Megan Taylor

Coming Soon...

2012-01-25T18:41:00.003Z

Out 26th April 2012

A New Year... A New Novel

2012-01-11T09:03:00.002Z

What’s that? I hear you cry (or perhaps wonder vaguely)

Could it be that the story I’ve been muttering on about for ages is to be released in a matter of months?

That I’ve just signed a publishing contract with wonderful Weathervane and my Ghosts will finally be unleashed?

Yes, yes.

Oh, yes

More (professional – well, professional-ish, is that even a word? It is now!) details to follow...

Turning Pages at She Writes

2012-01-06T18:28:00.004Z

I'm guest-blogging over here -

http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/turning-pages-by-megan-taylor

talking about 2011 becoming 2012 (and quite clearly not really knowing what I'm talking about at all) but hugest of thanks to Fiona Robyn and She Writes for letting me babble.

Sledging, for Christmas

2011-12-16T11:04:00.005Z

The snow had transformed everything. Zac’s hill had become a mountaintop, the whole park some storybook kingdom; even the other kids’ high-pitched shrieks were softened by its padded, magical layers. Zac sat in the sledge. He was perched on the brink of the highest peak, breathing in crystals and wishing he was gone.

And yet – what a view!

He felt compelled to admit that, just as he felt unable to stop looking. In the distance, beyond the fairytale trees, the deserted playground had transformed into a futuristic city. It was all strange, glittering angles, sci-fi walkways and suspension bridges, elegant towers with head-spinning drops. Today, it would be padlocked. It didn’t belong to the children anymore, not to these present-day children anyway, although they were everywhere else, moving in fits and bursts and surging ripples. Scattering across the other hills and craters like blown confetti, their bright coats and flying scarves unreal against the white.

Almost everything was white. The sky all around Zac, and his chattering teeth, the air that snapped between them. His knuckles, he was sure, were blanched to the pale of their bones beneath his gloves. Zac wondered if, in all his life, he had ever felt this scared.

The rope tied to the front of the sledge was frayed and grubby, not much more than a handful of unravelling strings. Yet he leant forward to wind it tighter around his woollen fists and as he shifted, the snow directly beneath him creaked and dipped. Like the warped old wooden boards of some galleon, the precarious deck of a sinking ship. Any moment, he knew, it might give, it would collapse. He’d be sent flying, falling, spinning over the edge –

As if that wasn’t the whole point of being up there. What was wrong with him?

He couldn’t give up, couldn’t trudge down to where the little kids were playing, closer to the bottom. Far too vividly he could picture that return: Mum and Dad waiting with Jamie, while the sledge bumped along behind Zac as if he were a toddler dragging some dead-eyed toy about, a plush, stuffed dog on a lead maybe, a duck with wheels. He knew how, as soon as they saw him, they’d start to laugh.

Of course there was no possibility of retreating. And yet – no way he could sledge down.

He’d started to shake, he realised. To shiver. But that was just the cold, surely? The cold, which was everywhere. Pushing up through the snow and the sledge, through his jeans, his flimsy skin. A cold that seemed to rise directly from a secret darkness packed far beneath the blinding earth. A chill so abruptly cutting, stinging, that Zac was forced to blink back tears. He blinked and blinked, wishing with all his might that he was sitting at home, beside the fire, watching television perhaps, and eating toast. Definitely eating toast, he told himself. Although truly, he longed to be anywhere else, doing anything else. To be anyone but Zac.

Except that then, suddenly there, between those confetti kids and their sledge tracks, through his own ice-bright tears and all that white, there was Mum. She was heading towards him, red-faced, arms pumping, puffing out steam and grinning as she waded closer. She was wearing her new suede coat. Such a deep, burnt orange colour, that coat; she flared like a flame against the snow. Briefly, Zac recalled church, the Christingles lining the deep stone sills. And then, despite how obvious it was that he was stuck, trapped, that he wasn’t about to go anywhere, Mum shouted. Shouting loud enough so that even the people waiting, far away, might hear.

“Hey, Zachary! Wait up! Wait for me...”

And almost before he realised what was happening, she was climbing on to the sledge behind him, wrapping her long, warm arms around his belly.

“You’ll be ok,” she whispered, and then she pushed.

And although Zac knows that the flight must have been exhilarating, that his heart was bound to have lifted as trees and kids and powder went tumbling past, his main memory of that sledge ride is of Mum. He remembers her arms around his middle, her cheek pressed against his own – and then, flickering out around them, against that glaring, spilt bleach sky, her joyous amber coat. The most vibrant, living colour, he’d thought then, in the entire Universe. Reaching out to grasp it with one flailing, grateful fist.

(glimpsed from The Dawning)

Happy Christmas x

Nigel Pickard

2011-11-13T14:08:00.003Z

This week we lost Nigel. A wonderful person, a stunningly good writer, an inspirational teacher and an unforgettable friend. I’m finding it very difficult to write about him, although I’ve tried to express something of what he meant over at LeftLion, where James Walker has gathered together memories of this unique, amazing man.

But really, words are nowhere near adequate.

The Broadway Book Club Weathervane Reading will still be going ahead on November 24th, and will be held in celebration of Nigel. There are details here.

Nigel is the highly acclaimed author of One, Attention Deficit and an incredible poetry collection, Making Sense (Shoestring Press). His current, almost complete work-in-progress contains some of the best writing I have ever read.

It is impossible to explain how much he will be missed

Spot the Difference :-)

2011-11-06T22:13:00.004Z

& Just One More

2011-11-06T19:50:00.004Z

Wafer-thin mint...

Or maybe two

(please don’t explode)

But firstly, the reading at Mayhem was amazing!! Such a lot of fun, and utterly terrifying – completely packed (my papers were shaking like a shaking thing, nevertheless it was great to unleash a little of my Ghosts.)
Alongside fabulous excerpts from Niki Valentine, Charlotte Thompson and local storytelling legend Pete Davis, there was an awesome performance scripted by the very talented Andy Kells and up on the big screen, Robert Powell, Christopher Lee and Tom Baker!! How good is that??

So, coming up...

This Wednesday, November 9th, at 7pm, I’m at Nottingham’s marvellous Lee Rosy’s Tea Shop, running a fiction workshop on openings and images with the great Writing at Rosy’s cw group.

And later in the month, I’m back at the Broadway (hurrah!) reading with wonderful Weathervane (irrepressible Ian Collinson and perfect Pickard) at the phenomenal Pam McIlroy’s brilliant Broadway Book Club, November 24th, from 7...

Right. That’s quite enough alliteration (more than enough), though if you’re not fed up of me wittering on about events (which you surely are) there’s a bit more of my blah about such things amidst an excellent article by Shanta Everington about workshops and Luton’s groundbreaking book festival over at the awesome The View From Here....

And More!!!

2011-10-01T10:22:00.004+01:00

Ghost Stories for Halloween

Nottingham Writers Studio and Mayhem present a Halloween treat for
all fans of supernatural storytelling. Leading horror author Niki Valentine
hosts an evening of haunting tales and live readings as well as a series
of screenings of cult television ghost stories including Tom Baker reading
The Emissary by Ray Bradbury from Late Night Stories; The Mezzotint
read by Robert Powell from Classic Ghost Stories by M.R.James, and
from Christopher Lee’s Ghost Stories for Christmas, the good man
himself reading The Ash Tree.

I can't believe I've been invited to read at this!!

The Broadway is one of Nottingham's finest establishments and its annual Mayhem film festival is legendary. Alongside those screen greats, there will be spine-tingling tales from stunning storytellers Pete Davis and Marty Ross, a performance of Andy Cattanach's SMS ghost script 'Sent/Received', Nicola Valentine will be reading from her new novel The Haunted, and there's horror and wisdom from graphic novelist Brick too!

What am I doing there? (well, actually I'm reading something from my latest, The Lives of Ghosts, but you know what I mean)

A scary night for me in many, many ways -
am so excited, I can't wait :-)

It all takes place on October 31st (of course!) in the Broadway cafe/bar from 7.30 and it's FREE
Come along and join my trembling! Come! Come!

...and another

2011-09-19T19:26:00.003+01:00

My review of When I Followed the Elephant by Tony R. Rodriguez can be found over at the fabulous The View From Here...

(just saying)

And Another Thing...

2011-08-25T14:13:00.003+01:00

Taking Off

2011-08-03T06:56:00.002+01:00

There is no fear of flying here. She love, love, loves it. Despite the airport waiting, the narrow foot space, the vague smell of something not too clean burrowed like rats into the upholstery. She loves it.

The grin is there already on her face, even before the safety demonstration that no one ever bothers to attend to, although she pretends to. Out of some sneaking wonder for the secret flitting lives of the cabin crew. And out of politeness. Of course.

And –

Concourse!

Goodbye!

She loves it.

She loves the acceleration, is head-over-heels-passionate for the whoosh-slump of the moment when the plane leaves the ground. That swinging in her stomach. The hurricane that turns on, and then oh so forgivingly turns off, her ears.

Perhaps most of all, she loves the other passengers.

The little boys in matching lumberjack shirts who squash the stunted windows, shouting “Mum! Mum! It looks like toys.”

She loves the mum already with her headphones on, the cream-slow thick flick of her magazine. Her practised “mmm”.

And the teenage couple, the girl freshly blonded and bed-tanned, fully prepared for their very first break, while her boyfriend sits rigid, with his eyes screwed tight, white-lipped as they ascend. The way that girl laughs and pretends not to notice how scared he is, offering only the briefest touch to his corrugated knuckles –

She loves the kindness of that. The whole containment.

And she’d like to lean over too, to let him know that really,

Really!

There is no need to feel afraid.

But naturally, she won’t intrude and right now, she has no one else to explain to. The seat beside her is empty. The plane’s crowds have been mismanaged. And yet although she can’t see him, she can feel her own missing person there. Right there. She’s keeping hold of him, no matter what he might be thinking. Or where he’s placed. How high, or low.

Unstoppable, the thoughts fly out of her (to him? to him?), twined with that happiness.

And does he catch them? Perhaps it makes no difference.

His ghost hand’s wrapped so knowingly in hers.

Blue Windows

2011-06-01T05:47:00.005+01:00

She doesn’t hear his key, the latch, the charm-like jangle of the forgotten chain. She doesn’t hear the back-and-forth rasp of boot soles on brown bristles, WELCOME trampled underfoot. She only realises he’s home with the bark of a televised shout, and then an eruption of orchestral strings that crest up through the living room ceiling, through the bathroom floorboards, an exultant fanfare for a shiny new car, or a packet of razors –

The commercial thrums in the gaps between her toes.

It’s more than enough. She throws the test into the cupboard beneath the sink and slams the door, catches her grey face in the dusty mirror. Her lips in the twilight are almost blue.

Her hair splashes over them as she swings away. She’s been in the bathroom for long enough. She’s thought for long enough. Nothing will change unless she starts it. And yet everything is different no matter what she does –

But before she can barrel downstairs, before she can rush him, the sky snatches at her. Blind-less, it forms a perfect panel in the neat white tiles. Not a true blue this evening, but a silky, opening mauve. Veined and deep and delicate, like the layered heart of some tropical flower. She feels a chill dab her collar, though the dusk doesn’t appear cool at all, but warm, and secretive.

Like flesh, she thinks and then hastily un-thinks it, drawing back the bolt and crossing the landing, but walking – walking now, not running – down the stairs.

She supposes that this is better, to appear calm. At the living room door, she pauses. Rakes her fingers through her hair, the strands more silvery than blond in the bleary, static light.

Not that it matters; he scarcely glances from the screen. She perches on the armchair at his side.

The programme is familiar. Yet another narrative about people circling their dreams. Every week, the same formula – a bright young couple or sometimes a family with mysteriously disappearing children, strive to build a house. Along the way, inevitably, things go wrong, with building supplies, and with builders and architects, bills flutter out of control – except it is almost at its end now. It’s the moment when everything’s resolved and the mellow-vowelled presenter (Cloud, she thinks his name is?) is led through a glittering palace of glass and clever, winking halogen. The fantasy-house (they’ve done it! Against the odds! What a surprise!) is revealed, as it always is, against a backdrop of incoming night.

The surrounding trees smear beside the building’s gleam; they bow respectfully, shuffle back. And it’s not the vast windows that are blue of course, but the world beyond their clean-cut gold. It’s as beautifully shot as ever and yet she thinks how her own bathroom sky was so much more palpable, a living thing –

"What now?" he says, and she jumps.

The remote’s clenched fatly in his fist.

"Shall I switch channels?" he asks "Or d'you want it off? Do you still want to talk..?"

She opens her mouth to begin it. She needs to explain.

About the test tossed with the unopened tampons beneath the sink. About windows, changing colour. She tries to imagine how his face will transform too, with her confession, but instead becomes distracted by the TV’s glow, the way it slides across his well-known features, remaking them already. And that blue flickering in his eyes. It brings to mind her Nana’s gas fire – the one she reached into, when she was five. She remembers how, because it danced so prettily, like water, she’d kept her fingers there, unbelieving, even as her skin began to curl.

"I," she says, but finishing off, the Cloud man interrupts her.

