Wee bit of nice news:

2010-12-07T08:49:00.001Z

My story "Yeah, yeah it takes two" made the top 10 in The Glass Woman Prize.

(Please be kind and ignore my typo on the 3:AM page if you do click through!)

Polly Samson "Perfect Lives" review

2010-11-29T12:01:00.000Z

As I sometimes write brief book reviews for WBQ magazine, or squish thoughts onto bookseller recommends cards, I thought that perhaps I'd occasionally post some reviews under 100 words here & on twitter. First up is a gorgeous new short story collection by Polly Samson.

"Perfect Lives"

Samson's sumptuous prose brings a piano tuner, an artist, a pianist, a betrayed wife, (or two), mothers, daughters, sons, lovers, and husbands – all inhabitants of a seaside town - to life. The characters swim in and out of each other's stories and we go beneath their public faces to reveal secret hurts and hopes. There is humour amongst sadness, and many witty dénouements. Just when it all feels a little too slight Samson delivers devastating knowledge with the lightest of touches in The Rose Before the Vine. This is a collection to take time over and savour.

Susannah Rickards is super smart!

2010-11-10T18:38:00.000Z

I'm lucky to be part of a very small writing group which includes Susannah Rickards. Seriously, she is an outstanding writer and offers the best, the absolute best, critiques of others fiction that I have ever known. Her debut collection of short stories has just been published. Hot Kitchen Snow (even the title is awesomeness, no?) is available from Waterstones and Salt (and other less lovely places too I'm sure.) She recently won the Scott Prize and was commended in The Olive Cook Award and has had many writing successes. I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of her book and will review it when I have read, absorbed and enjoyed it. I've read enough of her stories to say with certainty that I will be raving about it. For now I want to draw your attention to her guest posts on Emma Darwin's blog, particularly part 2:

"The Hoops You Must Jump Through: an insider's view of writing competitions"

Susannah shares her knowledge of how to catch a first reader's eye with y/our short story. As always her insight is thoughtful and helpful. I'd go as far as saying this is fairly essential advice and there it is, just hanging out on the internet for free. Go get it!

Who is going to pay money to read y/our stories?

2010-10-25T09:31:00.000+01:00

We write our words, we create our stories, and we want to be read. (Not all writing is to be read, of course, but for this post I assume the “we” here to refer to those of us pursuing a career in fiction writing.)

So, we write our words.

And then?

We submit our story to an editor, an agent, a publisher.

The dream is that our novel/short story collection is published, right? That we might get to see our book on the shelves of a bookshop and available online? That sometime we might earn money from our talent? We’re not talking about writing as a hobby, we’re talking about craft and graft, years of experience, reading and learning. We’re very good at what we do. We’ve won short story competitions, prizes, awards. We’ve been published extensively in quality literary journals online. Our work appears in anthologies. And now we are ready to be published in book form.

Who is going to pay money to read our words?

I work in a large bookshop. I get people asking me to stock and/or review their books. I know several authors who have been concerned that they won’t get their book stocked by Waterstones and it becomes a holy grail. If only they could get their book on those shelves their book would sell. But would it? I ask again, who will pay money to read y/our story? Why would they?

Who are you? How have they heard of you? How many people walk into a bookstore and browse the spines of all fiction titles until something looks appealing? Who will see you there, spine on, an unknown author, and choose you?

Or, what if a bookseller displays you face out? Will people buy your book then? If you get a bookseller recommendation, that’d help, right?

Except I can tell you from experience that sometimes it can, and sometimes it just doesn’t. If the book is good; unknown and yet enticing, then a bookseller review gets it into a customers hand for that all important, albeit brief, look. They’ll scan the blurb on the back and then flick the pages letting them open in random spots and speed read some prose. They’ll decide, fast.

I have displayed similar positive reviews on two separate collections of short stories on display for over a year. We have sold way more of one than the other. Both are good in my opinion. Not all time favourites, but solid works. The big difference it seems is the cover. One is unexciting, nothing that hasn’t been seen before, whereas the other is intriguing and striking. Can it really come down to the cover? Yeah, I think so. And the quality of the paper. People shy away from those that look self-published.

If you’re a short story writer maybe you’ve been prepared for slow sales. The common wisdom is that short stories don’t sell (except they do), so let’s turn to novels: I put 5 copies of a novel face out on our shelves over a year ago. No review. Over a year later we have not sold a single copy. The writer of this novel has a high online profile, is a good writer, actively engages with promoting his work and has received decent reviews on various blogs and sites. The theme is relevant, and I have little doubt that were it by a “name” author it would sell. If it was placed in our 3 for 2 promotion and available in every branch it would sell. If someone from The Guardian or The Telegraph reviewed it positively then customers would come in and ask for it. If it were discussed on TV or radio it would attract customers.

The truth is that you can be a good writer and achieve your dream of being published and yet not sell many books. One book does not automatically lead to another, talent doesn’t automatically lead to sales and neither does having a book on the shelf of a bookshop.

What can you do? I’m not sure, but there are a couple of things that I’ve seen work well. I’ll write a follow up post soon.

wigleaf - woot woot!

2010-10-06T10:10:00.001+01:00

I have a tiny thing up at wigleaf - Prayer for a Daughter - and one of those postcards too (which sounds snarkier now than when I wrote it. Funny how words can change when you're not looking at them.)

I rather adore wigleaf so am chuffed.

I have decided...

2010-10-03T16:11:00.001+01:00

...that David Vann's "Legend of a Suicide" and Breece D'J Pancake's "Collected Stories" make perfect partners: cream/cream, turtle/fox, suicide/suicide, sense of place/sense of place, incredible prose/incredible prose.

What do you think?

Wabi Sabi and The Brighton Creative Writing Sessions

2010-09-30T21:41:00.000+01:00

I haven't been writing for a while. Life is seriously sucking arse - my sons aren’t well, I’m ill, we struggle on, and I consider it a good day if we are all breathing at the end of it. So, no space for writing, though in my head sentences form and jostle for attention. I tell ‘em they have to wait. On Sunday, however, I was given the opportunity to go and play with words for a day.

James Burt is running a series of writing workshops with Ellen de Vries under the umbrella of The Brighton Creative Writing Series and he invited me along to a session. Luckily, although they are usually held on a Saturday, this was on a Sunday (as a Saturday bookseller I can never do any of the fun writerly things that happen in Brighton at the weekend, sulk).

The header for the session was “Wabi Sabi” - a term I was unfamiliar with but which is defined on their website thus: “Wabi Sabi is a Japanese tradition which celebrates broken and fragmented things, things coming into life and dying things. It lends itself well to writing from landscape; it’s a new way of looking into the cracks in the world around you. “Just lean into the crack / and it will tremble ever so nicely. Notice how it sparkles down there”. Bjork.”

I was a little hesitant - I’m not so great at joining in and sharing work face to face and when Ellen Di Vries started by asking us to select a bean sprout and imagine we were the bean, and to write how that felt, I’ll be honest, I cringed. That’s the kind of stuff I hate to do. I tried. Then we read, and you know, it was fine. All the other participants were...nice (rubbish forbidden word, but fitting). No massive ego driven loud voice trying to take charge, no mememe attitude, no hierarchy.

The whole event took place in an artist’s studio (the artist being Jake Spicer, who made a brief appearance at the beginning and impressed us with a tale of chasing off would be thieves with a mallet). Ellen led the session and she is likable, engaging and enthusiastic about sharing her knowledge. They had arranged a table with suitably Wabi Sabi items which we selected an item from to write about. (I chose a petal.)

One exercise was to write about something ugly, read it out and then rewrite it making the ugly beautiful. I find it way easier to write ugly than pretty. We were sent out into the corridors of New England House to look for suitably Wabi Sabi places to add post it note messages to. (A smell in a corridor that brings back memories, a face formed by screws, tiny port holes that reveal metered numbers, an origami person.) And again out at lunch to collect detritus that we used to create beautiful little booklets of fragmented prose and juxtaposed objects (stones, leaves, sticks, an iced gem that had lost its ice!)

We watched videos and listened to music. We discussed lost things and wrote about them. Wabi Sabi is about impermanence, insubstantiality, fragility, broken things, cracks, and the shine that can be found there. It's a melancholy beauty I think, and ultimately it is death (maybe?).

The session lasted 6 hours but the time didn’t drag or fly, it gently passed in pleasant reflection, knowledge and wordiness, and I came home with some new words, a hand made booklet, a cool new story idea, and a few new writing chums. Win!

I think there are only two sessions left but there will be more. Contact details and stuff is here.

And here's the table of inspiration complete with our wee booklets:

IBRC Blog Award nonsense

2010-09-24T19:04:00.002+01:00

Six weeks or so ago I received an email with a subject line "Blog Award Notice: Your Blog Has Been Awarded By IBRC"

Oh?

The email continues:

"During the month of July, the International Blogging Recognition Council (IBRC) had the pleasure of reviewing your blog A Salted. Your blog was referred to IBRC through our Refer-A-Blog program. "Sweeties Like Radioactive Worms" was the topic that the Council reviewed. Based on the review, the Council has recommended that your blog receive IBRC’s designation of “Recognized Blog”. IBRC reserves this honor to those blogs that effectively connects with the audience and promotes the sharing of ideas and experiences.

We invite you to visit our website at www.ibrcblog.org to learn more about IBRC and our “Recognized Blog” award. Congratulations on your accomplishment."

