Blogs

i have not been on this site in a while. not because i had forgotten about it, but because i havent been writing. i remember at last look being happy for 200 reads, but 2000+ is wutz up. thank you for reading my little creative body of work. i feel special right now. many prosperous blessings to you and yours!

Every now and then I get a query about self-publishing: how to go about it, who to approach, what to look out for. So I asked Luigi Pagano, a fantastic ABCtales poet who has published half a dozen collections with different presses over the past ten years, if he might share some of his experiences with the ABC community. And he happily obliged: I’m Luigi – some of you may know me already – but for those who don’t I’ve been an ABCtales member for...

Before I get in to this week’s picks I wanted to let you all know that the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2014 is now open for submissions in three categories: poetry, fiction and life writing. Wasafiri is a fantastic magazine with an international bent, and the competition is open to anyone worldwide who has not published a complete book in their chosen category. The deadline is July 2014, word limit is 3000 for fiction and life writing entries and...

This is a novel based on the true story by Ruth and Jack Gruener. Inside, the book is dedicated: ‘For Jack who survived’. So it’s a novel that’s not a novel and a memoir that is not a memoir. All memories are ersatz, watery coffee brought to the boil with novelistic techniques. So we open, Chapter One, page two, with equilibrium, a remember of remembering: ‘If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have...

I’ve got Janice Galloway the wrong way round. I’m working backwards from her autobiographical and award winning memoirs to her earlier works. This is a collection of short stories, musings and the setting of a stage play (Scenes from Life No.27: Living In). ‘Fearless’ is my favourite, which is no surprise, I just ate up anything autobiographical and this is from that genre. ‘And he had these terrible specs. Thick as the bottoms of milk bottles,...

I’ve always meant to read this novel. Now I’ve spoiled it and watched the Hammer House of Hokum directed by James Watkins, with the screenplay by Jane Goldman, first. I’ve always liked a bit of Gothic. The name Arthur Kipps immediately makes me think of Pip and John Mills. I suppose we make do with the boyish Daniel Radcliffe as the man that is sent to settle the estate of the late Mrs Alice Drablow. Drablow is a Dickensian sounding name and...

As you might be able to tell from the pictures , we had a fantastic get-together this Wednesday at the Wheatsheaf in London, where we managed to raise 135£ for The Railway Children . Rhiannonw read some beautiful poems – including one inspired by last week's IP, a first for me - Kevin Marman, aka Stan, gave a very spirited (and poignant) reading from his book In the Day , Barely Black Francis had us first laughing and then deeply moved, while...

The last of David Hare’s spy trilogy. We have some salt of our youth in us and old Worricker has more than most. Has he enough to bring down the government, to bring down the Prime Minister? Well, let’s start with a little jazz, a little flitting about, a short-stay in Germany. Worricker and Tyrell are lying low. An M15 agent is told by her counterpart the difference between Germany and Britain is ‘Germans don’t like cameras’. They don’t like to...

What a terrific evening! A great atmosphere and very well organised by Luke, much thanks and praise are due to his relaxed and yet very effective event management skills and style of getting things done. Everyone who read surpassed any advance expectations I had. This includes the three writers who I had not found my way to reading before; Akimba, Rob Newlyn and the young man who read after me (Aidan?) I had no idea what to expect from them and...

I had the good fortune to discuss writing with Phil Klay, a brilliant author whose debut collection of short stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Redeployment , is publishing this Thursday via Canongate. He told me about what got him writing and what kept him at it – about the processes behind his work, his time in the marines and the writing communities that he’s relied on along the way. How did you get started writing? I was always...