"This home," he says, "is an act of faith."

And for a moment, she watches her lover's thumb hover, considering Mute, before he shrugs forward. Breathes out. Turns over.

Furver fings...

2011-05-20T15:48:00.006+01:00

ooh - look...

Come along! Make crafty things! Browse books! Say hello!

(I really must get a new picture)

and if you'd like another chance to hear me waffling on about The Dawning and writing in my own unique bumbling way (how can you resist?), the lovely Tina Bettison has made a podcast of her radio interview available on her blog (the brilliant Ian Collinson and Nigel Pickard are on there too, making contrastingly perfect sense)

Small happy happenings

2011-04-10T08:39:00.005+01:00

A new review in the fabulous the view from here of Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch (which I bloody loved, though if you'd like to know why, you'll have to buy a copy (-:)

Have been invited to talk about The Dawning, alongside my lovely publisher, at Nottingham Central Library, 4th May as part of this fine city's Festival of Reading (-:

And most very exciting, am about to vanish again, back to this amazing place, to play with novel 4.

Plus the sun is everywhere today. Who could ask for more?

Second Person

2011-03-23T19:54:00.003Z

5.33pm
You’ve reached your flat, your doorstep. At last, you stop, but you’ve scarcely any breath and your head goes on echoing with the harsh ticking of your heels. You still can’t quite believe yourself, how you forgot your phone. Today, of all days. When you promised you’d call as soon as you’d told him. There’s somebody else. By 2, you’d said.

You drop your keys. Bend awkwardly to retrieve them, unbalanced by your heavy bag. It slide-slumps from your shoulder to your elbow, the strap catching, snapping, at your hair. A battle to simply get past the door and even once you’re in, you go on fighting yourself. Knocking your knee on the hall table so that later there will be a bruise, not unlike those others. Those perfect, purple petals circling your wrist. Not that any of this concerns you now –

The pathway to the kitchen, where your mobile surely waits, becomes a wind tunnel, sucking you on.

And it’s there. Thank god, it’s there.

Lying on the counter beside the fruit bowl (two browning, wrinkling apples, a skeleton of grape sticks), like something innocent. In relief, in triumph, you pounce. A greedy child grabbing at the last fat wedge of cake. But in your hand –

5.36pm
The phone is lifeless.

You don’t take your eyes from its screen as you rush through to the bedroom, to where the charger waits amidst a tangle of other wires. Irrelevant leads. You squat clumsily to plug it in and your skirt rides up, revealing a milky slice of winter thigh. While you wait for the connection, the acknowledgement, you grow aware of the different places where your blouse is sticking. And that exposed skin distracts you. The pale, dimpled meat of it. Hastily, with your spare hand, you tug flat the crumpled cotton. You can’t afford to think about your imperfections. Of how, even after everything, you might not be enough. With the first pulse of the battery bar, you dial.

5.40pm
Except apparently you can’t. Not yet. At least not without a glass of wine at your side. You return to the kitchen, where the light is changing, pinking. Reaching into the cupboard, you look deliberately past the way your fingers tremble through that pink. Only you can’t help wincing when the glasses knock together; their thin, piercing ring reverberates right through you.

It's the fear. The fear that despite all the planning, the daydreaming, the reality of your freedom will change everything. The fear that though you’ve kept up your side of the bargain – that you’ve actually done it, you’ve left him - you might after all, remain alone.

You go to the fridge, and as you pour, you’re suddenly, distinctly, struck by a whole new guilt. A cold, far brighter and sharper than the slow, pervasive, mud-like sensation that you’ve been carrying for months. So clearly, you feel the waiting beyond yourself, and you know that this delay is madness. In your renewed haste, clenching your Dutch Courage, you leave the fridge open, purring, behind you.

5.55pm
Still, the phone goes on lying in the soft dark beneath the bed.

You needed to finish the glass first. Although between each starched sip, your afternoon snapped back at you in pieces. How he slumped forward when you told him, the colours changing in his face. You’d never seen him cry like that before. Such a slow, sad breaking… And it’s all wrong. Of course it’s wrong –

You ought to sound happy when you ring. You should raise your cool glass to your new future. You need to believe in that future, to trust it, to move beyond the fear. After all, you’ve done everything you were begged to do. Except even now. Even now.

There’s too much love inside you. Too much hope. You return to the kitchen to fetch the bottle. You go on pouring, drinking.

6.27pm
The bottle’s empty.

Though you lost the last half-glass of it, tipping it stupidly, soaking your skirt. For a moment you just sit, watching the stain. Feeling the wet, feeling caught out. You don’t know how you’ll explain this wait, why you still haven’t called. When you said 2. What if it’s unforgivable?

In the next moment, you’re up, fumbling with your waistband, desperate to be rid of the sodden fabric. The zip’s tearing sounds far louder than it should. You feel it in your teeth. And there’s your body again. Your legs. You cover them quickly. A pair of ancient pyjama bottoms, the first thing to hand. You can’t stand your skin, that sallow gleaming, made worse by the shadows. Grey flowers, cobwebs, in every corner. The scent of your own sweat turns your stomach. And your breath’s rough with the wine. Something sourer underneath.

Your dread becomes clearer. What if you get what you deserve?

But with it, the longing –

6.32pm
You’re calling.

The phone damp already in your hand.

You’re calling.

And between the ring tone and your heartbeat, it occurs to you that its small, glowing screen revealed no new messages. No missed calls.

And you look at the bruises on your wrist. The bruises that I put there. And I join you in your wondering, about whether I’ll reply.

Radio!

2011-03-12T08:24:00.006Z

This Sunday evening I'll be talking writing with wondrous Weathervane on local radio station, Boundary Sound.

We'll be on Tina Bettison's 'In the Limelight' show from around 6.15 and you can listen live here:

http://www.boundarysound.co.uk/listen/webplayer/

(if you fancy (-:)

February fings

2011-02-08T20:53:00.004Z

Happy writing things lately!

Firstly, a visit to fabulous Fosseway writers group with Weathervane.
It was a real honour to read and chat with such supportive, interested and interesting folk. I first visited them in 2009 when I had the privilege of judging their horror short story competition and it was wonderful to be so welcomed back. And it’s always inspiring, and tons of fun, to read alongside Ian Collinson and Nigel Pickard. They show me how it’s done.

Also, I have a review out in the February issue of the magnificent the view from here magazine of Kenneth Oppel’s Half Brother – a YA novel, with wide-ranging crossover appeal about a family raising a chimp as a child in a unique linguistic experiment…

Meanwhile, at work, I’ve been figuring out workshops and writing with children, which has been brilliant. They're brilliant, imagination overflowing.

At home, I’ve been writing a new short story, which I don’t do so often these days, and which at the moment feels a bit, I think, like amateur topiary – there’s this massive hedge to shape and shears to wield and at times I’m so cack-handed I may well end up chopping that fuzzy green swan’s head clean off... Yet, I’m loving it – although if I ever do get it finished, I’ve no idea what I might do with it. But then, writing simply for writing is perhaps the very best thing of all.

Birthday

2011-01-22T08:40:00.002Z

This weekend, a year ago, The Dawning was published.

And over that past year, I’ve…
Read and been welcomed at a number of fabulous writing and reading events, all over the place in Nottingham, and in Leicester and London.
I’ve had interviews and reviews online and in print
Sneaked into my local Waterstones on more than one occasion just to see my spine gleaming back at me on a bookshop shelf (I know, I know, I’m sorry)
I’ve been on the radio and featured in podcasts
Been nervous and grateful and utterly overwhelmed. And a bit tipsy too.
I’ve signed books. And I’ve tried to explain.

The Dawning has brought me many, many happy things, but meeting brilliant people has definitely been the best bit.

I’m incredibly fortunate.

So please excuse the soppiness, but I wanted to say some massive thank yous.

Firstly, thank you Nicholas Royle and Sherry Ashworth, alongside my other inspiring tutors and astoundingly talented classmates at Manchester Metropolitan University for all that incredible encouragement long before The Dawning even guessed what it might be called.
Thank you to my long-suffering family and my lovely friends, and to the great writers at NWS, who have been so supportive.
Thank you kind bloggers and reviewers, and especially readers, and to the people who have patiently listened (and sometimes even nodded) while I’ve read and chatted and squealed. Thank you to everyone who’s raised a glass with me.
And
Thank you, hugely, to Weathervane, to fellow author Nigel Pickard for putting up with reading beside me, and to the lovely Ian Collinson who turned my excitement into a real, live book.

This weekend, I may be celebrating all over again, with something fizzy, maybe a cocktail. Or two.
Except I’d best not have a headache on Monday because that’s my birthday as well (though I’ll be considerably older than my little book)

So cheers folks, and thank you. I’m a lucky, lucky woman. (-:

... New Year!

2010-12-30T20:42:00.003Z

Here's to having absolutely no idea what adventures 2011 will bring...

But wishing big midnight snogs and overflowing glasses to y'all

m xxx

Happy...

2010-12-23T13:10:00.007Z

The cold makes everything stiff, catching.

Your breath hitches with the air sliced thin inside your throat. Air that feels polished-clean. Shockingly pure. You blink up at the blue jigsaw pieces carved between the trees.

The snow makes everything beautiful.

The branches glitter, jaggedly defined. Road, gutter, pavement, park – they’re all the same this morning. All of them sparkling. Smothered.

You lick your chapped lips. You swallow. And you remember how the sky used to taste when you were little, when you stepped off the bus into the twilight on your way home from school. You remember the deepening shadows and the gold at the windows, and even the creak of your footfalls feels just right. Gorgeous and secretive, but with those cut-glass edges…

Except today, hidden at the heart of it all, there is your phone.

Clenched inside your pocket, between your fingerless gloves and the silky lining, it’s the only warm thing about you. A single strange defence against all the white and splintered silver. Against that sheer, sharp, threaded blue.

The phone’s warmth remains tiny beside the dazzle. And yet it keeps you walking, and it keeps you smiling. Shimmering back at the eye-bright day.

Especially as now, it begins to ring.

Vibrating against your marching thigh, your bitten nails. You dab your thumb to the screen as you lift it slowly, as if casually, to your icy face. But your smile gives you away. It’s already widening, opening. Anticipating that rich, hushed voice, pushing softly through the cold.

Happy Christmas

M xx

East Midlands Book Award

2010-12-17T17:41:00.005Z

Oooh, look.

The East Midlands Book Award 2010 nominations have been announced!

Scroll down the titles and what's that...

Surely, it couldn't be The Dawning?!?!?

:-D

How amazing is that!?!

Not that I've got a hope in hell of coming anywhere remotely close to the shortlist, but how exciting-wonderful just to see it there, amidst all those brilliant writers, those excellent works.

There's so much there that I've been wanting to read, along with several books that I've raved about already this year - Jon McGregor's haunting, revelatory Even the Dogs, Maria Allen's evocative historical emotional suspense, Before the Earthquake, Nigel Pickard's humorous, compassionate and unflinching novel of life and education, Attention Deficit...

I feel incredibly lucky for The Dawning to be slotted in between such stunning stories, such groundbreaking authors. And very, very fortunate to live in a region that produces, and now celebrates, such diverse, exciting writing.

Thank you EMBA. Thank you Weathervane.

Ghosts and Lightning and The View From Here

2010-12-12T21:19:00.004Z

My review of Trevor Byrne's Ghosts & Lightning is featured in the latest issue of the marvellous the view from here.

I'm a bit excited.

I found Byrne's debut novel surprising, intriguing and a little bit bonkers (in a good way). But if you'd like to know why, you'll have to check out the view from here.

If you haven't yet come across this gorgeous and innovative literary magazine, you should definitely investgate further in any case. Intelligent, inspiring and beautiful to boot, tvfh offers interviews, reviews, comment, fiction and poetry. I feel very lucky to have joined the crew.

Hello Snow

2010-12-01T15:12:00.002Z

"Here, Philip," Barbara murmurs, and he feels her lapping closer.

She brings with her warmth and a cool, bright perfume, a delicate, lime-tinged scent. He feels the pull of her, the gentle glow of her – but he waits until she is standing right beside him before he turns to her directly. A part of him resists being drawn away from the tall French windows. Like a child, he has been captivated, mesmerised, by the falling snow.

It is coming down more heavily now, turning and colliding in thick, wet, playful clumps, alternately highlighting and then hiding the trees in Barbara’s garden, outlining the slightly disconcerting silhouette of a statue rising from the centre of her large stone pond. Except that the pond is invisible now, as the statue is faceless, eyeless, almost mythically blind. Philip appreciates this; he likes how the snow brings an uncertainty to things. A mystery and magic – and yet the way that it whips and gathers is very tangible too, reminding him of cake mix, a pale, creamy blend of butter and sugar in a bowl. Forbidden and delicious and irresistible. As he watches it whirl, he remembers the sharp childhood satisfaction of dipping a grubby, reckless finger – the anticipation of a sweetness that makes him shiver, as though with cold.

"Here, Philip," Barbara murmurs, lifting a champagne flute. "For you."