Why, thank you IBRC. I wonder who nominated me.

Clicking on the link takes you to the site of the International Blogging Recognition Council. Sounds fancy.

And there one is invited to "Get Recognised" for the one off fee of $45.00.(Please read in sarcastic voice) A small price to pay for the right to put a button on your site that states you've "Been Recognised by IBRC".

They have a donate button which leads to this "IBRC promotes the belief that we are all one global community. Below are several charities that are making a positive impact across the world. Please consider donating to one of these groups." And then list several known, good charities who I'm sure will not be pleased in being listed on this shonky site. I assume the presence of the charities is supposed to lull us into thinking good work is done here?

Sounds like a right old lot of dodgy nonsense. I wish I'd got round to posting this sooner as I expect as many bloggers as possible were targeted. Hope nobody got scammed.

Psst! Wanna see my short story display case?

2010-09-16T12:59:00.000+01:00

Regular readers will know that I occasionally post pics of "my" short story display case. (Of course, when I say "my" I mean books selected by me and displayed for sale at Waterstone's bookshop in Brighton.)

So, here's how it looks RIGHT NOW!

On the top we have Just When Stories all profits of which go to WildAid and the David Shepherd Foundation. Next up is Fame by Daniel Kehlmann, and then Stories to get you Through the Night which is the most perfect gift book I can think of. It's beautifully done and offers quality stories from Katherine Mansfield, Alice Munro, Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Haruki Murakami, Wilkie Collins, Kate Chopin, Elizabeth Gaskell, The Brothers Grimm, John Cheever, Arthur Conan Doyle, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, Helen Simpson, Richard Yates, James Lasdun, Martin Amis, Angela Carter, Somerset Maugham and Julian Barnes.

On the first shelf we have, as we always will as long as I am running this, the wonderful Collected Stories of Janice Galloway. I'm not sure if you'll be able to read my review card in the picture, suffice to say I truly believe Galloway's prose to be perfect. Next along is The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore - another MUST for any short story fan. Then A. L Kennedy What Becomes (seriously people, this top shelf is chock full of awesome talent.) Then there is The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, which contains the 6 stories published during his life, and 6 unpublished. It's harsh knowing that's all there ever will be. These are such vivid stories, rooted deeply in the place of his birth, rural West Virginia.

On the second shelf is Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff, The Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology 3 (which we had to reorder almost as soon as it came in!), Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and If I Loved You I would Tell You This by Robin Black (the title story is wonderful.)

The third shelf begins with Simon Van Booy The Secret Lives of People in Love which I haven't read yet but am looking forward to, David Vann Legend of a Suicide which is one of those rare, special books that people urge on each other: Have you read? No? You should...

I have just added Virginia Woolf A Haunted House and other stories, it seems such an autumnal book. Then there is the inimitable (tho' plenty try) Irvine Welsh with Reheated cabbage.

The bottom shelf begins with The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg, then the splendid Instruction Manual For Swallowing by Adam Marek, the much praised (and still on my list to be read) Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower and finally Wilful Creatures by Aimee Bender.

Pretty darn enticing, huh?

Helen Garner "The Spare Room"

2010-09-10T15:37:00.002+01:00

I’ve just finished “The Spare Room” by Helen Garner. I knew that it was going to be a difficult read, how could it be anything but, telling the story of two old friends, one who is dying of cancer and sleeps in the other’s spare room for 3 weeks. The line between fiction and fact blurs - the narrator is called Helen, and Garner is known to have nursed a terminally ill friend. It is beautifully written and shines with truth.

Garner is apparently well known for her nonfiction and sometimes controversial journalism. She has said: “Writing novels is like trying to make a patchwork quilt look seamless. A novel is made up of scraps of our own lives and bits of other people's, and things we think of in the middle of the night and whole notebooks full of randomly collected details." I love this. It seems exactly what fiction is, a hodge podge of observations, musings and feelings.

In the novel Nicola goes to stay with Helen so that she can access some alternative therapy in a nearby clinic. Helen’s scepticism is the readers, we know there is not going to be a happy ever after. The prose is crisp and clean. There’s no sentimentality. The soaked sheets, wet with urine and sweat, the brutality of cancer, and Helen’s fury, are plainly writ. Nicola’s glued on smile and polite social face are irritating and endearing as she struggles to accept her approaching death.

Garner writes: “It was barely one o’clock and I was wide awake and staring-eyed. I thought I could hear movement in the kitchen, perhaps a voice murmuring, but it was a matter of urgency that I should get to sleep before two, the hour at which the drought, the dying planet, and all the faults and meannesses of my character would arrive to haunt me.” Oh yes, I know that hour well.

In the end the character Helen can’t bear to nurse her sick friend longer than the agreed 3 weeks, she is sizzling with anger and Garner bravely displays her flaws. She is human, as real as you and I. It’s a brilliant sad, achy, and honest book.

The Spare Room at Waterstones

John Self at Asylum

2010-09-08T19:36:00.001+01:00

I just realised that John Self's Asylum blog was no longer in my blog roll. Because I always read him via Google Reader I hadn't noticed but it must have happened when I changed design and lost everyone. Anyway, it gives me a chance to bring his excellent blog to your attention. He writes possibly the best book reviews on the internets so do check him out. You may not always agree with his analysis but I guarantee you'll be impressed.

Asylum

In the absence of anything better:

2010-09-07T20:16:00.002+01:00

I wrote a big blog post review and then realised the book I'm reviewing isn't published until 2011 and it seems pointlessly premature to post. So, in the absence of anything better, I have decided to do one of those hahait'ssofunnyhowpeoplefindmyblog posts. I always like them. Which sounds sarcastic but isn't - I really always enjoy them.

So, allow me to present in random order: -
"Louise Wener naked" no explanation necessary.
"dirty tamil stories" which regularly appears!
"utterly alone" - how heartbreaking is that?
"pumpkins jim martin" is a perennial favourite as I once wrote a blog that mentioned the ex FNM axeman's new life growing giant pumpkins and now seem to be a favourite stop off point for those who wish to do the same - hence the many variations of "world class giant pumpkins".
"anal bashing" !
My number one search is apparently "Sarah Crowley" not sure who she is! (Should I be worried that Sara Crowley is about 20 in the most popular searches this last 4 weeks. Hmm.)
"anti pickel" which I have no clue about.

The rest are all fairly standard.

In other news we now have a kitty. She's a rescue cat, two years old and her name is Princess. I have now christened her Princess Pancake and kinda dropped the Princess bit. So, looky looky here's my cat and everyone likes cat pics right?

She's fitting in nicely with what I do - just looking at the computer screen and not writing.

Catch up (or at least hello)

2010-08-22T20:08:00.000+01:00

I've not had much to say lately. It's school summer holidays so my days are busy with the boys. I'm still ill with my pyoderma gangrenosum, and a chest and ear infection which has lasted 5 weeks so far. (I'm waiting for yet more blood test results/autoimmune profile etc.) I've been taking large amounts of steroids and antibiotics, I think they rather drag one down. Off everything for the moment, except some steroid cream, and I'm hoping to shake the infection, start eating more healthily, take vits, maybe slowly exercise again. Gotta keep moving forwards.

I haven't been writing.

What I have been doing is reading. Yay for words!

I'm now a reader for PANK, which you may recall is one of my favourite magazines. I've been finding it utterly fascinating being on the other side of submissions and noticing some of the recurrent themes and images. It's so cool when you read a story or poem that dazzles. And it makes me feel that in some teeny (very teeny) way I'm putting a little (very little) back into the lit community.

I returned to work yesterday after 4 weeks absence. I was feeling rather shaky but ooh, it was lovely to be back. And there were some delicious books waiting for me. Yippee! Thank you to Joe for my copy of the very enticing Bristol Short Story prize Anthology (Volume 3). We haven't yet got copies in store but they are on order. Plus I have a couple of proofs of books that I really want to read. Result.

Speaking of new publications, edition 1 of Fractured West is now available and looks super scrummy.

Erm, new bloggy look Part 2!

2010-08-07T22:34:00.000+01:00

Sorry. I've changed again. The book spines in the background were bugging me. I'm way happier with the new design (from the delicious Yummy Lolly site.)

I'm ill, again. Still. Pyoderma Gangrenosum may be Nodular Vasculitis and I've been on antibiotics then steroids to try to reduce the inflammation. I have a chest infection so they have given me more antibiotics. I ache all over. One of my sons is ill too. We've gone to my parents to try and rest. I feel adrift in their house. My dad is in the lounge watching TV, my mum goes to bed early (and watches TV in there.) Ted is in our shared bedroom so he's sleeping, and I perch wherever (kitchen/landing) and change my blog design, check facebook too often, and twitter, and feel weirdly alone. Then I cough. And cough. And sleep for an hour or so before I wake up coughing. It's not so much fun.

New bloggy look

2010-08-06T23:23:00.000+01:00

I've dispensed with the cocktail shakers and retro orangey stars. I've ditched the trim 50's typist. False advertising and all that. (The reality is I'm a fat, fucked off, po-faced bitch.)

Thoughts on the new look? I was aiming for clear and simple. It's the words that matter.

PANK interview

2010-08-04T11:22:00.001+01:00

PANK have interviewed me here about "Wombs as weapons, growing up, and period sex."

