Remembering how my novels began their life is always a problem. With Incident on the Line I wrote a paragraph, without knowing where it was going, likening life to a concertina, each event as the pleat of the bellows. Those particular events that are marked in your memory. At the same time I wanted to explore opening […]
Where did this come from? Did I see a couple, man and wife, sitting upright side by side, stiff Lego models in their camper van? I don’t remember, though the image, real or imagined, is where it started. Who were they and are they both happy? I thought not. What I do recall is sitting on the […]
This began with a newspaper cutting given to me by one of my writing friends, Henrietta Branford. It was the true story of a woman who had lived outside in her garden for years, shielded by umbrellas. It seemed that she died of old age rather than hyperthermia; no one knew why she had take […]
‘I wasn’t the first man to put a pillow over a woman’s face, even with love. … “I don’t want to live anymore, let me go!” That’s what I’d heard her say, my mother. When it was all over, I stood beneath the cherry tree, the blossom growing whiter as I watched, more glorious than […]
How would you like to read a brand new novel before it goes print? Sent to you electronically with my one plea, that you give me feedback. * The Greenhouse Legacy – has been four years in the making, that is the writing process. However it has been lurking inside my brain for twenty odd […]
‘Shuggie Bain’ by Douglas Stuart is my book of the year, 2020. A debut novel, Winner of the Booker Prize, a remarkable achievement and I love it. I read a hardback copy – borrowed – and am waiting impatiently for the paperback publication later this year to have my own copy. A story of love […]
This isn’t what I meant to write, an obituary, an epitaph, to the café in my town that has become a victim of lockdown. It is a small tragedy amongst the many far worse but it is a loss. It will have affected people with whom I’d become acquainted, the baristas who knew my regular […]
This makes me think of how it happens. Behind is a structure, the trellis of phrases, sentences, form. The branches and twigs are bare, no sign or hope of a flower until the eruption somehow magically happens and buds push out to blossom into work worth looking at. Just a thought!
How to manage Lockdown 3 This short article, or whatever it might be, is not advice. There is plenty of that around and I have no right or inclination to add to it. This is entirely for me. The horror of what we’re going through is incredibly difficult to bear. How not to sink into […]
Wallowing in the grey and gloom that is typical November weather, watching from inside a house or flat, through windows, is all wrong. Yes, most of us can’t be out there all the time, the need to work where the wind and rain aren’t going to ruin whatever we’re doing, let alone the facilities of […]
Thank you, Zoe Williams – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/13/a-vaccine-trump-going-a-bit-of-good-news-and-my-optimism-has-gone-bananas Here I was having another day of ‘this is worse than before’, that’s as in the previous lockdown, hope given and taken with each day, grey days, grey gloom, guilt that I’ve little to grumble about, yet nerves frayed and jittery. I’m normally the glass half full person, the […]
Here I am again, delighted to have completed my latest novel but wondering what and how I can create an eye-catching cover. It needs to highlight the focus of the story and, more importantly, grab readers’ attention. That I was inspired to write ‘The Greenhouse Legacy’ from a postcard of a painting by Eric Ravilious […]
This is the result of a most enjoyable collaboration which I wrote about in a blog with that title, Collaboration, at the end of March. Several of my postcard stories are already published on this website but I was delighted when Innes Richens suggested we combine our work in a book of short stories. A […]
I began writing this blog on 29 March, one week into the lockdown. The shock and horror had slightly muted by then and I’d begun to say to myself, as so many others said, get on with it, you can’t battle it, use the time. Six weeks on, seven weeks into this isolated / distanced […]