Except the glass seems filled not with liquid, but with a lemony light, and behind it, Barbara’s shimmering too. Her dress is very pale, although not quite white. It glimmers silver as she moves. A long, strapless garment, possibly silk. It fits her narrow body closely. Catching him looking, she hooks his gaze back in with hers, and reels it up towards her sculpted face. She smiles and lifts one eyebrow and, as if from a great distance, he hears his own unembarrassed laugh.

The snow, this house – the smell and shine of her: there is a satiny, dreaming quality to it all …

Extracted from The Dawning

(Available now!! And just what you’re after! An unsettling festive read!)

Coming up ...

2010-11-24T16:55:00.004Z

Stop Press!! Or something!

Due to the (lovely, lovely, naughty) snow, this magnificent event will now take place on Thursday 9th December
Same time, same place.

Perhaps you'd like to come along??

On the top deck of the 36

2010-11-19T22:34:00.007Z

You swing up the final step as the bus lurches a corner, sprinkling rain from your coat hem, your cuffs, your sorry excuse for an umbrella. Faces turn, from where they’re clustered, in pairs. Gazes grab at you, dismiss you –

Sitting at the very front, there’s an elderly couple on the left, while on the right, a young mum and her son dip and sway with the pattering night.

Hastily, the toddler returns to his earnest driving, his invisible wheel clenched tightly between woollen paws, his gone-bedtime eyes intense. It’s a good job he knows where you’re going, since no one else can see anything. Every single window is cottoned with condensation. You smell wet wool and cigarette ends. The secret leaves and mud patterns gridded to damp boots.

The middle seats are occupied by Girls Going Out. Insect eyelashes and hair straightened to the fluidity of tarmac – brittle blond, brunette and a combination of the two, carefully arranged stripes of oak and gold. Frosted lips all round. But these girls aren’t raucous, or giggling, as you might have expected. They’re not even whispering. Texting …

At the very back, one man, alone.

You take the seat behind the girls, but more because you’re afraid of skidding or stumbling than anything else. You haven’t realised, yet.

It doesn’t take long though, before you hear him. The way he’s drumming his heels against the floor, the thud of it an irregular heartbeat, almost exquisitely out of time with the engine’s wheezing, with the rain’s hiss and spatter. And when he speaks you realise that he’s probably been talking for some time. You’ve interrupted.

"I’m telling myself I’m a fucking idiot," he says.

And you turn, of course you do, along with everyone else. And yes, he’s definitely on his own. And no, he isn’t on a mobile.

He isn’t even old, or grubby-looking. But there’s the hollow volume of his voice. That shuffle-stamping. Thud ... Thud-thud, thud –

The girls’ eyes flash back at you. The old woman shakes her head.
But he continues:

"I’m telling myself not to think these things."

And his words seem so deliberate, it’s almost funny; they’re so painstakingly enunciated –

You realise that the folds of your umbrella are soaking a patch of darkness into the empty space at your side. And you know you ought to place it on the grey-glistening floor, but you don’t. Not yet. Because at the moment, you’re not moving. You’re listening.

"Just because these people," the man says. "These people –"

And now no one’s looking back there anymore. Everyone’s attention is singularly focused on those wide front windows, on the nothingness there, and a child humming. Driving with blind confidence into an expanse of clouded white.

On trains. And beauty. And things that happen

2010-11-17T09:23:00.003Z

A beautiful woman sat beside me on the train, although I didn’t realise it at first – her beauty.

Because she wasn’t young. Because the colour had slipped from her hair, and yet it was her hair that caught me, tugging at the edge of my vision so that, again and again, I found myself glancing up from my novel, my notebook. Shifting in my seat.

Hair that clouded past her pale, lined throat, misting where it touched her shoulders. And when she bowed, brushing her lapels, I saw how thick it lay against her crown.

Luxurious.

I thought of down then, and purity.
Plump new pillows in a hushed hotel room. The untouchable place where a swan’s wings meet, tucked against its back.

No wonder I kept looking.

There was the smooth, lifted line of her jaw. Her elegant shoulders and long lean torso, acknowledged but discreet beneath her coat. She was all poise and posture and pleasing angles. I pictured her spine falling with the fluid certainty of a Jacob’s Ladder; she seemed so contained. Complete.

I slumped, a sack. My fingers fumbled with my fraying pages. My pen lid dropped anyway, skittering too loudly towards the aisle.

Her hands had come to a careful rest across her lap. Perhaps, after all, the most beautiful part of her. Those tapered fingers and pearly nails, a single ring. Skin so thin it made me wince. The veins beneath so delicate, frail threads winding towards neat knuckles, a spreading, silken blue …

It took me a moment to dare an "Excuse me". To reach across.

She drew her knees high as I leant past. Her coat whispered. Sharp folds with something softer underneath, and a whiff of rose water, and talcum powder. The scent of baths from long ago.

But beneath her trailing hem, her feet –

Without shoes or stockings, without socks. They were small enough, streaked and smudged enough, to have belonged to a young girl. If it wasn’t for their pallor, and the tiny cuts.
Nonetheless.
Her stripped heels and toes remained almost as elegant as her finely strung hands. One ankle bound with a plastic tag.

And in the moment before I sat back up, abandoning my pen lid where it had dropped, I recalled the commotion back at the station.

The ambulance parked in the damp outside, doors wide. Police and rail staff converging on the platform, radios buzzing. Yellow jackets against the grey …

And when, drawing breath, I straightened, she was staring at me. Eyes lit with mischief. She raised one finger to her lovely mouth.

"Hush," she said.
At least, I thought she said.

Before she looked beyond me to the window. To the black rain, black glass. Another carriage rumbling past.

Retreating

2010-10-24T10:44:00.003+01:00

And it isn’t winter yet, but only autumn

2010-10-11T19:56:00.014+01:00

Nicola is five years old again. She is somewhere wide and grassy, lined with paths and ancient trees, and her Dad is there, walking beside her. He’s laughing. It’s so easy to make him laugh; all Nicola has to do is pull a face, or swing from his coat sleeve, or simply chatter. It’s a kind of magic. When he glances down at her, which he does frequently, his grin is wide and real and full of glinting teeth. Even stooped over like that, he seems impossibly tall, as high as the treetops, and impossibly happy. There are dense, glowing ashes piled inside him. She can see them smouldering gently through his eyes.

And it isn’t winter yet, but only autumn. "My favourite time of year," he tells her. The trees are full of autumn. They’re brown and yellow and rust-coloured, a waxy lipstick-red. One of the tallest is even a glorious deep purple. Nicola has been watching that one for a while, watching it grow larger up ahead. She’s longing to reach it. She wants to touch those purple leaves; she’d like to sniff them. If Dad isn’t looking, she might even slide one across her tongue . . .

Biting back a secret smile, she turns her head this way and then that, taking in the clean, crisp sky and the dewy grass, the mushrooms that sprout among the tree roots in a spongy, spreading rash. There are conkers everywhere. They litter the path like fat Maltesers, but Nicola isn’t collecting them, not today. She feels one roll beneath the sole of her boot and her smile grows. The conker’s too hard to crunch down on, but nonetheless the roll itself is satisfying. She steps sideways to make it happen again, but Dad snatches up her hand, and the air stirs and thickens all around them.

It’s smoky, this autumn air, full of the promise of Halloween and Bonfire Night. It makes Nicola think of wet socks and coming home, of potatoes and foil blackening together amidst white, untouchable coals . . . But then Dad pulls her closer still and the smokiness gives way to the familiar scent of his creaking leather jacket. Briefly, she nuzzles her face into his side. He smells sweet and musty, like the inside of the car.

As soon as they reach the purple tree, he’ll swing her up into the branches. Nicola knows that it will happen without her even having to ask. "There you go, Princess," he’ll say, his face big and pink and beaming, and as he lifts her, she’ll reach down with her small, stubby hands. She will run her fingers over his wiry head and watch the ripple of his thick brown curls. Then she’ll look past him to admire her own feet, kicking back and forth through empty space.

He won’t be able to reach high enough to ruffle her hair in return, but his grin will somehow spread even wider, splitting his beard, and: "On top of the world, kid," he’ll say in one of his silly T.V. voices. Then it will be Nicola’s turn to laugh.

Time will pass up in that tree. The bubbles of sunshine between the leaves will slowly stretch and burst and turn a deeper shade of orange, but he won’t make her go home. She’ll cut him off before he can suggest it: "Please, Dad, not just yet . . ."

And he will nod, his big face flushed with the early sunset. He’ll go on holding her safe and steady among the swaying, purple branches until eventually Nicola will feel as if she’s floating. Fluttering. On top of the world. She’ll never have been as high before, never so knowingly happy.

(extracted from The Dawning)

Canoe

2010-10-03T08:17:00.004+01:00

During the weeks when he was leaving, the feeling that she carried almost constantly, that she lugged to work and around the supermarket, the sensation that flattened her to the mattress every single sleepless night – that feeling, was canoe shaped.

She came to see it very clearly.

An old, wooden canoe with cracked, warped boards, its paintwork weathered grey. The sort of given-up boat that’s sometimes transformed into a tourist sign, stabbed vertically into the ground before a row of cabins, a forest campsite. Once it might have been daubed with words, ‘River View’, or ‘Hiawatha’s Retreat’. Some such brochure-shit.

It wasn’t a canoe anybody would ever actually use. You couldn’t even bob in the shallows with it, let alone negotiate rapids or glide between dragonflies and lush green banks. Undoubtedly, it leaked.

And what use was that, a canoe like that, inside her?

She could feel it all too keenly.

Her flesh, her skin, draped awkwardly around it, like wet clothes heaped across a cheap hanger. Her stomach was crushed thin beneath it, and she had no idea how her ribcage managed. And yet it was such a waste of space, that canoe. While it’s oar-less heart remained stubbornly, greedily empty, filled with nothing but aching, sour air, she had to struggle to live around its edges. Some nights, in bed, when he was there, or not there, beside her, it made it difficult to breathe.

The only time she’d ever experienced anything remotely similar was after her mother had died. Remembering this, she wondered if the feeling wasn’t canoe-shaped after all, but more like a coffin? Except how did that help? How did that make anything easier? The idea of hauling a coffin about, of it rearranging your insides?

And even after he’d finally left the house for good, the feeling didn’t go.

She couldn’t escape it and there came a point when she feared she might start telling people, as if she couldn’t help it. Running into friends or colleagues, or even the familiar strangers at the station each morning, she became filled with the urge to reach out, to pluck at a sleeve or a hesitant hand –

“There’s a canoe,” she might tell them. Hissing: “A fucking canoe, inside me.”

Except it was far too easy to imagine how their lips might twitch or their eyebrows jump. The whole aghast or overly polite way they’d probably nod back at her. As if they hadn’t even heard of a canoe before. As if she was the type of woman to go mad.

Fings

2010-09-17T19:07:00.005+01:00

While things around these parts have been a bit upside-down or inside-out or generally the wrong-way-round lately, there's nonetheless been some great writing stuff happening, and more to look forward to.

At the end of the summer, I returned to this fab review (thank you Pam Mc at guide2nottingham for allowing me to tug your 'emotions through a wringer' (-:), and I also met a brilliant North London bookgroup who had chosen The Dawning as an August read. It was such an interesting and enjoyable evening.

It was a proper dark-and-stormy night. The conservatory roof was ink-black and shuddering with rain and as we ate and drank and chatted beneath it, it struck me all over again how a novel stops belonging to an author once it slips off into the world - how it slides and shifts, becoming so many different stories. Stories as diverse and unique as their individual readers.
I loved having that reminder; it's such a frightening and wonderful thing. And I was also blown away by how the novel's characters felt as real as the brilliant people discussing them.

:-)

Coming up!

Alongside my lovely publisher and fellow Weathervane Press authors, I'll be chatting books (again!) at Nottingham Writers Club on October 6th, as part of the Weathervane Vocal Books Tour.

Towards the end of the month, I'm looking forward to learning more at Jon McGregor's editing workshop at Nottingham Contemporary.

And I'm really ridiculously excited about running away all over again too. Especially about staying in a Cube.

Shanta Everington and The Terrible Twos

2010-09-12T09:47:00.007+01:00

Shanta Everington is a hugely talented and hardworking writer*. In celebration of her latest publication success, The Terrible Twos: A Parent's Guide, she’s dropped by my blog so I could pick her incredible brains …

Could you please tell me a little about the book, and how you came to write it? What makes ‘The Terrible Twos’ different from other parent guides?

S: The inspiration for 'The Terrible Twos: A Parent's Guide' came from my son and our trials and tribulations through the 'terrible twos'. I found that a lot of parenting books seemed to offer very prescriptive advice with a 'one size fits all' mentality and that didn't make sense to me. After all, every parent and child is different. When my son and I were struggling through the 'terrible twos', I found it so useful to hear from other parents about their experiences. My son threw major traffic stopping tantrums! Some parents had no problems with tantrums at all but worried themselves sick about faddy eaters. For others, the potty had become an object of much fear and hatred! Sleep regularly cropped up in the conversations. So many parents were wonderfully generous in contributing case studies and quotes for the book. There are parenting books written by non-parents (e.g. SuperNanny and Gina Ford) and parenting books written by journalists with no professional childcare training. I'm a parent and a qualified early years teacher, so hopefully I can contribute personal experience and professional expertise. The book also draws on the experiences of a wide range of other parents and every chapter includes a real life case study. My book is unique because it doesn't tell parents 'how to' parent or what they 'should' be doing. Rather it recognises that every family is different and offers a range of strategies to help parents find their own way to transform the 'terrible twos' into the 'terrific twos'!