Sweeties Like Radioactive Worms

2010-07-16T15:15:00.000+01:00

I have a thing published at Beat The Dust. It is called "Sweeties like radioactive worms" and is the fictionalised account of the real life death of the author of the coffee reviews and recipe it contains. Regular readers here will guess that my co-author is Matt Kinnison.

I'm really pleased that Melissa Mann decided to run with this. I know it's a bit odd. I also know that Matt would freakin' love it!

Matt was Mr Caffeine, he loved coffee more than any other substance and was a real aficionado. A few birthdays back he sent me a package containing 4 bags of freshly ground coffee and a card containing descriptions, ratings and reviews of the coffees. He also wrote the turkish coffee recipe for me on our shared (now defunct) Live Journal. We had spoken about the possibility of us collaborating on some words. We wondered about him maybe illustrating a children's story I would write called "The Bear and the Pickle" - only when we tried, his Pickle looked too phallic for a kids book. We ran out of time. We had wildly differing styles too - he was surreal and funny and abstract and, erm, I'm none of those things. But he loved my writing and encouraged me enormously. I said I would write a coffee story for him and asked permission to use his words.

After he died I set out to write the deepest, most awesome tribute to him. And failed. And failed again. And again. The coffee story became too important. However I wrote it was wrong. It became soggy where it should have been sharp, reportage where it should have been fiction, and the more I worked at it the worse it became. I put it away.

I got it out months later, looked at its blahness, its 5,000 words of well intentioned bad, and I cut it to shreds. Sliced and diced. Spliced in Matt's words - et voila!

Matt loved William Burroughs cut ups and would love the fact that I have done this. I have no clue what anyone else will make of it, but that's not so much the point. It's the last of my Matt writings, and it feels good.

By the way, the very awesome title comes from Matt's coffee recipe. Boy did he have a way with words.

In PANK In July!

2010-07-15T21:37:00.000+01:00

I'm rather chuffed to be in one of my fave lit journals: PANK. My story "In July" is up now.

Memory, truth, Louise Wener, and me

2010-07-13T22:37:00.000+01:00

If you asked me who my best friend at primary school was, I would answer without any hesitation - Louise Wener. On the first day of school, aged 4, Louise introduced herself to me and told me we were best friends and that was that. I liked being told, it made it easy. I still wait for people to make the first move.

I have a fairly dreadful memory and the ability to wipe out huge chunks of my life. I kept diaries from age 11 and they show me a hideous version of myself that I prefer not to recall. Pre- secondary school there are no diaries, just a few mental images like grainy cine film:

Louise.

Snapshot 1.

Going to Louise's house and being nervous. I think it was my first ever play date and I may have taken Floppy (my cuddly dog) with me for comfort. Louise's older brother was there. He was incredibly tall, slim, and had brown curly hair. (Note, I have no idea if he is tall, brown curly haired etc, but in my memory he is.)

Snapshot 2.

Louise once ate cold fishfinger and ketchup sandwiches on a coach and was sick.

Snapshot 3.

One time a girl from the year above tied us up with a skipping rope and left us in the school field. I think I wet myself, I probably did; I was always wetting myself in Infants school.

Snapshot 4.

Talking to Louise's mum over the school wall (they lived right opposite.)

Snapshot 5.

We walked around the playground pretending we were being filmed and making up stories. I think we liked to imagine we were on Jackanory, or that may just have been my own private fantasy.

Then there was another girl, Susan, who appeared on the scene from nowhere and there were three of us walking around the playground. I didn’t like it and was incredibly jealous, but I lived with it. I tried to make friends with Susan (I even went to her house, just once – her family were wealthy and had stables in their garden.) I went on holiday or some such, and when I returned Louise told me they didn't want to play with me any more as I was too bossy. This was devastating. My first heartbreak, my first lesson in rejection (sadly not my last.)

I haven't seen Louise since we left secondary school (where we were in different classes and a different class was a whole world away) but last week, after all these years, I discovered that this is not how Louise remembers it.

Her memoir "Different For Girls – My True-Life Adventures in Pop" has just been published and details not only her Brit Pop success with Sleeper but also, and more interestingly for me, her childhood growing up in oh so glamorous Ilford. And in it she states that from age 4 her best friend was Bernice Cohen. Bernice Cohen! (A girl I vaguely remember from secondary school but possibly have never spoken a single word to.)

I asked my mum "Who was my best friend at Parkhill?"

"Louise Wener. You and Louise were inseparable. "

"Was there another girl?"

"Oh, yes, Maxine. The three of you were very friendly."

Maxine?

Who is Maxine?

Where are the memories of Maxine and Bernice?

Via the magic of Twitter I told Louise that I gasped when I read about Bernice because "As far as I was concerned from age 4 *you* were my best friend (until I was dumped for Susan. Sigh.)" And she replied that she had been left "Alone in that field with no one to play with while you and Susan took off together hand in hand. Sob."

Eh?

Me and Susan? That did not happen. In fact, until Daniel decided that he liked my knees and ran after me in kiss chase, I was utterly alone. So how can she tell me that she spent an entire year alone? (Hmm, where was Bernice?) Gosh, so many tangles!

By the end of our tweeting we were wondering how Susan would recall it, if at all.

I am left thinking that if something that I know as fact is actually as flimsy as this early memory, how on earth am I to trust anything I remember at all? Truth is all about perception, I know I see purely from my own point of view but now I have to factor in that I am my own unreliable narrator.

It's not often that one gets to gawp voyeuristically at an old school friends life and Louise's book is a hugely engaging read. From the not too surprising revelations that yeah, the music press is largely made up of sexist twunts, and Alex James really is a buffoon, to the glory of being serenaded by Michael Stipe and appearing on TOTP (TOTP's!) Louise shares her truths. Of course, the things that stick with me most are her memories of a childhood we shared: Pens worn on cords around our necks – blimey, I'd totally forgotten all about them. Moon-boots! Shrunken crisp packets as badges (really, what the fuck was that about.) The perfectly groomed girls in our year and the bitchy silence and whispers. The sheer awkwardness of knowing that you didn’t quite fit and never would. I like how this fairytale transformation from nerd to pop star is a real life version complete with a cool look at how the music business is, erm, actually a business, and how Louise saw her media image became cartoonish (feisty, gobby female, sigh) because bloody hell, even in the '90's women weren't supposed to offer intelligent opinions on anything.

It's an entertaining read whether or not you shared our 70's/80's suburban upbringing or were Britpoppy, and Louise writes well (she beat me in the school literary competition one year so she must be good, eh?)

I hope she lives happily ever after.

I am not gracious in defeat!

2010-06-25T12:06:00.001+01:00

Well, I didn't win the Short Fiction competition. One is supposed to be gracious in defeat but, frankly, bollocks to that. I am disappointed and In A Bad Mood. Why wouldn't I be? My story has not been judged the best. Subjective as that always is, I would prefer my story to be considered the winner. That's normal, right? Why don't I ever read sulky posts by other bloggy writer people? It's impolite maybe. I am being rude. Or unprofessional, perhaps. Ach, whatever.

I'm not so sulky that I can't congratulate Jill Widner and the runners up, Jo Cannon and Louis Malloy though. Congratulations!

Nice things...

2010-06-24T10:12:00.001+01:00

I made the final 15 of Short Fiction's New Writers Competition and now nervously await the shortlist.

And I received an email from the Brit Writers' Award saying "I’m sorry that you were not one of the finalists however you did come very close. In fact your entry into the Short Story category was ranked within the top 30 - out of several thousand!"

Which is pretty cool - unless everyone got an email like that just to make them feel better? They have offered me 2 complimentary tickets to the event at the O2. Smile.

One name on both the lists is Jo Cannon. Congratulations, Jo - I have my fingers crossed for you in the Brit Awards, though for obvious reasons not the Short Fiction comp!

Rejections

2010-06-04T12:49:00.000+01:00

Being rejected is part of the writing life. Yeah, yeah, we know that. But it can sometimes really drag me down and I have been known to indulge in a big ol' sulk. Other times I have a nano sulk and let the rejection bounce right off. Acceptances are joy - they validate and elate. Whoo hoo for acceptances. However nobody, no matter how shit hot a writer, is going to be accepted every single time. Not unless they are a "name" - one of those elite who carry so much weight with their history that whatever they write, no matter how shonky, is published. (And the reader who questions the merit may feel that it is their own lack that stops them comprehending the genius.)

When I am rejected I often hate the rejected story. I re-read and what once seemed good, solid prose can appear tatty, flimsy, pedestrian, unbaked. (I have a couple of stories this is not true of. I remain deluded convinced that they will be huge successes one day.) I may ignore the rejected words for a while, or edit, or fling 'em straight back out hoping they will find a loving home. There's no strict routine, it depends on how my mood is.

Roxane Gay wrote a post about rejection etiquette on the PANK blog the other day. I always find Roxane's posts there, and on her personal blog, fascinating. In this particular blog post I was struck by the comfort to be found here:

"If you are only looking for a “Yes,” you’re perhaps not cut out for the publishing game. More often than not, the answer is going to be no because any magazine can only publish so many writers. We’re basically full through October online and about 90% full for our next print issue. The majority of the writing we receive is great but we, like most magazines, are in a position where we can only publish the writing that really grabs us, that really makes us fall in love, that really moves us."

This post was written on 31st May and already PANK are full for the next five months. I know this is the way things are with them as I had an acceptance from them a couple of months back that won't go live until July. They receive untold amounts of submissions, they are chock full, when they say no, it's not always going to be that the words sucked arse or that you're not good enough. And it's not just PANK is it? It's all of the quality magazines and journals. This makes me feel so much better. I know how many talented writers are out *there* in internetworldwidewebland. I want my stories to shine and stand out, and sometimes they do. That's bloody brilliant.

Review of Nik Perring's Not So Perfect

2010-05-30T20:25:00.001+01:00

I "know" Nik Perring from the online bloggy world, but I don't "know" him at all. We aren't friends, tho' he seems like a nice guy from his twitter feed and his blog. We have mutual writing pals but we've never emailed or met or spoken or gone beyond commenting on each others tweets/blogs. I wasn't offered a review copy of his flash fiction collection "Not So Perfect" (humph) but as I run a dedicated Flash Fiction section at work I ordered a few copies in as I like to mix classic books with fresh, contemporary work.

From what I have seen so far, Roast Books create gorgeous publications; books that stand out because of how they look, books that demand to be picked up and held, explored, read. Nik's is no exception. It's a small book - the size of a CD, so immediately looks different. Here's the cover:

Delicious, eh? I had a wee flick through and liked it enough to buy it.

I read it in my lunch break and on the train ride home. To be honest I was so immersed in it that I didn't notice I was at my home stop until the last moment and that never happens. What Nik Perring seems able to do is breathe life into characters. It's a vital, difficult skill, made all the more impressive by the brevity of these fictions. With just a few pertinent details he makes characters feel real. He makes the reader care. His stories are brief but full. I was surprised by how romantic many of them are; beautiful, aching examples of love and heartbreak.

A grumpy man surprises his wife with a message in flowers, a woman heard sobbing through a wall may bring hope, a spurned lover can't recall the last time anyone said his name, a man finds a lump on his dates breast...slices of lives reveal human nature.

It's a cute book containing 22 wee stories (each complete with accompanying quirky line illustration.) It costs £7.99 and is available to buy from Waterstones online, Waterstone's Brighton, or y'know, one of those other places.

Stories at Neon Magazine

2010-05-16T11:25:00.004+01:00

(Image from Neon Magazine issue 23)

When Matt died I somewhat inevitably found myself writing about grief. Not as straightforward reportage, rather I wrote tiny, odd flashes of misery and loss. Three pieces in particular seem to belong together despite their differences. I call them Grief Triptych and am pleased to have found a good home for them at Neon Magazine ( a place that states it looks for "...the new, the experimental and the strange.")

My second story at Neon is called "Inside VS. Out" and ostensibly has nothing to do with Matt at all. However, it was using his words "evenings of ordinary sand" and "moon worms" as prompts that was my inspiration. He wanted us to collaborate and write together and I hope that he's cool with what I did.

Matt was very supportive of my writing and had an especial fondness for my concise flashes. Anyone who knew him knows from his music, artworks and humour that the weird, surreal and grotesque appealed to him. I hope he would approve of these fictions. I think he would.

The main thing I would like to say if any of his friends or family read them is that I wrote and published them in memory of Matt, but they are not about Matt. Rather, they are about me.

Matt Kinnison

2010-05-07T21:50:00.000+01:00

It is two years today since Matt died. Crummy kinda day. I send love out to Matt's friends and family.

I have a few flash fictions forthcoming in Neon Magazine that I have written in memory of Matt and I had hoped that some magic would come into play and they would be published in time for this ghastly anniversary. They haven't, and really I'm at a loss for anything new to say. I miss Matt and time passing merely highlights to me how rare and true a friend he was.

Matt's small list of impossible things : cheese bow ties, stinging nettles with fingerprints, someone posting Jupiter through your letterbox, 50 year old babies, November being knighted, pudding before main course, tying a knot in tap water etc etc etc.

Most used words

2010-04-23T19:32:00.000+01:00

I'd forgotten all about the nifty WordCounter tool until today it popped back into my head. I have put together a bunch of my flash fiction and was curious to see if there were any over used words. I tried to guess what those words might be. "Salt" maybe, I know I use that quite often. But nope, my most frequently used word was "look" followed by "one" "back" "over" and "go". It was only after I sent my manuscript off that I realised if I put those most used words together they form a message. "Go look back over one."

Oops.

I also favour "say" "think" "get" "want and "watch" which I think flows quite well. As does "head" and "down."

My list of 25 ends with "mouth" "little" "hand."

What are yours?

Titles are hard to keep thinking of

2010-04-15T16:49:00.000+01:00

I have a teeny bit o' froth up at LitSnack - Wednesdays Go Like This. I think someone challenged me to write a flash with the word bilious in. Which I did.

I went to London yesterday and met up with a few writing chums. It's a little like internet dating in that we met online and know each other through our writing but hadn't met in real life. You get a fair idea of what someone is like through their words and fictions, but I was still nervous. No need though, they were all lovely. Phew.

Perfect first date night for writers? Lorrie Moore in conversation with John Mullan as part of the Guardian Book Club. Ah Lorrie, how I love you. She seems so unflappable, calm, wise, witty, beautiful, and oh boy is she talented.

I think a podcast of the event will be up at some point at the Guardian, and I didn't take notes but I think she said the following:

In a short story she will write a beginning without knowing the end, then the end comes to her and she'll write that, go back and write the middle to unite the two parts. (I find that interesting because though I may begin with only the vaguest idea of what I am doing I still plug away at it in order. I work towards an ending, but I never stop, write the end and then get the two parts to meet. I may give it a go.)

That a short story focuses in on something out of the ordinary in a character's life - illness, death, divorce, an affair etc - and in the examination of that event we will have the "ordinary" revealed too.

In answer to the accusation that all her work is melancholic she responded by saying that all life is underpinned by the knowledge that we will die so is inevitably melancholy.

Erm, lots more, but I think it'll have to wait for someone who actually took notes to blog it, or for the podcast.

Words and pictures

2010-04-08T15:49:00.001+01:00

I think that the coolest thing about reading at Sparks is the privilege of seeing how someone has visually interpreted your story. I feel very lucky that my story ended up with Nikki Acott of Maverick Photography.

Plans. Needs. Blues was originally published at Dogmatika but I'll post it again here so you can see just how brilliantly the image works with it:

Plans. Needs. Blues

You have left the station and are trying to remember your way to the town centre. You are two hours early for the appointment with the psychiatrist who wants to discus the state of your child’s mental health. You are trying to formulate a plan.

The spring morning is sharp and bright. You stop in the middle of a wide road. It is not a safe place.

You go to a café and buy a mocha. You wipe your mouth after each sip in case you retain a creamy moustache. You hold a paperback, scan the words but do not read them.

You think of your son’s cuddle; the warmth of his body pressed against yours. You rub the teeth marks that remain imprinted on your arm. It has always been love/hate with him. When you start to trust the peace, he will erupt. What pours forth could be words, violence, urine, tears…you never know. You clamp your lips; lip on lip, pushed hard.

In the street, you check your watch. There is still an hour to go. You walk into a shop and look at rings in the shapes of flowers, butterflies, snakes. You pretend you may want one.

A greasy sickness slides over you. Moisture dots your top lip. Your head begins a soft pulsing. You enter a department store and locate the washroom. In the cubicle, your stomach churns and shit splatters into the toilet.

You only have ten minutes. You speed walk.

A bus passes; its destination is a place you have never been to. You flirt with the notion of going there right now.

This will be the eighteenth health care professional that you have spoken to this year. You met her for the first time two weeks ago when she ‘assessed’ your child. You remember the pictures and mottos that she had tacked to a corkboard above her desk. There was a postcard: blue water, blue mountainous shapes, another place that you have not been.

You knew that the tranquil scene was a trick to make you feel calm, just like her quiet voice, her careful body language. You know that she is another woman who will say she can help. Your son is ten years old and you have stopped believing anything will change.

Outside the hospital, you check your face in a handbag mirror. You apply another layer of lipstick. You are wearing a suit, a tactic you have learned disarms.

You wonder how other mums cope. You walk towards the huddle of smokers outside the main entrance as the plan you have been struggling with snaps into focus.

You lay down in the ambulance bay. You can’t decide whether to lie on your back or to curl in your sleeping position. You try both. Neither is comfortable. You wait for help.

I love this. Big thanks to Nikki and please do check out her website which is packed with fabulous photography.

Thanks to Jo Mortimer for hosting such an eclectic and friendly flash fiction night and inviting me along.

Oh, and tee hee. My husband came to this and it was the first time he's seen me read. It was a funny kind of situation reversal for us as I have sat through a gazillion of his gigs (he's a drummer) and I have told him this is what his future holds as I may just be getting a taste for it!

P.S Was good to meet bloggy/tweety pal James Burt too. What a nice guy!

Linktastic stuff!

2010-04-02T22:34:00.000+01:00

I keep forgetting to mention that I am in The Best of Every Day Fiction 2 - an anthology from those EDF peeps. It's available in hardback or softback. Thanks to EDF for including my wee story "The Collector of Shiny."

I was pleased to be in the debut issue of kill author and I am pleased that they have been voted best new online magazine or journal in the storySouth Million Writers Award. Woot woot! Speaking of the Award, kudos aplenty to all the writers who have been listed in the notable stories list. There's some really good, good writing there (special mention must surely go to Roxane Gay who has, what, six stories nominated?)