How do you find writing non-fiction in comparison to fiction? Is either easier? Do you juggle both at the same time?

S: I really enjoy both but the process is very different. For me, writing fiction is more organic and fluid. I start with a burning idea and character(s) that I feel I just have to write about and I go with the flow. With non-fiction, the contents have to be more mapped out at the start, especially if commissioned in advance. But I was surprised to discover that the writing can still take unexpected turns.

I don't think either is necessarily easier but non-fiction seems easier to put down and pick up again. It's a slightly more detached process, although I did get very passionately engaged with this book! If I'm working on a novel, I really need to be able to immerse myself in the characters' worlds and live and breathe through them. I find it very intense and I have to be in the right 'place'. There are other challenges with writing non-fiction - for me, there was a lot more research for starters! I planned to juggle both at the same time but it was too hard! So I tend to focus on one at a time. :)

You’ve previously had two stunning novels published (‘Marilyn and Me’and ‘Give me a Sign’), how has the publishing process varied with ‘The Terrible Twos’?

S: (Blushing...) Thank you, Megan. With both my novels, I wrote them without a publisher in mind. I wrote them for myself, focusing on the integrity of the characters and the story and only when they were finished, redrafted and edited several times did I start to think about finding a suitable publisher.
With 'The Terrible Twos', I sent a proposal (synopsis, contents, sample chapter) to the publisher and was commissioned on the basis of that. It was exciting to have a publisher on board at the outset but a little scary to see the book available to pre-order on Amazon before I'd actually finished writing it!!!
It wasn't the first proposal I sent them but it's obviously less time consuming to work up proposals and have them 'rejected' than write entire books! I have (coughs) several novels that never made it to publication.

Along with being an incredible writer (of parenting guides, education resources, journalistic articles, interviews and reviews, of novels, short stories and poetry …) you’re also a tutor and a mother – do you ever sleep?

S: (Blushing again...) You are way too kind. Well, I certainly survive on a lot less sleep than I used to! It's true that I am very busy right now but there was a long time when it seemed that many doors were closed to me so I don't like to complain about it!

What’s next for you, Shanta?

S: Well, Need2Know have commissioned me to write a second book, 'Baby's First Year: A Parent's Guide', which will be published in 2011. So I'm just starting to gather material for that. If anyone reading this has a baby and wants to be included in the book, please do get in touch via my website (www.shantaeverington.co.uk)!

In terms of other writing, I have two short stories appearing in two different anthologies this year - 'Yasmina's Elbow' in 'Even More Tonto Short Stories' (Tonto Books) and 'Graft' in 'Mosaic Open Anthology' (Bridge House Publishing), which is really exciting too.

Thank you, Shanta!

S: No, thank you!!!

* Not only is Shanta an incredibly talented, productive and inspiring writer, she’s also completely lovely. I first met her three years ago, when I read alongside her and the fabulous Caroline Smailes at Manchester Central library. We were each reading from our debut novels and it’s been wonderful following these wonderful women’s writing journeys.

Can’t wait to see where we all go from here . . .

EBOOK!!

2010-08-31T21:44:00.002+01:00

If you prefer digital to paper, you can now buy The Dawning in eBook format too

(just thought I'd mention it)

m xx

Fairies

2010-08-08T22:55:00.007+01:00

Mid-Summer at the station and the air is full of fairies.

Cotton-fluff, you tell me and sweep one arm towards the trees, as if those rippling shadows and foaming leaves could explain anything clearly. I turn back slowly, through the soft.

The afternoon hugs us, closer than our skin. The sky melts into your face and I smell the grey sludge of my old sun-screen, and cooking metal, from the fence ribs and the tracks.

Fairies, I insist.

And though you join me, you remain begrudging, at first.

Except there are so many, it's dizzying, giggling. Irrisistible. And they're easy to catch. Wilting to white spiders in our hands.

Soon we're both leaping and laughing, wishing relentlessly. Clapping each time we flick them free. You're with me now, completely -

After all, there's a lot to wish for. A blizzard of dreams burn bright between my sticky lashes. There's hope in your high-pitched, hitching breath.

The train's not here yet, but the air thrums. Secrets spiral, rising, blurring with the whir of a swallow's wing.

Summer Reading

2010-08-04T20:56:00.004+01:00

On holiday, and around the edges, some of the books I've (splashed with Sangria and gritted with black sand) loved lately -

Forgetting Zoe by Ray Robinson - completely stunning, beautiful and brutal, this utterly blew me away

Train by Pete Dexter - further intriguing and complex Americana, not quite as good as his glorious and devastating Paris Trout, but almost

Like Bees to Honey by the lovely Caroline Smailes - everything I was hoping for, and more. Loss, redemption and Jesus at the bar. Take it away with you, or curl up at home. You'll love it however

Bury Me Deep - more sheer Megan Abbot goodness, this time noir in elegant thirties shades

Not So Perfect - Mr Perring provides some surreal and superb snapshots of the way we are or might be in these perfectly proportioned short short stories

A Fair Maiden - another twisted fable from the indomitable Ms Oates, Joyce Carol I will love you forever

Weathervane Summer Sale!

2010-07-14T21:25:00.007+01:00

In the spirit of holiday reading (be it lost in the grass, cocktails at dusk, a leaky cottage or simply a Sunday lie-in) my magnificent publisher, Weathervane Press, are having a Summer Sale.

For a limited period, you can pick up any Weathervane title (including The Dawning) at half-price - that's just £3.99 - and with FREE P&P too!

Just what are you waiting for?!?

oh - here's a bookshop link

Discovering Megan Abbot

2010-07-10T20:50:00.004+01:00

She’s been collecting awards and accolades for years, but I’ve only just discovered Megan Abbot.

I started accidentally, on a whim, with her second novel, The Song is You. The book’s styling made me pick it up (my husband’s a bit partial to pulp art and I’ve grown to have rather a soft spot too, our dining room is walled with it), but as soon as I began to read, I fell hard and I fell fast. Just the way you should with such a book.

Abbot writes period novels in the hardboiled/noir tradition. She’s frequently compared to Chandler (and I love Chandler), but there’s both a succinctness and sumptuous lyricism to Abbot’s writing that is absolutely her own. She’s everything I might have hoped for in this genre. And so much more.

There are bent cops and wayward starlets, cloudy bars and glittering casinos, each crackling, sizzling story accompanied by perfect pacing, hooks and twists. The moral ambiguity is brilliantly layered – everything and everyone has a beautifully rendered seamy underside - and while Queenpin is simply dazzling, in each of her novels, her female characters are outstanding.

And this is hugely appealing. Personally I’ve always had a thing about fictional ‘bad girls’ (Oates’ Foxfire is one of my all-time favourite books). It’s also more generally refreshing – not that this is some simple redressing, the chilling brutality of gender politics runs in dark threads throughout Abbot’s books.

Most of all though, she tells fascinating, stylish and irresistible stories.

And her covers truly are amazing. And she’s called Megan. What’s not to like?

Wimbledon

2010-07-01T07:20:00.005+01:00

After he’d left us, during those final weeks, I’d rush home from school each afternoon to find my mother spread across the sofa cushions, watching the tennis.

At least she appeared to be watching it. The room was so dimmed it was difficult to tell. The French windows often stood wide open, but she kept the curtains closed. The garden’s heat and buzzing drifted in, in small, squeezed pieces, although now and then, the lined hems quivered with a more persistent, fruit-tinged breeze.

And from the television, that very English murmur:

"Fifteen – Love"

Before the furred, steady thud of the ball resumed. On and on, like a heartbeat. Back and forth, like breath.

My mother watched the screen and I watched her. I’d never seen her looking quite so blank, or pale, or still. Not in the flesh, anyway. She looked like an old photograph of herself, perhaps one of the perfume campaign shots, when they had swathed her in silk, behind a misted lens. She looked just as dreamy and beautiful, and as unnervingly unreal . . . When the telephone rang she hardly stirred. She’d glance up, but that was all, or shift to rearrange the cushions at her neck, but she wouldn’t rise. She never answered.

While it trilled though, she sometimes smiled in my general direction and once or twice, she raised her glass to me. She winked.

Or seemed to wink. Through those blowsy shadows, that uncertain light.

And I do remember crossing the room. Not to answer any call either, but to sit on the rug beside her. Beside her glass, filled with gin and tonic and shifting ice. And I remember how meticulous her movements were when she lifted her drink over my head. I remember that hiss and icy tinkle, while the ball-girls ducked and ran in circles, then fell hastily back into place.

(from The Lives of Ghosts)

Lowdham!

2010-06-23T22:28:00.004+01:00

A quick reminder!

I'll be reading and chatting this Saturday morning at Lowdham Book Festival, alongside the splendid and talented Nigel Pickard and Ian Collinson.

Come along! You know you want to
(-:

Tell Me Stories of Your Trinkets

2010-06-12T20:32:00.007+01:00

You were on my bus. I didn’t notice you, at first.

Through the window, there was rain, cars, a smear of trees. Each wet day the patterns are almost the same, grey and green, dissolving. And watching the pavement melt into the leaves, I felt that pinch, that small longing, like I always do.

Your perfume found me first. A smoky-brown scent, patchouli hints, resurrecting memories of park benches and my own growing up, of shop-brand cola, generously spiked. Nonetheless, for a moment still, I kept my forehead to the glass.

It was the sound of you that made me turn. From across the aisle, you jangled. And then you sparkled, and I wondered.

I studied your earrings first. A matching, flamboyant pair. Dangling loops of shivering gold, with wooden animals attached. Camels or llamas, maybe cats. Souvenirs, I thought, from somewhere exotic, Morocco or Kenya or further East. Those earrings spoke of holidays, of escape, or perhaps merely of hoping. A desire to be gone.

There was a single metal ear-cuff too, on your left side, clipped higher, catching stray hair. That might have been when I thought of ballpoint pens. Of pinning you in place.

There were two strings around your neck. The first a set of love-beads, multi-coloured seeds that drip-drip-dripped between your woollen breasts, bright as the candy necklaces we’d fight over as little girls. Pinging elastic in search of treasure, chasing summer flavours, pastel dust.

The second string was tighter. A black leather lace, suggestive of a noose, or dog-tags. Maybe even a lead. Perhaps a gift – did he like to see it there? There was a pendant attached, stone-like, bone-like; I couldn’t read the words it bore (if words they were), but its shadow was distinct. A second secret message smudged red against your skin.

In your lap, your folded fingers. Your hands revealed a single ring, and the space where one once was.

The ring was gold, with a green stone, shining with a broken, antique light. An heirloom, surely, passed down from some austere aunt, or a shadowy grandma . . . Unless it had simply belonged to your mother? I wondered how frequently you felt its weight. How much you might still miss her.

And that paler strip of skin on the third finger of your left hand; it betrayed you so that I hardly needed to guess. Except – instead of looking stripped bare, that fine line glowed, a milky glimmer. It looked younger than the rest of you. A thread of newborn flesh.

You lifted that hand then, to the pole. Already, it was your stop.

The bus bell buzzed, but I hardly heard it. I was distracted, freshly captivated, charmed by the charms about your wrist, those tiny, flickering trinkets. I wasn’t close enough to see them; nonetheless, I did my best. I pictured a silver figure and a glinting guppy, a perfect doll’s house clock. You chimed – jangling once more – as you heaved yourself upright.

I could have cried out as you rose; your bracelet sang, but you only sighed. And you remained mostly faceless, shapeless; I’d hardly started – I didn’t want to let you go.

LeftLion

2010-06-07T21:26:00.005+01:00

I was in the fabulous Broadway cinema's cafe last week, leafing through the latest issue of Nottingham's culture bible, LeftLion (as you do when waiting for your friend to reappear from the bar with wine AND cake) when - lo and behold - I found a new review of The Dawning!

Although LeftLion were kind enough to feature the novel previously on a podcast, I didn't expect to come across the review and I was deeply chuffed. LeftLion is amazing - funny and insightful and truly unique.

And while The Dawning perhaps proved a little 'ominous' for reviewer Robin Lewis with its 'general air of creeping disaster', apparently 'Taylor has crafted an involving picture of a family in a tailspin'

(well done Taylor!)

If you're not lucky enough to live in Nottingham, I believe you can download the complete, free magazine from their website. Not only do Leftlion provide reviews, great comment, brilliant interviews and top listings, they also publish quite possibly the best star-signs in the Universe.

(ie; 'Capricorn - If you want to keep a cool house this summer then buy a beagle and train it to smoke. Surveys have suggested that a smoking beagle is the coolest house pet you can possibly have, ranking above a juggling monkey and a cat in a jumpsuit. Do not put the beagle in a jumpsuit.')

Lowdham Book Festival 2010

2010-05-24T22:11:00.003+01:00

My lovely publisher says ...