And tooting my own (plastic, red and yellow, imaginary toy) trumpet, it's been brilliant to get my writing mojo back after a long time being ill and brain fuddled. I have been writing words that please me, and feeling pretty good about it. I started subbing again (after a long time of not) and yesterday I got acceptances for 5 pieces of work. Five! In one day! (Though if I break it down, four pieces were accepted by the same place, does that count? But - I sent four hoping that they might find something to like amongst them and am THRILLED that they said, yup, we like, and took them all.) The other piece found a home somewhere I have really wanted to be published, after a requested rewrite. I spent some days nervously checking my emails, and hoping that my rewrite was solid. So yay!

And - the best words to hear on going into work?
"I saw a rep. last week, he had some new short story collections so I took them for you."
Yup. Life can be good.

Ye Olde Bookshoppe bits...

2010-03-29T22:52:00.001+01:00

If you say "Where are your guide books?" with a Scottish accent it really does sound like "Where are your gay books?" And if you ask this question in Brighton, which is known as the gay capital of the UK, we will have a lot to show you.

Kazuo Ishiguro and Haruki Murakami are two different people. I know! Pesky similar sounding Japanese names, eh?

Shakespeare wrote plays. (He's rather famous for it actually.) That's why his writing can be found in our "Drama" section instead of "Classics."

We have copies of the for-a-very-good-cause-and-containing-lots-of-excellent-writers-that-I "know" "100 stories for Haiti" on sale and appearing in my short story display case NOW!

WHOOOOOOSH is the sound of the gorgeous McSweeney's 33 selling very swiftly (also in my short story display case, unless it's gone already!)

Lookit:

Blooming irresistible if you ask me.

Corium debuts today.

2010-03-22T21:40:00.001Z

You could click on this link and go check out the debut of Corium if you feel like doing so. I think you'll be glad to read some of the good words available to you there.

Not really a review...

2010-03-22T21:18:00.000Z

I said that I would review "AN A-Z of possible worlds" by A.C Tillyer aaaaaages ago. I have put it off and put it off because the truth is I wanted to love it so very much but I don't and I didn't want to say that.

It looks beautiful and utterly unique. I am a huge McSweeney's fan and the presentation of these stories put me in mind of the care and attention that McSweeney's publications have. It comes in a red box embossed in gold with the letters of the alphabet. Each story has it's own wee booklet and it is just gorgeous.

See

Roast Books have done a wonderful thing here, and I am excited to see what else they do in the future. Their website is very interesting - looky looky!

So, hurray for Roast Books, hurray for publishers that take chances and produce works of such fabiosity, I am only sorry that an A-Z really didn't do it for me. I love the concept but found the stories to be more tell than show, and they all seemed to share the same rather dry voice. I am entirely prepared to say that may just be personal preference as there seem to be plenty o' rave reviews around the blogosphere. I think also that the price is a large one to pay to take a chance: when I pay £20 for a McSweeney's it's a lucky dip of writers, some I will like, others I won't and I can just flip on to the next, here Ms Tillyer's is the only voice on offer so...

Eep. Sorry.

A little bit more & a link

2010-03-16T22:50:00.000Z

The comment thread on my previous post is bothersome to trawl through but there's some interesting debate going on in there. Though I was exploring my use of personal experiences for fiction, and the role that autobiography has to play, it is me saying that I won't write one of those "small African girl in a dusty village" stories and quoting from Kuzhali Manickavel's blog, that has created most interest.

Kuzhali has written a blog post - A Letter of Apology to the Muslim Village of No Good Horrible Very Bad Things With Legions of White Peacocks. Her comments section is also interesting and contains further links.

I have received lots of emails on the subject from people who would prefer not to make their thoughts public. I am fascinated by the silence of some I thought would have a say, and the sense that people are watching from the sidelines.

By the way - unless you agree one hundred percent with everything I say, you are clearly wrong.

A really long blog post about fiction, autobiography, cultural tourism and such like

2010-03-12T15:42:00.002Z

I’m still chewing this over so blogging about it may be premature. The other night I mentioned to writing pals that I can’t help but write from my life. That’s usual I think, although people bury themselves in their words to a greater or lesser extent, so sometimes it is obviously a fictionalised account of personal experience (Sylvia Plath) and other times the reality is almost invisible (Ted Hughes.)

I have felt lonely, awkward, happy, and sad. I have had relationships, I have children, I have been ill etc. So when my fiction has a character that feels alone I draw on my own understanding of that emotion in order to convey it. That’s what we all do, right? But what about when I, owner of sixteen pet slugs, write a story about a slug? I draw part of my story from my own experiences, and yet the slug in my story is not my slug, and the slug owner in the story is not me. The things that happen are not real. It is a made-up story. What if my fictional woman picks up a saucepan and bangs her slug to death with it? Does that mean it is something I have done. Nope. But what about her feelings? If she is feeling desperate and angry and fizzing with violence when she flattens that slug I may call upon my own knowledge of how that feels in order to portray it.

I’m not the owner of sixteen slugs. I made that up. You know what I mean though.

My twins have special needs and I have written a story about a boy with special needs. He is not based on my boys. The mum in the story is not me. The situations that arise have not happened to us, the things said and done are all fiction. I draw on my experiences though, my knowledge. I feel okay writing about this made up boy with special needs because although my work is fiction I do have experience of how it may be, and so I feel that it is ok for me to explore.

I don’t have a pet slug. If I wrote a story about a pet slug I could research it, I could read books and articles. I could go in my garden and find a slug and force myself to touch it and write about that. Or I could just make it up. I could imagine that it would feel cool, and jelly, and squishy. That would be ok. Slugs won’t read the story and feel upset that it is inaccurate and that really they feel warm and wet. But. Hmm. I won’t write about a small African girl in a dusty village. I don’t feel that is my story to tell. I am uneasy about the cultural tourism that writers and readers so often engage in. Not my bag, man.

I have had heated debates with other writers about this. We are fiction writers and we make things up. Our imagination is the key we unlock our stories with, and we have the right to imagine anything. Yeah. But.

It was suggested by one writer I discussed this with that perhaps it was because I wasn’t talented enough as a writer that I couldn’t write these types of stories. Rude. I choose not to. I am uncomfortable with taking stories that aren’t mine.

The always awesome Kuzhali Manickavel said in a recent blog post “I am not going to ask why your story is about a Muslim Village of No Good Horrible Very Bad Things where all the girls get raped and raped and raped and raped and raped and everyone speaks some foreign Muslim language which makes them sound like they all have massive brain injuries because hey, that’s just how those crazy foreigners talk, right? I am not going to ask about this because people write this kind of stuff all the time, possibly because they believe that the chances of someone calling them on their bullshit are very slim to nil. This is why so many craptastic stories about “foreigners” get published. However. I do want to know why you would say that legions of white peacocks flooded the skies each dawn and alighted on everyone’s front lawns in the Muslim Village of No Good Horrible Very Bad Things. Legions of white peacocks? LEGIONS? FRONT LAWNS? WTF, are you on drugs? Is this sci-fi? Are you on drugs?”

And I think, she has a point, no?

I suppose what I seek is authenticity, because ultimately I look for truth in fiction. I look to fiction to supply absolute truth in a way that non-fiction sometimes fails to do. And I don’t mind at all if the truth is embedded in magical realism, or laid bare, or if it rhymes, or whatever. I don’t like sentimentality though, that almost wobbling on the brink of tears luxury of voyeuristic misery. I want to recognise, empathise and believe. I revel in the joy of feeling understood and connected in some way.

So we’re back to me writing somewhat biographically but not really.

Tania Hershman just reviewed Janice Galloway’s Collected Stories over at The Short Review. She comments:

“The next point is that where many authors cast their net far and wide and write stories set in many locations - be they cities, countries or other planets - Galloway needs no such exoticism. She is curious about the domestic and mundane; she takes a microscope, peels back the skin and probes, down to the bones, the sinews, the very atoms.”

I hadn’t noticed that, I hadn’t looked. But yes, it seems that the author who interests me the most is one who writes in the way I aspire to. She rejects the exotic and examines the everyday. Her truth shines and resonates. I wonder if that’s true for all my favourite authors, and suspect there it is: the uniting thread between Plath, Galloway, Lorrie Moore, Ali Smith, A.L Kennedy, Bukowski, Dave Eggers, Douglas Coupland.

There is a wonderful quote from Lorrie Moore in response to being asked about a story “which seemed to straddle the line between fiction and nonfiction.”

“No, it didn't straddle a line. It was fiction. It is autobiographical, but it's not straddling a line. Things did not happen exactly that way; I re-imagined everything. And that's what fiction does. Fiction can come from real-life events and still be fiction. It can still have that connection, that germ. It came from something that happened to you. That doesn't mean it's straddling a line between nonfiction and fiction. And the whole narrative strategy is obviously fictional. It's not a nonfiction narrative strategy.”

Brilliant. (You can read the whole interview here.) I love how she sounds kinda testy and absolutely sure of herself.

Anyway, like I say, I'm still mulling. I'm not saying that you shouldn't write whatever you feel compelled to, but I think we all strive for a unique voice, and mine sounds a lot like me.

Sparks - April 6th

2010-03-08T18:31:00.002Z

The dynamic Jo Mortimer seeks good quality fiction submissions for her fabulous short fiction night in Brighton. Details here at Sparks Blog - have at it!

Waiting for the good news, not the bad

2010-02-24T22:07:00.001Z

Sending work "out there" means waiting for responses. I'm not so great at subbing. I know writers who constantly have lots of work out at one time and just send that baby straight back out the minute it comes back to them. I understand that, I just don't do it myself.

Thing is, I choose really carefully where I want a story to go. I'm not "this must be published no matter what" I'm, "Ooh, I think my story "You say Grigio I say Gris - who knows why?" would be perfect at THAT PLACE, so I send it off, and stay hopeful, and if it comes back unwanted I feel a little sad for "You say..." and I write down the date of the rejection and any comments I got in my skull notebook, and that's it.

A month or so may pass and I'll look at the story again, edit a little, and realise, "Ooh, no, THIS PLACE would be superb for my story" and so it goes.

While something is still being considered there's a gorgeous feeling of possibility. For ages I had a really high ratio of successful subs to rejected ones. I think that's gone now. That sucks. But that was happening when I was writing fresh words regularly. Illness and family responsibilities have cut my new words way down but hooooo-rah, recently I have written a couple of brand new stories. It feels so good to have actually made some stuff up! I am now in that world of hope again and feel like good news may be just an email away. I am doing that too frequent email refreshing.

Anyway, there have been a heap of top tips for writers around the blogs but none pleased me as much as this wonderful list by Laura Ellen Scott "Get out of that slushpile, what are you crazy?!?!?" Perhaps if I follow her advice faithfully I'll boost my success stats.

Talking to myself

2010-02-13T22:59:00.001Z

Sara, could you please stop going on about Ted Hughes letters? It's getting boring.

Hmm, well, I would, but...

But what?

There's this poetry book called "The Scattering"...

Right. And?

When I was in Oxford I picked it up and considered buying it. Truth is I felt compelled to buy it. To be honest, I only didn't because I knew that I could get staff discount at work.

Okay, and?

Well, it's kinda unusual for me to buy poetry. I mean, I love Les Murray but otherwise I'm not a huge reader of poetry. I certainly don't write it. There's Plath, Paul Beatty, Bukowski, Les Murray and...well, that's pretty much it.

So what was there about this particular book of poetry then?

Not sure really. It is written by a man in response to his wife's death. It seemed emotionally open and... Nope, not sure.

Right. So, you saw this poetry book but didn't buy it? Fascinating.

But!

Okay?

I came back and tried to buy it at work but we had sold out. Three people in one day came and asked me for it. Three people asking for the same poetry collection! Then I heard that it had won the Costa Book of the Year Award. This is highly unusual.

Cool. I'm pleased for poetry.

Yes. So. Today I saw the book was back in stock and bought it.

Good for you.

Ta. You can buy a copy at a branch of Waterstones or online at Waterstones.com

Great. Thanks.

Did you notice who the author is?

No. Who?

Christopher Reid.

Right.

Christopher Reid!

Okay.

Ring any bells?

Nope. Should it?

Christopher Reid is the editor of The Collected Letters of Ted Hughes.

Ooh! Spooky.

Is it?

Dunno. Could just be a coincidence.

Yeah, that's what I figured.

Making things up

2010-02-12T19:59:00.000Z

I haven't been doing much bloggy stuff lately, but that's because I've been busily making things up and it's been taking up my computer time. Yay, it's like I had forgotten what fiction could be. It's great fun - I think imaginary things in my head and then write it down and create stories. Woot woot!

I will stop banging on about Ted Hughes eventually but I am still savouring the Collected Letters, and it seems to have been the key to unlocking my words again. He struggled and went months without writing at times, he sweated over stories, he abandoned ideas and ranted and tried to find his mojo again. It's done me such good to read. It's as if someone has said to me "Whatever way you do it is okay."

I have entered a couple of comps, subbed a couple of bits. Health-wise I am feeling improved, not totally ok, and I have good days and bad, but yeah, getting there I think.

Aren't words fabulous. I'm grooving on "palpable" at the moment.

Letters of Ted Hughes selected and edited by Christopher Reid (thoughts while reading)

2010-01-29T22:04:00.000Z

I have a cold. Poor me. It is just a cold so I am able to struggle on. It's been a busy week, uncommonly sociable actually, which has made me realise how unsociable I usually am. I've been in to Brighton and up to London and have sat on trains for quite a few hours so I had extra time to read "Letters of Ted Hughes", and wow, I am enjoying it so very much, it's a delicious treat.

So much of what he writes in letters to Plath and other writers is incredibly relevant and familiar. He writes about things that affect me, and consequently fills me with a strange confidence. Ah, I can think to myself, it was the same even for Ted. (Yeah, we're *that* familiar I can call him Ted.)

On not being able to write: "At present I am doing nothing - I sit for hours like a statue of a man writing, no different, except during the 3rd or 4th hour a bead of sweat moves on my temple. I have never known it so hard to write."

On discovering he had won a prize to have his first book of poetry published: "My first reaction was a horrible feeling of guilt at what I had committed, and I went to read the poems over to see if they were really as dull as I dreded (sic) they were. I immediately saw fifty things I wanted to change and I'm appalled that I let most of the poems out in such an unfinished state."

On rejections: "Don't be taken back by those rejections, but don't send them straight out...If you can keep up your writing you will see, after a few weeks, where you can improve the rejected ones, or whether they are better let lie."

I am finding it liberating and inspirational and it seems to be feeding me creatively, to the point where I have just finished writing the first draft of one new story, am editing two other stories, and had a great idea of what to do with an old story that I like but which doesn't quite work as is. I'm not sure what the magic of it is, but hey, it's good!

One other thing: I always said that Matt wrote the best emails and letters ever. His were funny, clever, sarcastic, witty, intelligent and thoughtful. He had an authoritative voice which made statements; sometimes hilariously, wicked statements. Ted Hughes writes in the same way, it's really uncanny. It's not Matt's voice, but they definitely shared a similar style. Matt really disliked Hughes, he was a Plath fan who blamed Hughes for her suicide. I am amused to note just how similar TH and MK seem, and would love to be able to tease Matt about it.

Anyway, available at Waterstone's bookshops or online at Waterstone.com at the bargain price of £7.49

HTML Giant, Ted Hughes, permission to write, privilege, education, commas.

2010-01-20T13:21:00.003Z

I read online publications and submit my own stories. The standard is high (so high that comparing the weaker books for sale at work in the bookshop leaves me baffled at how they are published in print and some of these online authors are not) and sometimes that is an exhilarating thing that inspires and pushes me, and other times it kinda makes me a wee bit anxious - am I good enough, how can I get better?

There are a wealth of do's and don't's scattered thru the lit blogs; advice which can help but also hinder. HTML Giant has a lot of very good writers who say things authoritatively, persuasively and thoughtfully. (And other times they talk a load of bollox, but that's not relevant right now.) I enjoy reading HTML Giant although occasionally I struggle with what I perceive as its American Academia "in club" vibe.

Recently I have been fretting about my lack of a formal writing education. I don't think my A level English Lit counts for much! I have begun doubting my ability to compete with all the MFA/MA students out in the world. I am pretty much self taught, and what I know I have gleaned from reading. It has got me this far, wherever this far is. Now I worry that misplacing a comma and fucking up formatting is working against me when I submit to the same 'zines these HTML people edit and inhabit.

I took Simon to Oxford for a birthday treat last weekend. We did the tourist bus tour and looked at University sites and beautiful old buildings. Part of me felt a familiar twist of resentment - I felt the same when we visited Cambridge - a tug of longing to immerse myself in study, an unpleasant envy of those who do. Anyway, I enjoyed myself in Blackwell's. I bought a copy of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" which I hope may help me. I also bought a half price copy of "Letters of Ted Hughes". I'm a huge cliche in that I adore the whole Ted and Sylvia *thing* and have for years. I love both of their poetry (and prose) and hold them in the highest literary regard. Their story began in Cambridge, and knowing that Sylvia Plath was a genius student I have always imagined that Ted was too. I began reading "Letters" last night and was delighted to read Christopher Reid (the editor) write in his introduction:

"A more pervasive problem has been what to do with Hughes's spelling mistakes, which occur liberally in both manuscripts and typescripts, and with his idiosyncratic punctuation and sometimes wayward grammar and syntax."

Yipee! He goes on:

"Oddities of punctuation are even more abundant, and most of these I have preserved..."

"...Missing commas and full stops, the pairing of single with double inverted commas, lists lacking their expected commas and such like."

Now I am in no way comparing my writing self with that of Hughes, but ooh, how lovely to know that such a hero had fucksy commas too! Plus, he swapped his English course for Anthropology and only achieved a 2nd. Ha!

Onwards!

Five bits of blether

2010-01-10T23:22:00.009Z

1) I subbed a few bits and bobs last week; the first time I have done so in what seems like an age. I got my first acceptance of the year today. It's for a tiny bit o' word play, nothing big or clever, but I am pleased. It's a start.

2) This week there were less people coming into the bookshop and brandishing out of print books that they claim to have received as unwanted Christmas presents. The whole exchange/refund thing becomes an awkward business in January. Sometimes you get people coming in with a big glossy hardback that they assume was bought at full price. Without a receipt we will offer an exchange for the price we sold the book at during December. Telling someone that their sister or whoever actually only paid £8 not £16 always makes me squirm. And the person trying to exchange an out of print book? Did someone buy them a gift from a bargain bookshop or are they just trying their luck with an unwanted book they had on their own shelves? Either way it makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

3) I apologise to the man who asked for the erotica section. I really didn't hear you. I didn't mean to make you shout "I want erotica" that loudly.