Weathervane Press are delighted to announce they will be hosting an event at the excellent Lowdham Book Festival final Saturday on June 26th.

We will be launching the Weathervane Live Vocal Books Tour at this event, which takes place at 10.30 am in the Lit & Phil Tent behind the Village Hall. There will also be readings by Megan Taylor from her thriller 'The Dawning' published in January and Nigel Pickard from 'Attention Deficit' published in March. All Weathervane books will be on sale at the event and throughout the day from our own stall at the Book Fair also in Lowdham Village Hall. The event is free - no ticket required.

Full details of the Lowdham Book Festival programme can be found at http://www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk/

I say:
Come along! Say hello! You know you want to!

'Like Bees to Honey' - Chapter 13

2010-05-20T06:43:00.001+01:00

Open publication - Free publishing

It's a total pleasure today to host Chapter 13 of Like Bees to Honey, the stunning new novel by the wonderful Caroline Smailes

In the run-up to next week's publication, the whole story is buzzing from blog to blog - just click the cover to delve in.

The next installment will be available from Bubblecow

To retrace the adventure from the start, you can find Chapter 0 on Caroline's blog.
Or you could just buy the whole marvellous novel.

You really should - Caroline's audacious writing is always beautiful, heart-breaking, shiveringly good.

New (and rather lovely) Dawning Review

2010-05-11T22:38:00.000+01:00

A while ago, when I first began bumbling about amidst this strange/ bewildering/ beguiling bloggy-internet-land, Eli got in touch via my original MySpace to let me know she'd enjoyed How We Were Lost.

I was over the moon, especially when I discovered what a talented woman Eli is (she's a truly fine photographer and a poet too!! Her first collection, 'i scrubs' has just been released - please do check it out).

Now, as I continue to go on bumbling, Eli's blown me away all over again with this very kind review of The Dawning.

Thank you tons Eli - it means a lot xx

A Woman Walks Into A Post Office

2010-05-05T06:57:00.000+01:00

She’s carrying a package. The package is big enough to warrant using both hands, but she manages with just one, and an awkward elbow. Her other hand is hooked between a gaping satchel, a swollen purse and the trailing strings of her I-pod.

Joining the queue, she wonders whether she’ll be late for work. She isn’t as anxious as she might be; she’s frequently late for things. The package in her hands, for example, ought to have been sent three weeks ago. She’s tried very hard not to worry about that either. Her arm aches.

The queue is mostly made up of much older, murmuring women, some of whom are wearing hats. They shuffle past penny sweets and chocolate bars, row after row of glimmering foil.

The whole post office feels like it has been sent to the woman directly from her childhood. As does the brown paper of her parcel. She dips her face when the queue moves on. Such a satisfying smell.

The package is so neatly wrapped too. And painstakingly labelled. Her handwriting doesn’t slant or wobble or shrink away. There are no fingerprints smearing those hospital-corners, no stray hairs caught, incriminating, beneath the tape. She has taken such care; it’s not like her.

She’s the kind of woman who sheds and drops and forgets things, a woman who doesn’t ever quite manage to speak up when she should, who blurts the wrong words when she shouldn’t. And she’s always late. When she finally reaches the counter and the parcel is taken from her, as if it’s nothing, she remembers these facts about herself. She remembers them acutely.

Shit, she thinks, feeling the empty air throb between her empty hands. What have I done?

But in the next moment she’s dropped to her knees, she’s laughing and apologising. Scrabbling for silver as the coins go raining from her purse.

My Current Draft ...

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

of The Lives of Ghosts is now COMPLETE

(I think)

(I hope)

yay?

On Rewriting*

2010-04-24T09:18:00.000+01:00

Random thoughts along the way -

I love you words

I hate you words

But where’s the time?

Where’s the coffee?

Have I forgotten to get my characters dressed (again)?

Am I late picking my daughter up from school (again)?

Don’t drink that wine …

Drink the wine!

Walk and think and walk and walk

This novel is amazing

This novel’s a disaster.

This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel. This novel.

This novel.

*I’m aware I may be flogging the whole ‘On Writing’ title variations. But currently there are other words to think about, so I’ll just blame Stephen King. In general.

New Podcast! Podcast News!

2010-04-14T21:41:00.000+01:00

Back in January, I was invited to take part in an interview and reading for Write Lion, the brilliant literature division of Nottingham's phenomenal cultural guide, Left Lion.

In conversation with the incredibly insightful and patient James Walker, I'm in between two completely fascinating Proper Writers, Paul Reaney ('Shoot'! 'Family Guy'! '24'!) and Rod Madocks ('No Way to Say Goodbye')

The podcast is now available right here.

(apologies for any ums and errs and giggling involved. I could blame it on the fact the interview took place on the Monday after the weekend of both The Dawning's release and my birthday and I may have been feeling a little, um, sketchy - except that it might feel familiar if you've ever heard me read before ...)

Bookmunch!

2010-04-09T09:58:00.000+01:00

The Dawning seems to have taken over the brilliant Bookmunch site this morning

(yippee!!)

I'm honoured to have been interviewed by the incredibly talented Annie Clarkson - and what a challenging and enjoyable interview it was too. She really made me think about my writing

Annie also posted a very kind review

Thank you tons Annie
Thank you Bookmunch

Vocal Books Tour

2010-04-07T22:39:00.000+01:00

Attention East Midlanders!

My wonderful publisher, Weathervane Press, have just launched an exciting initiative, the Vocal Books Tour, a scheme designed to bring writers and readers in the East Midlands together.

Here’s how Weathervane Press describe it –

Vocal Books Tour from Weathervane Live.

Weathervane Live, a group of five Nottingham based authors whose dynamic character-driven novels have all been published by Weathervane Press in the last twelve months, feel it is time to ‘make some noise’ and get out on the road.

If you run or belong to a library group, book club or literary cluster of any description and would like a couple of us to read from and talk about our work at one of your meetings, please email us at:
mail@weathervanepress.co.uk.

So, if you're interested or would like further information, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

I think it's going to be fun (-:

While Not Writing …

2010-03-30T13:08:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd share some of the novels I’ve enjoyed reading recently. A couple were written by very talented local authors, but really there’s no theme or reason to this selection (I generally like to read randomly), aside from the fact that these five are especially great and they happened to be part of what I've been up to while Not Writing.

Before The Earthquake by Maria Allen
Breathtakingly evocative and hugely enjoyable, 'Before the Earthquake' takes place in rural Italy at the turn of the century and follows 15 year old Concetta's search for lost memories - her emotional journey is as finely wrought as the book’s unique setting. A stunning debut.

Attention Deficit by Nigel Pickard
By turns, funny, heart-wrenching and hard-hitting. A tale of life and education told in parallel through the compelling and distinctive voices of incorrigible teacher, Harry, and disruptive pupil, Lewis, as they each stumble towards crisis. I was swept along. A completely cracking read.

After You’d Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
This novel was recommended to me during a discussion about writing flashbacks. Somehow I’d never read O’Farrell before and I’m very pleased I finally have. This story expertly weaves together different threads and her work generally seems to be all about secrets (which is perhaps my very favourite subject too). I’ll definitely be catching up with more.

Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
I love Joyce Carol Oates. I love her unstoppable energy and her courage. I love her true and twisted vision of how we are and how we might be, and the strange, dark, rhythmic poetry of her prose. Basically, I just love her.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
What can I say this book that hasn’t already been said? Quite frankly, nothing. Except that for me, it's perhaps even better second time round (I first read it 20 years ago – 20!!! How did that even happen?)

I’ve also been reading (and chatting about) my own novel too. This month, ‘The Dawning’ was featured at a lovely evening reading event at the gorgeous and truly pioneering independent bookshop, The Bookcase, in Lowdham and also at the Independent Press Fair at De Montfort University. (Thank you The Bookcase for lovely wine and nibbles and lovely people. Thank you States of Independence for such an incredibly inspiring day).

P.S. You may be relieved, or completely un-bothered, to hear that I’ve now allowed myself to start (re)writing again. It’s driving me crazy. I’m loving it. Thus the usual insane balance of my universe has been restored.

On Not Writing

2010-03-22T09:26:00.000Z

I’ve been trying not to write anything creative lately. I’ve gone two weeks already, I'm hoping for three. But I’m not very good at it. (I’m often not very good at writing either, but that’s a whole other post).

I’m attempting to gain some space so that when I return to take another long, hard look over the latest draft of my third novel, The Lives of Ghosts, I’ll be more likely to see it as a reader might. That’s the idea anyway.

In the meantime, I’m not letting myself anywhere near brand-spanking-new novel 4 either (despite its muttering) and I’m not even allowed to approach that dusty file of half-baked, half-finished short stories either.

There have been lots of fabulous happenings to keep me busy*, but mostly I’ve been trying to focus on just reading.

And I love reading. It's the most important thing - without reading, why would I write? And many of the books I’ve been reading have been brilliant*. But at the moment, it’s not enough. I’m still waking early, but instead of stumbling, zombie-style, for the coffee pot and a notebook or my laptop, I’m simply lying there, amidst the flotsam, thinking strange things or the same things, over and over again, around and back.

I miss my secret dark mornings twitching with words (even when the words were wrong). And I miss that feeling of dropping right off the edge, into a story. Those melting moments when the story becomes more real than anything else. I’m also even missing fiddling with a single sentence for twenty minutes before deleting it altogether in a huff.

I may have already cheated a little too. My brief notes scribbled on the bus (quick - while I remember!) sort of . . .grew. As did a letter to an old friend until it wasn’t really anything about us anymore.

And I seem to be blogging (/blithering) more than usual too*. Apologies for that.

My husband thinks that writing provides an outlet for me, especially for any weirdness, or sadness. He reckons it’s what keeps me (relatively) sane. Right now, he’d better watch out in case he’s right.

*details to follow in yet another post – I bet you can’t wait!

Nottingham Evening Post Review

2010-03-19T09:41:00.000Z

And another one (!) this time in today's Evening Post -

Page-turner set in the Peak District

The Dawning, Megan Taylor, Weathervane Press, £7.99

On a momentous New Year's Eve amidst the backdrop of the Peak District, the seemingly ideal Haywood family unravels in this tense second novel by Nottingham author Megan Taylor. The characters are all intelligently formed, with mum Stella the stand-out personality. And whilst some scenes are uncomfortable to read, there is a deliciously realistic atmosphere plus some clever plot devices.

- Oonagh Robinson

It's brilliant to see it in the paper (- and with Rose Tremain reviewed next door!)

A lucky week this week, for sure (-:

Vulpes Libris Review

2010-03-18T09:14:00.000Z

The truly marvellous booksite Vulpes Libris features a review of The Dawning today. Here's a glimpse -

'Taylor writes like a modern D H Lawrence. The quality of her rich and poetic prose wraps you round like a fur coat on a winter’s night . . . read slowly to savour it.'

- Wow!

Enormous thanks to the incredibly talented, indomitable and very generous Anne Brooke. What a wonderful surprise this was to wake up to :-D

States of Independence - This Saturday, 20th March!

2010-03-15T19:51:00.000Z

INDEPENDENT PRESS DAY

Clephan Building, De Montfort University, Oxford Street, Leicester

10.30am – 4.30pm, Saturday 20th March.

Stalls from dozens of independent publishers.
Workshops, readings and book launches.
Independent presses from across the region (and some from around the country) will be on site, together with many regional writers whose work is published by large and small independent publishers. Join us for an hour or two or the whole day.

Open to all and free of charge.

How can you resist?

A brilliant, buzzy event, with bucket-loads of inspiration and imagination for every kind of book lover. There will be poetry and crime fiction, novel and magazine launches, industry insights, short stories and so much more ...
And I'll be reading in the afternoon too (but please don't let that put you off - in fact, come and say hello)

For further information visit http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/

Cheers to you Nottingham!

2010-03-09T21:48:00.001Z

When we decided to move for my partner’s job almost seven years ago, I wasn’t even quite sure where Nottingham was (I know - I’m sorry!). I’d lived in South London all my life; I was surrounded by family and old friends. My son was still at infant school, my daughter still in nappies. Things were safe and happy, if in a bit of a skint, day-to-day bumbling-along, unthinking kind of way.

Moving away with hardly any money and no guarantees and small children to re-settle wasn’t easy, but I soon started to discover brilliant Nottingham things (wonderful countryside nearby, some excellent eating, music, cracking cocktails, lovely people …). And I had no idea that books would become such a part of my life here too.

Before I moved to Nottingham, I wasn’t published. Although I’d always loved writing and becoming an author was a long-term daydream, I had never considered studying creative writing and I rarely shared my stories. Firstly, living in Nottingham gave me the space to start taking my writing more seriously. And later on, it offered me support.

Nottingham Writers’ Studio has been inspirational, presenting many opportunities, along with introductions to a varied and vibrant range of writing people from poets to journalists, playwrights to publishers (including my wonderful second publisher, Weathervane Press). There really is an awful lot of fabulous writing business going on in this town. And the fiction produced here is amazing.