4) I apologise to the man buying the butt fucking anthology. The price on the back was in dollars and I had to type the isbn into my computer to get the price in sterling.

5) Radio 3's The Verb is running a short story competition judged by Janice Galloway. The winning entry will be read out on a future show. No bucks, no trophy, but plenty of kudos, no?

This month is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Anton Chekhov, doctor, playwright - and master of the short story. He wrote hundreds of them, often very quickly, and many have become enduring and influential classics: The Lady with the Dog, Kashtanka, and The Kiss to name but a few.

As part of Radio 3's Chekhov season, The Verb would like you to send us an original short story of 1000 words, using one of the following Chekhov titles:

1. The Lady with the Dog
2. Difficult People
3. The Lottery Ticket

Please don’t call your story Difficult Dogs, or The Lady with the Ticket! These will not be considered. You don’t have to use the same characters, or setting – you don’t even have to have read the original story - but we will be awarding points for a certain Chekhovian spirit. Please check our terms and conditions, below, before sending your entry to:

theverb@bbc.co.uk

or:

The Verb,
Room 7045,
Broadcasting House,
Portland Place,
London W1A 1AA

The closing date of the competition is 5th February.

"Short Circuit - A Guide to the Art of the Short Story" Blog tour here NOW!

2010-01-04T10:05:00.001Z

Ok, it's the 4th of January, the day the majority of us return to work or school after the holidays, and it's time to get back at "it" (whatever your "it" may be!) Reading around the blogs lots of writers are resolving to be better, work harder, hone craft, shine prose etc. Well read on...

I get asked to review a lot of stuff these days and to be honest I turn most requests down. Whilst I like to imagine myself some queen bitch who will tell it like it is, the truth is that I actually hate to upset anyone if I dislike their work. On the other hand I have no desire to turn my blog into some kind of puff factory where I churn out positive reviews for fellow authors in the hope that one day they will reciprocate should I have something of my own to sell either, so I tend to say no to requests unless I think I'm going to be genuinely enthusiastic about the book.

Hurray for Short Circuit!

It's a guide to writing short stories written by experienced authors and teachers and is packed with essays, advice and exercises. It's a text book that will keep on giving, and one can dip in and out. Having trouble with your ending? Check out the relevant chapters here. Stuck for inspiration? Try one of the exercises. (And so on...)

This ace book was edited by Vanessa Gebbie who answered some of my rubbish questions! (One question is inaccurate but I left it in because Vanessa's answer is so good and if I reworded it I'd make her look a bit nuts!)

As editor of Short Circuit - A Guide to the Art of the Short Story, how did you select the contributing authors?

Easy. I’d either met (thanks to the comp circuit) or otherwise been in touch with (blogosphere etc) so many fantastic writers – I drew up a wish list. I was keen to have only half Salt authors in the main part of the book, for a start. Then I looked at how ‘open’ the people were, whether they were easy to talk to/unstuffy – those I’d met and those I hadn’t. You can tell a lot from blogs etc. I didn’t want any stuffy old academic up one’s self dahling text. Writing is NOT the province of academia, or any ‘set’. I wanted a predominance of top prizewinners AND the majority had to be great writing teachers. I wasn't tough on myself or anything...

Do you think it's possible for anyone to become a good short story writer or does there have to be natural talent?

I think you can learn to be a good writer. Craft skills can be learned – and writing is a craft, just like making furniture. But we can’t all be Chippendales (and I don’t mean the strippers…).

On top of learning craft, there has to be something – a way of seeing the world, a need to express something, an original mind. You can teach someone to open their eyes a bit more, to see through a writer’s eyes… I believe that. But beyond that…what is genius? Where does it come from? No idea! (If you find the answer, can we go halves?)

Can people starting their writing journey learn practical tips for writing short stories by reading Short Circuit?

Absolutely. When I was planning the book, I decided all I could do was create the book I would have loved when I started out. So that if someone picks it up they are instantly in the company of a group of fabulous writers, who are all generous with their time, advice and care. Care? What am I blathering about? Yes – CARE. Because if you (not you – know what I mean…?) just go round telling a new writer that there is only ONE way to do things, YOUR way - you really don’t care or understand at all.

I wanted to send people off on trails of questions, try this, try that, consider this, consider that. And find out what works for them. Not for me. I am irrelevant as far as their writing journey goes, see? But I can put a range of ideas in front of them, let them discover, stretch. Get it wrong! Then gradually, get it right. But avoid some elephant traps along the way.

And people further into their own writing journey?

I also wanted a book that I could turn to when I’m more experienced, but jaded. When I find the strategies I employ let me down and I want to try something else. Or when I am down, and want to remind myself that others get down too, and find this thing hard. Everyone’s honest, in the book. No one ‘flannels’, I don’t think…

I love the exercises at the end of each chapter. Sometimes a writer becomes stuck for inspiration and these are perfect springboards into creativity. Do you have a personal favourite exercise?

No, not really, apart from the exercise that might work today as opposed to yesterday. The one that usually works is flash writing… just spilling it out, not censoring yourself.

And the other is, cutting out the feedback loop by switching off the screen. Or sticking an old teeshirt over it. And typing like the devil…(on a laptop, turn the font colour to white… but try not to hit caps lock.)

What is the worst piece of writing advice you have been given?

Can I have three??

1) “Women writers over fifty might as well recognise that they are not going to get published, so just have a bit of fun.” (Visiting editor of now defunct lit mag (ha ha), Sussex University, 2003).

2) “Learn to write fiction by writing a novel.”

3) “The short story is just a stepping stone to the real thing – the novel.” (The short story is NOTHING like a novel. I know this, and challenge anyone to a duel if they say it is.)

And the best?

1) “Read read read write write write submit submit submit. Seek out rejections. Knock your ego sideways.”

I found myself "Yes, yes-ing..." some of the chapters as I recognised my own writing self, and other times delighting in the clarity of someone expressing something I had previously felt intuitively (Elaine Chiew's marvellous chapter on endings will feed into my own work I think, and Alison MacLeod's chapter on risk taking felt very true. I loved Paul Magrs chapter and will reread his list until it all sticks in my head.)

Did you disagree with anything said?

Not really, because it is not didactic. I tend to automatically disagree if anyone is didactic! If anyone had said THIS is how it MUST be done, then I’d disagree on principle. But even when (for example) Tobias Hill took me to task for making an assumption about something, in our interview - voice/vocabulary use/charactersisation – I thought hey, this is great, because it challenged my preconceptions, made me think. And that’s exactly what I wanted it to do for others.

I can see places where the other writers are saying they work in a different way to me – but you can’t disagree with that, can you?! It just opens my eyes to the range of things we do as writers.

Did you learn anything new?

Yes!! It’s so easy to get into a rut, isn’t it? A mindset that says ‘this is how Vanessa Gebbie works best and I can’t possibly try anything else…’. I know I can get like that easily – and I know it’s out of fear. Fear that I won’t be able to recreate the success I had last year/week/month again. Fear that it’s finished.

But ruts are only made in mud, when mud is soft. I learned from all the amazing writers, their openness, willingness to share - that it is possible to be successful in many many different ways, that it is important to try new things. That mud can be reshaped. (How’s that for a muddled metaphor?!)

As far as I can tell (from my not at all scientific method of quickly scan reading) the single most recommended writer of short stories is Raymond Carver. What do you think makes him so special?

I just know my reaction to a story like A Small Good Thing is visceral, and that this is what I want to achieve in my reader, in however small a way. That he really does write stories that make you forget you are reading (Viz Jon Wyatt of Bridport) and does it so seemingly effortlessly. No poncy writerliness. I think a lot of writers appreciate the technical superiority of his work.

You asked each of the 24 contributors to name their favourite short stories. There are fewer female writers on these lists than males, and six writers, including yourself, only mentioned male authors. Why do you think this may be?

Oy. Petina Gappah is a lady. (Oh gosh, of course I know Ms Gappah is a woman but in my rubbish scanning I didn't see her name in Vanessa's list. My bad!)

But I take your point. Hand on heart – I have no idea. I also know that if I was asked the same question on any day of the week, the answer to ‘give me your six fave short stories’ would change. I’d only just read the Yann Martel story for example, was blown away by it, so put it there because I want everyone to read it. The same with the Gappah – I loved her collection for many many reasons, not the least that quite apart from being bloody good stories, it also taught me something – mostly about my own ignorance. And hey, what vindication of my taste, that she goes and wins Guardian First Book Award months later…!

Maybe it’s a sex thing. Maybe I generally respond better to writing that happens to come from a male brain/heart rather than a female one? Maybe I find writing by blokes who can express themselves beautifully, rawly, with meaning, somewhat ‘sexy’ (The Ledge, Ballistics) Maybe I don’t read enough female writers? Maybe I enjoy work by female writers, but generally, I don’t REMEMBER the work as vividly. Why is that? You tell me.

Or maybe (most likely) I just picked my fave stories, not worrying whether the writer of the stories happened to be the owner of a dick.

Do you have a favourite female short story writer?

No. I enjoy Annie Proulx, Ali Smith, Anne Enright, A L Kennedy, Alice Munro , and thats just some of the 'A's... I greatly enjoy the work of all the female writers in Short Circuit, Salt and Non-Salt and people keep telling me I ought to read this and this and that… aaagh. I am trying!