I’ve just finished reading Maria Allen’s hugely enjoyable and evocative debut Before the Earthquake. Just before that, I was blown away by Jon McGregor’s third masterpiece, Even the Dogs - and before that, I was enormously moved by Frances Thimann’s haunting collection Cello and Other Stories. Over the next month, I’m looking forward to reading Nigel Pickard’s Attention Deficit and Roberta Dewa’s Holding Stones. And last Saturday, while attending the East Midlands Writing Industries Conference, the supremely talented Nicola Monaghan (acclaimed author of The Killing Jar, Starfishing and The Okinawa Dragon) came over to ask me to sign her copy of The Dawning! I already knew how lovely and supportive Nicola was from reading with her last year – nonetheless, I was dead chuffed. And very pleased, and very grateful, to be writing in Nottingham too.

Fiona Reviews!

2010-03-07T09:19:00.000Z

Fresh from the success of her brilliant Blogsplash, the talented and lovely Fiona Robyn has nonetheless taken the time to read and review 'The Dawning'

http://www.plantingwords.com/2010/03/dawning-by-megan-taylor.html

Thank you Fiona!!

Thaw Blogsplash

2010-02-28T22:51:00.000Z

Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free.

Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat; books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about; princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.

I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say; ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for’, before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

Continue reading tomorrow here...

Or buy the complete novel right now, right here (-:

I will Never, Ever Cease to feel Excited at the Sight of My Book on a Shop Shelf

2010-02-27T20:46:00.000Z

I went into Waterstones in Nottingham yesterday, and there it was.

Small, but perfectly formed.

I will never, ever cease to feel excited at the sight of my book on a shop shelf. It's what I used to dream about when I was little. It's what I frequently still dream about now that I'm big.

I'm very, very, very, very, very, very happy.

(now somebody just has to buy it, so that they'll order in some more ...)

3 More Brilliant Book Things

2010-02-16T22:54:00.000Z

1.
A very kind review of 'The Dawning' at the unique and fabulous Literary to Sensory blog site

2.
An invitation to read and chat about 'The Dawning' at the amazing Independent Press Day at De Montfort University, Saturday 2oth March.
(There will be so much buzzy independent stuff going down here - stalls, launches, talks - and it's all free and open to EVERYONE. You should really come along)

3. An interview with the esteemed Ms Shanta Everington over at the innovative, incredible View From Here
just a little bit EXCITED!!!

Feel the Fear – And Bumble Recklessly Onwards Nonetheless

2010-02-06T09:58:00.000Z

It’s brilliant being published – but it’s also a little bit scary. Don’t get me wrong - every nanosecond of that scariness is more than worth it, but (if you’re a bit of a blundering scatter-head like me) it can also be sort of . . . challenging.

For a long time, reading my work before an audience made me milky-kneed. It’s not quite so difficult anymore. I’ll never be a performer, but now that I’ve finally understood that it’s about connecting with people rather than scrutinising my own unliterary accent, or my wobbly tone, or my hair, or my lipstick (or whatever) it’s definitely easier (and sometimes I actually, secretly, rather like it).

But then this week, I was invited to my local BBC Radio station to talk about ‘The Dawning’. My publisher happened to meet John Holmes, and then happened to foist (I’m sure in a very friendly way) a copy of my book on him. John liked it, and invited me on his show. I was completely honoured. And utterly terrified.

But John was lovely. And so were so many supportive friends in the nervy run-up.

I gabbled – it passed in a blur. And you can Listen Again here for the next seven days (apparently I’m on 47 minutes in), if you should so wish. I’m not sure if I will, but you can because I’m feeling brave. And hugely grateful (I really can’t tell you how much that support has meant). And very, very lucky.

Thaw

2010-02-02T20:29:00.000Z

"I feel strange after writing today. Like I have a blackbird in my stomach."
(p21, 'Thaw' by Fiona Robyn)

A vivid and delicious lyricism runs throughout Fiona Robyn’s compassionate and compelling third novel, ‘Thaw’.

‘Thaw’ tells the story of thirty-two year old Ruth, who ‘doesn’t know if she wants to be thirty-three’. Her life is meticulously ordered, her relationships painstakingly detached – her loneliness devastating. ‘Thaw’ is Ruth’s journal, covering three months, as she decides whether or not she will take her own life.

Last year, I interviewed Fiona after reading her assured and sensitive debut, ‘The Letters’. There was a delicious ease to reading that novel, a pleasure that I compared to sinking into a warm bath – although similarly lifted and illuminated throughout by Fiona’s deft, poetic voice, ‘Thaw’ is very different.

Describing deep-seated loss and self-destruction, it is a necessarily darker, spikier read, and yet the pacing of its diary structure makes it difficult to put down. Most of all, there is an authenticity about Ruth and her struggles that cries out for understanding, reaching far beyond the novel’s pages.

It is this sense of empathy, combined with the beauty of Fiona’s prose, which makes ‘Thaw’ such a valuable and unforgettable book.

"She is all curve and smooth skin. She looks like a seed or a bulb; if you planted her in dark compost and waited patiently, she'd burst into flower."

('Thaw, p.42)

Fiona is celebrating 'Thaw's publication with a unique, literary, internet experiment. From March 1st, she will be blogging the entire novel, for free, here!*

In order to spread the word, she's beginning with a Blogsplash and she needs as many bloggers as possible to get involved. If you'd be willing to host the first page of the fantastic 'Thaw' on your blog on March 1st, please do get in touch ...

*though I personally think it would be better not to wait. You can buy this beautiful book right now.

How It's Been

2010-01-28T16:53:00.000Z

During the past fortnight, among other things, I have . . .
Sprained an arm after slipping in the ice
Stared in awe at a box of shiny new books
Danced around my living room
Jumped up and down a bit
Read to a packed room of lovely, supportive folk at NWS
I have
Signed books
Sold books
Posted books out in neat, brown packages
Confiscated a book from my eight year old daughter
Taken the very same book out for cocktails
And one day, into work (and then felt suddenly too shy to mention it)
I have also
Grazed a knee for no good reason whatsoever
Been recorded for three separate podcasts
Interviewed on two brilliant blogs (thank you Caroline and Nik)
Written a ridiculous amount of emails
And barely any fiction
Been spoilt rotten
Had loads of fun
Turned 37
And slept (a bit)

I have felt -
Excited, delighted, panicked, unreal, exhausted, rejuvenated, overwhelmed, unstoppable, tipsy, terrified, grateful, lucky, happy, happy. Happy.

Today's the day . . .

2010-01-23T11:21:00.000Z

that 'The Dawning' is officially released!!!

Caroline's Blog

2010-01-21T15:00:00.000Z

. . . And the most marvellous Mrs Smailes has interviewed me over on her blog too!
(I am such a lucky woman)

There's a chance to win a copy of 'The Dawning' if you fancy dropping by . . .

Nik's Blog

2010-01-16T15:31:00.000Z

The lovely Nik Perring has interviewed me (already!) about 'The Dawning'. Please visit his blog if you'd like to find out more ...

Early Release!

2010-01-15T11:33:00.000Z

A message from my wonderful publisher, Weathervane:

Megan Taylor's terrific second novel 'The Dawning' is published by Weathervane Press on January 23rd, but there's no need to wait - you can order from the Book Shop at www.weathervanepress.co.uk and get free uk delivery right now.

'The Dawning' is a tense domestic thriller set in a wintry Peak District on New Year's Eve - a time for celebration, but for each member of the fragmenting Haywood family this night could mark the end. 'The Dawning' explores the danger that can arise even at the heart of a family, over the course of one dark night.

Megan will read from and talk about 'The Dawning' to members of Nottingham Writers' Studio on January 21st. For more details and information on NWS see www.nottinghamwritersstudio.co.uk

The Dawning of 'The Dawning'

2010-01-09T18:44:00.000Z

There are only two weeks to go until ‘The Dawning’ is released!
I can’t believe it will be happening so soon, although (before the workshops and the revising, the submitting and the waiting) the ideas behind my new novel actually arrived almost three years ago . . .

(I think it might be flashback time - imagine several atmospheric piano notes and perhaps the edges of your screen rippling into dreamy soft-focus)

‘The Dawning’ began in the car with my family, driving back from a day out in the Peak District. It had been a good day, as they still are, although we’d been walking through woodland instead of along one of the Edges as we often did, back then. My daughter, who was five at the time, had been happy hunting for fairies and the freakiest looking mushrooms. My son had, as usual, fallen ‘accidentally’ into a stream. Their dad was at the wheel and I was half-dozing, tired and happy, full of a pub roast and two large, leisurely glasses of dry white wine. Along with the sounds of the kids chatting in the back and the tarmac murmuring beneath us, Regina Spektor was singing from the stereo in her dark and joyful, playful way.

It was getting late. Outside, beyond the road and fields, the trees were black against the sky. I closed my eyes, thinking vaguely about the day we’d had and how I’d come to love the Peak District, and about going home, all sorts of home . . . I thought about our move to Nottingham, and the old London flat I’d left behind . . .

And then, as if out of nowhere, I was picturing a large, stone house with long, gold windows. I saw a back door opening, releasing more gold light and a figure emerging - a small, shadowed figure in a hood. He stood for a moment on the sloping step, gazing out into the dusk.

That image, that boy, would stay with me, although I was already drifting, resurfacing, and thinking simply about twilight – about the day folding in and the night rising. About that feeling that you get sometimes, of going under . . . I thought about one, long night in the middle of winter. A night of secrets, and of endings. I thought about New Year’s Eve.

I opened my eyes, suddenly excited. And all over again, I saw the beauty of those trees.

Far too early the next morning, I crept out of bed while the rest of the house went on sleeping. Throughout the night I’d been unable to shake free those images. It was still dark outside when I started to write what was to become my second novel, ‘The Dawning.’

And a Very Happy New Year!

2009-12-31T20:52:00.000Z

"On the radio, the shouts and cheers and high-pitched whoops have finally subsided to allow Big Ben the space to toll the hour. It feels almost religious, this ritual pause. You can sense the crowd waiting, listening, a mass drawing in of collective breath as those ancient bells ring out with dark, metallic gravity. They seem to grow louder with each peal. They seem to go on endlessly, as if marking so much more than twelve o’clock ..."

From 'The Dawning', to be published January 23rd!!!
:-D

Wishing Everyone an Excellent and Exciting New Year - may 2010 bring you all that you desire, and more xx

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-23T19:41:00.000Z

To One and All xxx

Festive Story Time

2009-12-21T07:52:00.000Z

This crept out when I was supposed to be writing about Other Things. It’s a sort of story. And sort of Christmassy (well, there’s snow). I hope you like it.

Charlie, in the Snow

The snow is falling, white and wet, in the way of snow. I watch it settle in her eyelashes and in her hair. I watch her watching it.

My little sister. Charlie.

Big, pale, blue eyes (the blue of winter shadows, the blue caught beneath thick ice). Pink, parted, cupid lips. Just seven years old as she stands there amidst the sparkle, with her small, soft arms lifted towards the blackness beyond it all, her mittens dangling from her wrists.

The mitten-strings are invisible so that the gloves themselves appear to float alone like some magic trick. Small, lilac clouds. And I notice how Charlie is swaying, just perceptibly, in her moon-boots. I stare at her woolly knees and at her blond hair and her rosy cheeks and I think how people are right; she is truly “Angelic”. She doesn’t belong in this world; everyone agrees.

Ever since she learnt to talk, she has told us herself: God is here. Inside me.

Of course she was the first to know. Mom never told her to say such things, despite what certain folk imagine. The truth, I think, is that Mom is actually a little scared of Charlie, underneath. But then aren’t we all a bit afraid of her in our secret, separate ways? And that’s right, isn’t? Shouldn’t holiness, after all, be at least partly frightening? Awesome – I think, and I don’t use that word the way that other kids would.

As I stare at Charlie, I try to see it, that hard place, that holiness inside her. A thread of burning ice amidst that softness. It’s probably clearest when she’s Healing, whether she’s illuminated by the angled spotlights and generous candle-dazzle surrounding our Church’s altar, or caught within the smaller, nervy flicker and fug of a Chosen sickroom. Perhaps you might glimpse the Truth inside her then, as she lays on her small, splayed hands. It’s there in the pinched concentration of her doll-like features, in the increased frosting of her gaze. A kind of ghost-light, which further enhances that wintry blue, while the Uncured groan and shudder underneath her. When they finally give in, weeping, to her shivering touch.

It’s because you can see Him moving through her, Mom says. His Holy Spirit.

But I can’t see that coldness in Charlie now. That icy flame is nowhere close.

Right now, with her head flung back and her gold hair pouring and glimmering past her fallen hood – right now, as she catches flakes like feathers on her lapping tongue, my kid-sister looks like any child. Like any seven year old, lost simply to the magic of snow, to that dizzying, obliterating tumble. And usually, even when she’s not Healing or Praying, when she’s not ablaze, but meant to be simply playing, or resting, Charlie’s expression remains careful, guarded. It’s an old-lady look, almost – but not tonight. Tonight, she stands gawping and open before the whirling sky.

Dumbstruck, I think, and maybe that’s why I dare to bend to my knees amidst the wetness and scoop up a handful, packing it tight against my already-stinging, blotching palms.