If so, why did she not make your favourite short stories list?

Cos I enjoy hundreds of short story writers, and it doesn’t cross my mind to consider what physical characteristics the writer has. I’m not sure it’s relevant. The words are what matters, innit?! and Sara, thank you for having me and Short Circuit on your blog. I appreciate it hugely, and its been fun. Thanks for such wonderful and searching questions!!

Thank you so much Vanessa!

Short Circuit is available directly from Salt and of course from Waterstones!

New year resolution thingybobs

2010-01-01T17:15:00.001Z

I like New Year the same way I like a new diary or notebook. It's the promise of a fresh start. I make resolutions all year round, I strive to be better always, but it's like New Year is an especially potent time to make those wishes (that's what they are right - wishes?)

I will try to stay alive in 2010 if at all possible.
I will try to love and cherish, nurture and support my family and friends.
I will try to be a brilliant writer.
I will try not to be ill.
I will try to be a good person.
Oh yeah, and lose weight, get fit, be BETTER.

I want to be a better wifemotherfriendrelativepersonwoman.

I feel cuspy. Maybe I am about to become the writer I want to be, the writer I feel deep down I am. Or maybe I'll turn my back on the whole stupid dream of it. Or, more likely, I'll stop being so drama queeny. You know, I'm going to write sometimes, and other times I'm not, and I have to make peace with that.

I am going to try to stop bitching at myself.

I will carry on bitching at others!

I would like to wish you all your perfect 2010.

Best of the year with salt 2009

2009-12-30T20:45:00.005Z

I used to do this best of the year thing and then Matt died and nothing felt best. I suppose it's a good sign that I feel a little like doing a sort of a best of the year thingybob. My main problem is that I can barely remember what happened this morning let alone twelve months ago, so it's more a snapshot of things I think are rather splendid on the 30th December 2009.

Arms of the year award.

MELT!

Novel of the year

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout was my most enjoyable read of the year. I loved the writing, the stories and the character of Olive. Such a beautiful book.

However my novel of the year is Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs. It was an exciting event to have a new Moore book to read, and she did not disappoint with her hugely ambitious novel.

My WBQ review:

Tassie Keltjin leaves her rural home to study in liberal, artsy Troy. She takes a job as a part-time nanny for a white couple and their adopted ‘biracial’ daughter, then she falls in love and becomes increasingly distant from her own family.

Fans of Lorrie Moore should rest assured that this long-awaited novel is chock-full of her customary word play, the sugar with which she coats her biting social commentary. Her appraisal of post-9/11 America is engaging, witty and quietly devastating; this story follows characters who are distorted, as though in a house of mirrors, by the trials of life and time.

Short Story Collection of the year

My runner up is A.L Kennedy's What Becomes which is an impeccable collection from one of the most talented writers around. These are stories that ache and resonate as Kennedy’s stylistic scalpel reveals the pain and truth inside each of her characters. Highly recommended. But not my winner.

You all can guess my winner right?

Janice Galloway's Collected Stories brings together stories from "Blood" and "Where You Find It" and is a masterclass on writing. In my opinion there is no finer writer around. All this judgement, all these "best of's" are nonsensical, it's all subjective. And yet, for me, Galloway picks the perfect words each time. Bloody marvellous!

Album of the year

Jay-Z Blueprint 3

What a record! Empire State of Mind and Run This Town are both so, so, so fabulous.

Lesson of the year

You know that sometimes people say that writing is all about who you know. Cliques and in peeps, blah bah blah. I have observed some of that myself actually, occasionally. But sometimes you can write something and it will be good, and that's all that is needed. Funny that, eh? All you actually need do is write good words!

So - here's to good words.

Illness is sooooooo boring.

2009-12-22T11:11:00.002Z

I am still ill. It is so tedious and makes me a bore. Someone asked how my leg was yesterday and I began trying to race through my reply, aware of how dreary and dull my answer was. For those of you who care to know, my Pyoderma Gangrenosum is healing but very, very slowly. I saw the consultant last week and the PG has shrunk by 1 c.m. I have a deep ache in my leg which is because I have accompanying inflammation of the fatty tissue. Nice. I have been prescribed another couple of months worth of antibiotics. On top of that I have endometriosis and am always at the mercy of my cycle. Things have got increasingly weird in my body, and now when I have a period my eyesight gets fucksy and bloodshot, my back and hips ache, my feet hurt, my body bloats and swells, I get a headache that lasts for several days. The exhaustion I feel is of the put-my-face-down-on-the-floor-and-sleep-wherever-the-hell-I-am variety.

I am embarrassed and ashamed of being ill. Like I am failing in my duties as a human somehow. I vow to eat well, exercise, be a better person, as if that will become a useful bargaining tool. Actually the Pyoderma began when I was exercising daily, cycling for the first time in years, walking a lot, watching what I ate.

I haven't been writing. It becomes impossible to as my brain becomes fudgy. I am trying very hard to shut up my customary inner voice, the one that berates me for being a lazy, fat fuck. I am telling it to sod off because actually, this isn't procrastination, this is disease.

So. A catch up of tedium. It's all I've got right now.

Literary magazine crushes.

2009-12-10T14:21:00.005Z

I am somewhat fickle. I have my all time favourite lit places (Pulp Net, FRiGG, Smokelong...) which I remain loyal to, and then there are those that catch my eye with shiny newness and good words (Kill Author, Cella's Round Trip) that I will keep an eye on, there are lots that I regularly read or skim read at least, but there are some that I fall a little in love with, and then I fall out of love with. I start off excited by their "voice" or look, or editorial, I like some of the stories, I want in. I'll maybe submit, I'll maybe be accepted, or rejected, it doesn't seem to affect how I go on to feel. Then pow, it's over. Perhaps I tire of the samey samey stories, or the voice becomes too loud and all knowing, maybe the shine dulls a bit, the quality control seems to have gone way off. I'll come out now and say that Mslexia was my big goal as a beginner writer. I thought if I got in there it would really mean something, but this last year I haven't even subbed to them once. The love affair is over for now (though I won't give up my subscription ever I assume.) My last crush was PANK, or was it Roxane Gay? I am kinda crushing on wigleaf right now. All that cute, quirky goodness! My first love was Pulp Net, and it was such a thrill that they showed me some love too. They'll always be my number one!

Am I alone in this or do you have these lit mag crushes too?

Who is your current love? Who is your old faithful? I'd love to know.

New display case revealed...da da daaah....

2009-12-06T22:47:00.008Z

I think this display case is a perfect mix of fiction that appeals to Eddie (lovely colleague and fiction buyer) and I. We have both selected books for inclusion (Eddie is very skilled at finding awesome, bonkers, wonderful fiction), and I'm really pleased with it. Show it some love people! (You can play guess who chose what as well if you like!)

A flash fiction display case! How cool?

I had never heard of Tender Buttons, but sheez, what an intriguing looking book. Gonna have to buy a copy for myself. Lydia Davis and Amy Hempel, of course. Barthelme looks magnificent.

An enticing middle section eh? Tania Hershman (aka queen of flash), Sum (which is selling heaps of copies)and Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms (and looks like a must read to me.)

The final shelf has Dave Eggers - How we are Hungry, Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style and The Black Sheep and Other Fables by Augusto Monterroso.

So, what do you think? Looks good, right?

P.S Since piccy taken we have sold out of Queneau and added Etgar Keret.

Check out "my" short story display case...

2009-12-02T20:37:00.005Z

I thought it was time for another look at Brighton Waterstone's short story display case. If this works I think you should be able to click the pic and see it in giant format. Some very good books in there.

From the top we have The Cost of Living by Mavis Gallant, The United States of McSweeney's(delicious as all McSweeney's publications are) and of course Raymond Carver's Beginners.

You'll not be surprised to see Janice Galloway's Collected Stories or The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore and then I have one of my favourites of this year, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout next to Sylvia Plath's Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (gosh, I love that cover so much.)

On the next shelf down we have the Bristol Short Story Prize anthology 2009, Gentleman's Relish by Patrick Gale, Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You, Nuala Ni Chonchuir's excellent Nude.

Phew - this link love takes it out of a gal.

Right, next we have a new one (spotted by my lovely colleague Eddie) Super Girl by Ruth Thomas, one regular readers of this blog will know very well - Vanessa Gebbie's superb Words From a Glass Bubble, A L Kennedy's What Becomes
and Kelly Link's Pretty Monsters (pretty cover too!)

Crikey, so many short story books, so many links! Onto the final shelf: Yiyun Li A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is next to Helen Simpsons Hey yeah Right Get a Life (a fab collection to change the mind of anyone who thinks women's domesticity can't be the stuff of brilliant literature.) Then there is David Constantine The Shieling, and finally The Childrens' Hours edited by Zimler and Sekulovic.

Cool stuff huh?

And I have a teaser for you. There is a new display case on the fiction floor of Waterstone's Brighton. I am running it with Eddie and we have both chosen books for it. I think some of you will really like it! Anyone want to take a guess as to what its theme is?

Blogover

2009-12-01T22:12:00.000Z

I have a new blog theme and I really like it. (If you're reading this in a reader please click thru and admire the shiny new!) Hurray. However, being a techy doofus I thought I had saved all my links but hadn't, so if you were there and aren't now could you let me know please? I've lost all my fiction links too but I think that'll have to wait for tomorrow as I am full of Zzzz.