And “Charlie!” I call in a teasing voice, as if this is something I always do, something quite natural to us – as I draw back my arm and throw.

The snowball hits her squarely in the middle of her back. It drops in satisfying cream-pie strings from the ends of her shining hair. And I’m immediately gasping, bent with laughter at my own audacity; I’m helpless as she turns, still caught in a kind of halting, jarring wonder, towards me, her blue eyes wider than ever.

“Hey,” she calls, “Hey you, Sammy!”

But through the stars, through the shattering glass piercing my own hot, wet vision, I see that her flushed face remains open, that her red mouth remains open; she’s grinning back – and then she’s crouching against the thick white, packing her own ball in return. And she doesn’t pause to pull her mittens on, she’s too determined. She’s going to get me too – except that then, when she straightens, something happens. Her shoulders hunch as she lifts her face and sees not just me, I understand that – but the Church looming over us, its relentless light glaring in garish patches at my back. Painting trapdoor panels in the settled snow between us.

I watch Charlie’s hand fall open. A small pink starfish. The laughter dries on my clumsy, chapping lips and my mouth feels full of stones as the whiteness slithers from her fingers.

And suddenly I see that there is perhaps nothing illuminating her gaze except that yellow from the Church windows –

Nonetheless, I bow my head as she pads past, her precise, little footsteps almost silent as she returns inside to save us all.

By Megan Taylor, December 2009
_____________________________

The Fear from Here

2009-12-07T07:25:00.000Z

The rather lovely and talented Shanta Everington has written an article over at 'The View From Here' in which she tackles the prickly and interesting issue of a writer's fear when it comes to actually being read.

As well as discussing her own post-publication nerves, Shanta also discusses the experience with Anne Brooke, Fiona Robyn, and myself (not that I'm ever really scared of readers or reviewers - honest).

The feature can be found here.

Sneak Preview

2009-12-04T09:26:00.001Z

: )

And last night, I read a pre-launch extract at Nottingham Writers' Studio, alongside Steven Wilcoxson, who was promoting his fascinating debut, 'Make Less Strangers'. Everyone was hugely lovely and supportive. It was a really fun night.

And during the next couple of weeks, I'll be sent my final proofs. And we have a tentative launch date - 23rd January 2010 (which happens to be the day before my birthday)!

And it is nearly Christmas!!

I'm so happy I think my head might actually fall off.

The Dawning

2009-11-17T09:33:00.000Z

My second novel, recently re-titled ‘The Dawning’ (originally ‘Before the Light’), is to be published by innovative, new Nottingham press, Weathervane, in January 2010!

We signed contracts last week. I’m so happy I could pop.

I have many people to thank, and lots to do – January doesn’t seem very far away at all. But for now, here’s a brief outline of ‘The Dawning’:

It is New Year’s Eve, a time for fresh beginnings - but for each member of the fragmenting Haywood family, this night could mark the end.

With mother Stella battling depression and father Philip determined to escape, eleven-year-old Zachary and his teenage sister Nicola are forced to fend for themselves when confronted by their own worst fears.

Set against a backdrop of wintry beauty on the edge of a Peak District town, ‘The Dawning’ explores the darkness that can arise even at the heart of a family, over the course of a single devastating night.

Fosseway Writers

2009-11-08T22:41:00.000Z

Last Thursday, we drove out of Nottingham through shrieks and bangs and bonfire smoke. The night air smelt deliciously charred, even after the fireworks were reduced to crackles in the distance, a glimpse of glitter beyond the woods - even as the landscape emptied, darkening and deepening all around us. During the journey, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. There didn't seem to be any road signs, but there were a great many trees . . .

It was the perfect beginning to an evening spent discussing horror stories.

After we had finished being lost (I am indeed highly skilled at getting lost) I was welcomed with coffee and biscuits by the bright and lovely people of Fosseway Writers group. I'd had the honor of judging their horror short story competition and I'd been invited along to their meeting to announce the winners. It was a very enjoyable evening, great to put faces and names to all those words and to hear the entries brought to vivid, unsettling (undead) life as they were read aloud. The whole judging experience, though very tough, was hugely rewarding and I felt truly privileged to have been involved.

While the night might have pressed cold and black against the car window, the reception from Fosseway writers couldn't have been warmer. I love being around other people who love writing - it's so inspiring. Thank you tons.

In Celebration of Hallowe'en

2009-10-30T15:48:00.000Z

I’m unleashing the opening to my most recent novel, ‘The Lives of Ghosts'

There were ghosts at the Loch House long before we arrived, with ours.

Marie told me about them towards the end of the journey. After nine hours behind the wheel and all that silence, her voice didn’t sound right. It was hollow and tinny and seemed to scrape at the air trapped between us. Air that had smelt of melting rubber for the entire four hundred mile drive.

“There have always been stories about the place,” she said. “Sightings of shadowy figures and sudden lights. Strange noises in the night. For a while, we even thought about including them in the brochure. Some people like that kind of thing.”

Looking back on it now that I’m older, I imagine that she was simply talking for the sake of talking, chatting to ward off the panic as the reality of what she was doing finally started to set in. I can clearly remember how her eyes flicked at me in the rear-view mirror, a dark, wet flash and then away, and how her shoulders had risen; she was practically cowering in her seat. Clinging to that wheel. And certainly not thinking straight to say the things she said.

. . .

If you’d like to continue reading, or want to find out more about 'The Lives of Ghosts', please visit my website, where (for a limited period, as they say, whoever they are) you can read the complete first chapter.

Thaw Blogsplash

2009-10-22T21:01:00.000+01:00

Fiona Robyn is going to blog her next novel, Thaw, starting on the 1st of March next year. The novel follows 32 year old Ruth’s diary over three months as she decides whether or not to carry on living.

To help spread the word she’s organising a Blogsplash, where blogs will publish the first page of Ruth’s diary simultaneously (and a link to the blog).

She’s aiming to get 1000 blogs involved – if you’d be interested in joining in, email her at fiona@fionarobyn.com or find out more information here.

Competition Ramblings

2009-10-19T16:36:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, I received a package in the post. Feeling the shape and weight of it and scrutinising the postmark, I was pretty certain it was the package I’d been waiting for. A strange new nerviness descended. The parcel was tightly sealed, bubble-wrapped, and by the time I’d finished juggling scissors and old sellotape and finally broken it open, I was practically popping with excitement, myself.

It contained exactly what I’d hoped.

A pile of brand new, as-yet-unpublished short stories, each neatly printed, each writer anonymous.

I had been asked to judge a local writers’ group annual short story competition. The terrifying responsibility of the task hit me right alongside the enormous privilege. But even before I started reading, I was grinning from ear to ear.

I love competitions.

I’ve had stories short-listed in a few, including the Asham and London Writers. And I’m pretty sure that having How We Were Lost placed second in the Yeovil Prize helped to draw it to the attention of certain publishers. But I also believe competitions are hugely rewarding even without the placings or the prizes. They’re great for the discipline of constraints and regulations, and for their deadlines, and perhaps for pushing writers into attempting something new.

Tonto Books have recently announced the results of their latest short story competition, judged by the marvellous Caroline Smailes. The finalists’ anthology, ‘Even More Tonto Short Stories’ looks like it’s going to be a fantabulous collection and I wanted to add my congratulations to all the winners, but most especially to some highly talented, bloggy friends, Shanta Everington, Nik Jones and Fiona Robyn.
And to those who didn’t quite make it this time (ahem) – Congratulations too for giving it a go (-:

Nik's Blog

2009-10-09T19:44:00.000+01:00

The very generous and talented Nik Perring has invited me over to his place for a spot of mild interrogation (it was fun).

Thank you Nik!

After the Circus . . .

2009-10-07T21:18:00.000+01:00

We did it!

And I loved it

So I'd like to say some enormous THANK YOUs

Firstly, thank you to awesome, award winning author Nicola Monaghan, who was not only generous enough to share her reading table, but also helped so much beforehand, offering encouragement about my writing, easing my nerves and ensuring that our pieces worked so well together.

Thank you too to LeftLion for organising such a brilliant, buzzing event, to Nottingham Writers Studio for all their support, and to all the lovely, lovely people who came along to listen.

You're all fabulous.

THANK YOU TONS

Roll up! Roll up!

2009-09-30T20:57:00.000+01:00

I've been invited to read this Saturday at Leftlion's fantabulous (Canning) Circus Extravaganza , an incredible day-into-night of FREE live music, art and spoken word in the heart of Nottingham!!

I'll be reading (possibly from second novel 'Before the Light') alongside the amazingly talented Nicola Monaghan and just before a whole dazzling parade of poets.

The literature events begin at 4pm in the upstairs gallery of the Hand and Heart

Would be marvellous to see you there!

Obsessions

2009-09-29T23:01:00.001+01:00

Rachel has 'tagged' my blog and given it an award! Thank you Rachel (I hope I'm doing this right).

I've been challenged to list 5 obsessions. Since my personal obsessions (wine, chocolate, daydreaming etc) aren't very exciting, I thought I'd offer 5 obsessions in my writing instead (hope that's ok) so here goes

Some features that tend to haunt my stories are -

secrets

smells

breaking points

light

mothers

hmmmm.

Moving swiftly on, I'm to pass on the award and challenge to 5 others, so stand by
Anne
Annie
Shanta
Nik P
Nik J

Playing Drafts (3)

2009-09-06T09:06:00.000+01:00

He's reading my novel.

I wanted him to. I asked him to.

It's freshly printed and neatly hole-punched. It sits like homework in its brand new folder. All the latest edits are in place.

The pages are crisp and clean and as-yet unscribbled on. I'm ridiculously aware of their slow slide, their rustle.

I can't be in the same room as him. I'll start watching his face - I might not be able to stop myself from asking.

And so I hover nearby, making coffee, And then more coffee. I pretend to think about the book I'm reading and the other writing I have planned. But -

He has been reading for almost two hours.

Eventually I go up to our bedroom. I rummage through the heaving shelves there and then lie on top of the covers and turn pages determinedly.
I try not to picture him doing exactly the same downstairs.

look what Annie did!

2009-08-23T14:26:00.000+01:00

Well, I've just returned once more, a little bit sad and filled with longing already, to find that the fabulous and talented Annie Clarkson has given me a lovely review on her excellent forgetting the time blog.
Thank you Annie for cheering me right up (-:

Travel Broadens the Mind (or something)

2009-08-02T00:17:00.000+01:00

I've been away to the Land of Dreamy Dreams.

It was amazing!!

Aside from having a generally fabulous, funny and fascinating time, the trip released so many imagination triggers that I've returned with a head ringing with stories.

Plus my usual chasing-the-dream philosophy, alongside my reading and writing appetite, may have grown even bigger.

In fact, I feel voracious (besides which, I love that word) not so much in terms of twitting/blogging/promoting internet thangs - I simply want to write and write and write.

So please excuse me if I stay quiet for a little longer.

lucky

2009-06-30T22:08:00.000+01:00

It’s been quite a weekend.

On Friday afternoon, I received my MA results. And I’ve passed. With Distinction!!!!

Yay!

I have loved studying creative writing so much. I’ve learnt tons, read some absolutely brilliant original fiction and met many wonderful, supportive and inspiring people.
Having the actual marks has been like adding extra delicious fudge icing to an already lush and chocolate filled cake. Or something (in case you haven’t guessed, I’m very happy)

And then, on Saturday, I ran my workshop at Lowdham Book Festival.

Yay!

We had a full house and everyone who took part was wonderful. I was a bit nervous beforehand, but then there was a lovely moment when I looked around at all these writing people and I could almost feel the crackle of words flying about their heads. Thank you so much to everyone who came along.

And then, I was whisked away for a celebration involving cocktails and cabaret.

I’m still grinning.

Playing Drafts (2)

2009-06-14T22:12:00.000+01:00

Snip, switch, scribble, slash . . .

(but will there be any novel left?)

Workshops and Websites

2009-05-29T10:34:00.000+01:00

"There's No Place Like Home"

I'm running a creative writing workshop at this year's Lowdham Book Festival, from 10.30 - 11.30am on Saturday 27th June.

Come along and learn how to transform childhood memories of real places into fictional settings. You might even find the beginnings of a whole new story . . .

The workshop is FREE and will take place in the Nottingham Writer's Studio tent. Book your place by calling 0115 9597947, or emailing nottinghamwritersstudio@gmail.com.

I'd love to see you there!

In other news, I've been playing with my website. Along with information about How We Were Lost, you can now read more about my recently completed novel, Before the Light and the brand-spanking-new The Lives of Ghosts.
:-)

Help Save Salt

2009-05-21T22:06:00.000+01:00

As you may have gathered, I'm a huge supporter of independent publishers. As the mainstream plays increasingly safe and so grows ever-narrower, it's frequently the small presses who champion the unique and the innovative, who look to the future.

This year, Salt lose their Arts Council funding. You can help them to survive by buying a single Salt title. Please visit
http://www.saltpublishing.com/

Or visit their blog to read more about this campaign
http://www.saltpublishing.com/blogs/confidential.php

Playing Drafts (1)

2009-05-10T21:40:00.000+01:00

It’s been over a month since I completed the first draft of my third novel, ‘The Lives of Ghosts’.

For me, having some space between completing a draft and beginning to read and edit is essential. My overall perspective on my stories is shaky at the best of times, but during those final intense novel weeks, the trees have so completely overgrown the woods that it’s almost like writing in the dark.

But now, after spending some time working, playing, reading, writing a new short story, but mostly simply attempting to catch up with all the things and people I’m destined to never completely catch up with, while at the same time trying not to think about my novel at all - I’ve printed it out at long last. (293 pages - the printer was a bit grumpy about it, but finally gave in). And this morning - I opened it.

It was a shock. To say the least.

What is this story? Who told this story?

Was I honestly such a different person when I wrote this - or has some mysterious, masked author crept in and secretly rewritten my novel while my back was turned? Perhaps I was more thoroughly possessed by my Ghosts than I imagined . . .

In a way, this sense of surprise is ideal, since in order to go through the manuscript as subjectively as possible, I need to try to see it from the perspective of a reader (a crotchety, pernickety, generally quite difficult reader frequently works best), but nonetheless the gap between the novel I believed I had created and the actual story on the page before me was startling. After all, these characters have been living in my head for almost a year - yet somehow, they’ve managed to sneak off and make their own way. Even their scenery is subtly different . . .

However, after that initial jolt, when I actually allowed myself to simply read (and only read – no rewriting or corrections are allowed, not just yet!), I found my irritation giving way here and there to a grudging pleasure and then, eventually, to a dawning relief.

Well, hello there story, I thought. Nice to make your acquaintance.
I’m looking forward to finding out what you’re about to tell me next . . .

(but what if I'm not really a Writer?)

2009-04-19T23:33:00.000+01:00

What if I’m just Deluded?
And no one will ever read another word that I write?

(have I lost you already?)

I think that -
I’d still have the stories in my head
I’d still want to explore those people, and those places
(and especially all their secrets)
I know I’d still need the sheer escape of writing

So, I reckon that . . .
I’d still love it

I’d still write.

phew

So that’s ok then.

A Walk in the Park with the BBC

2009-04-07T21:58:00.000+01:00

'My favourite way in is on foot, through the quietly rustling Parkside entrance. There is something almost fairytale about passing through one small, creaking gate and then another, and in the spring, the vivid, violet spectacle of bluebells beyond the railings is dazzling - dizzying. A reason in itself to love the park . . .'

My piece about loving Wollaton Park has recently appeared on BBC Nottingham's website! Please click here if you'd like to read more . . .

Fiona Writes Back

2009-03-23T15:12:00.000Z

I sent Fiona Robyn 'How We Were Lost' while I was reading her wonderful debut, 'The Letters'.

Fiona not only read my novel, she has also written a review!
(Thank you Fiona)

You can find the review on her 'planting words' blog, over here . . .

An Interview with Fiona Robyn

2009-03-19T23:41:00.000Z

Fiona Robyn’s debut novel ‘The Letters’ has been recently released by Snowbooks.

It is a compelling and finely written story, which links a contemporary woman’s unique, mid-life journey of self-discovery with a series of mysterious letters from the past.

I really enjoyed this novel for its beautiful detail and its atmosphere, for its sense of intrigue and quiet wisdom, and for its warmth.

Fiona has been kind enough to answer my following nosy questions about her writing . . .

M: First things first, where did the initial ideas for ‘The Letters’ spring from? How did the novel begin?

F: My novels always begin when the lead character 'appears' in my head and I start getting to know them. Violet materialised as a tall, skinny character with a brusque manner - I knew she was a workaholic, and I knew that her life was about to change in a fundamental way. As time goes on I 'get to know' my character better, and the story emerges from there. Sometimes I think I know what a novel is going to be about (I thought The Letters might be about feminism, and bodies) but it turns out to be something completely different.

M: Although this novel is far more complex and challenging than any simple ‘comfort’ tale, there is a wonderful ease about your writing, almost like stepping into a warm bath. On your blog, you have talked about ideas of being 'the typist’ - channelling words and scenes as if from somewhere outside yourself. Could you tell me a little more about this?

F: Oh, what a lovely image! I am pleased you think so. When I speak about 'just being the typist' I'm not implying that I have a direct connection with my great great aunt Jessie on a spiritual plane... It's more that the characters and the story come from my subconscious, and that my subconscious knows better than 'I' do how the characters hang together, and what their journey might be. You could also compare it to the 'small mind, big mind' concept in Buddhism, I suppose. I see my job during the first draft as getting my small mind 'out of the way' so the story can come through me. 'I' come back during later drafts to make decisions about structure, clarity, dialogue etc., but I haven't found it helpful to get this part of me out too early. It can freeze me up completely if I'm not careful.

M: I especially loved the vivid and finely wrought descriptions in ‘The Letters’ and was hugely impressed at the extent of detail surrounding your main character, Violet. How deeply did you ‘live’ Violet during the writing?

F: I suppose I carry my lead characters around in my head while I'm writing, but I'm not thinking about them all the time. Sometimes details will come to me when I'm not expecting them - I'll be driving the car and I'll realise that my character hates cheese. But often the details arise when I'm writing a scene. Sometimes the details don't seem to fit the character when I read them back, and so I'll search around for one that feels more authentic.

M: I see that there are two more forthcoming Fiona Robyn titles on Snowbook’s website ‘The Blue Handbag’ and ‘Thaw'. Would you like to talk a little about what’s coming next, or perhaps what you are working on right now?

F: The Blue Handbag follows a 62 yr old gardener, Leonard, who becomes a reluctant detective after discovering some mysterious facts about his late wife. Thaw is about Ruth, a microbiologist, who gives herself three months to decide if she wants to carry on living or not - the book is her diary for those months. And my work-in-progress is about Joe, a nerdy boy who goes to visit his aunt in Amsterdam - I'm off there this Summer to get some research done. What a lucky person I am.

M: Thank you Fiona very, very much!

To find out more about lucky, clever Fiona and her writing, please visit http://www.fionarobyn.com/

About Last Night

2009-03-19T13:42:00.000Z

Hurrah! We did it!!

My heart was banging, but I managed to sneak in there amidst lots of Proper Authors, including the very fabulous Shanta Everington (as above).

And I didn't fall over. Or even spill my wine.

Last night's 'Exclusively Independent' reading event was an interesting, varied and enjoyable evening. I'm especially grateful to Lauren at Legend for taking charge of us all. And to Sean at Flame too, for (among so many things) submitting How We Were Lost in the first place.

Please visit the 'Exclusively Independent' site if you'd like to learn more about last night . . .

The End is (almost, sort of) Nigh

2009-03-15T09:19:00.000Z

So – I’m coming to the end of the first draft of novel number three. There are only two more chapters left to write, I know (more or less) what needs to happen and I’m even still in first-draft-love with it. Nonetheless, I’m struggling.

In fact, my typing fingers seemed to have transformed into snails. And not just any snails. Obese, elderly snails in a going-backwards race.

This is probably partly because I have quite an ending in mind, which I’m a little scared of writing, but I also suspect that I’m on go-slow because I don’t actually want to finish. I’m aware that I’ll need to hide this one away for as long as I can possibly help it before I go back in again, on the editing attack, for draft two. And, as infuriating and disturbing as the writing has sometimes been, it’s also been such an exhilarating pleasure that I don’t want to say goodbye. Not just yet.

But there are a lot of things about to happen around these parts. There are more job things and children things that I need to focus on, and other-book things too (including finally finishing my creative writing MA and practising reading for next week’s Exclusively Independent event). I really should complete this draft – if only to begin it all over again, sooner.

But instead, what am I doing? I seem to be thinking about snails still, about how generally beautiful their trails are, and how strange their eyes and mouths, and about the snail hospital my sister and I ran when we were kids . . . And I’m even blogging about them too.

Please help.

'Exclusively Independent' Guest Blog

2009-03-11T12:58:00.000Z

The lovely people at Legend Press asked me to write a guest blog in the run-up to next week's 'Exclusively Independent' event - so today I am blogging over here, discussing the journey of my first novel, 'How We Were Lost' from publication to selection in this inspiring new initiative . . .

And Another One!

2009-02-27T18:56:00.000Z

I seem to be reading again, and even sooner – next Wednesday, 4th March, at 7.15pm, as part of Nottingham Writers' Studio next 'Word of Mouth' event at Nottingham’s Royal Centre!

The evening will also include writing by Nigel Smith, Wayne Burrows, Richard Pilgrim, Ian Douglas and Michael Eaton.

Tickets cost £5, which includes a complimentary glass of wine or juice and are available in advance from the Box Office (0115 989 5555), or on the door.

On this occasion, I won’t be reading from ‘How We Were Lost’, but my short story ‘On the Island’.

It would be very wonderful to see you there …

Exclusive, Exciting Reading News

2009-02-24T21:43:00.000Z

After 'How We Were Lost' was selected as one of the titles to be promoted by the new Arts Council funded 'Exclusively Independent' initiative in December, I've now been invited to take part in their first ever reading event!

So if you're knocking about in London on Wednesday, 18th March at 7:30pm, why not drop by Hammersmith Library?

Along with fellow Flame novelist, the very talented Shanta Everington, the evening's other fascinating, featured authors will include Michael Marr, Peter Cave, Stephen Clayton and Michael Bollen.

Although tickets are free, you will need one to enter. These are available from Hammersmith Library (telephone: 020 8753 3812)

I hope to see you there!

An Interview with Catherine Eisner

2009-02-16T08:25:00.000Z

And so without further ado, here's my interview with 'Sister Morphine' author, Catherine Eisner.

Could you describe at all where some of the initial ideas behind 'Sister Morphine' sprang from?

The narratives in 'Sister Morphine' have grown like accretions over the past ten years and each can stand alone as a work of fiction ... except, at the back of my mind I was working on a commonality that linked them, and this I found in the 'connective unconscious' of a group of characters, which is discovered in the last chapter. In my own confected 'soundbite' for this novel I wrote: 'Fifteen women - Felícia, Charlotte, Zoë, Elenore, Eveline, Miriam, Grete, Esther, Marianne, Irina, Mary, Elspeth, Theresa, Isolde and Roberta unveil their psychoses to you ... but not until the last page do we unlock the unsuspected secret that unites their destinies.'

There were three models for this book. 'Winesburg, Ohio' by Sherwood Anderson, which I admire tremendously and is a series of character studies connected by a distinctive location (my opening line, 'I am a madwoman', recalls Anderson's famous line, 'I am a fool' ... this was an Anderson character played, incidentally, by James Dean in one of his earliest roles). In my 'Sister Morphine' novel the special locale is Stoneburgh (pronounced 'Stoneboro'), somewhere windblown and chillily remote in South East England.

Secondly, as I wrote to my publisher (forgive me, this explanation is becoming somewhat complex), there is a definite structure to my book insofar as all 14 patient narratives were conceived as a pattern resembling a sonnet sequence, with the fifteenth section revealing the interconnecting lives of all 14 women, and their interdependence in a university city (Stoneburgh) in which their CPN (Community Psychiatric Nurse) practises. This poetic form is called a 'Sonnet of Sonnets' with a theme-line relayed through all 14 fourteen-line sonnets until the 15th when all the themes combine. This was the ambition, and more than a vestige of this structure remains.

The Stoneburgh Chronicles is a continuing theme in my work (see 'The Man in the Wardrobe' published in 'Ambit' Issue 191, Winter 2008).

However, in the end, I ask this. What is a novel? For instance, Italians read Lampedusa's 'Il Gattopardo' (The Leopard) as a classic novel but how many know that the whole thing was stitched together from post-mortal prose fragments by devoted editors to make a coherent chronicle?

And ... my third model is another classic short novel, 'The Bridge Over San Luis Rey', which examines the interconnectiveness of the characters' lives from a more spirito-mystical viewpoint (a great 20th Century work, at once seen as a parable of the 9/11 catastrophe and made rapidly into a feature film to reflect that terrible event, I understand). I read this book again in New York in the same month as the attack on the twin towers; my most vivid memory is of the armed policemen, each with a carbine at the corner of each block. The acrid smoke hanging in the air from this atrocity was sickening.

How did these narratives begin?

I rely, like many writers, on found objects so in a real sense I don't invent. An example is the tape recording in 'You Better Go Now'; it truly exists. The sentient plant and Russian Intelligence and the Lie Detector is a true story told to me by an émigré Russian academic I was very fond of (now, alas, deceased) ... 'a tropical shrub ... could be suborned by the will of the state.' I particularly liked this mordant remark of his which I incorporated into my text.

One of the features that I most admired about 'Sister Morphine' was its sense of inventiveness. I was fascinated by the literary allusions and by the inclusion of various, unexpected elements, including film scripts and musical scores and mathematical diagrams – and by the framework of the novel itself. You seem to enjoy overturning readers' expectations. Could you talk a little about that?

It's a dangerous compulsion to aim to be a completist, and I'm conscious of my weakness. Once I was aware that Patient ID CPN0312110842, Mary H. in 'Dispossession' was a father-fixated pianist I was keen to hear one of her compositions, so I completed her character with her own musical score; I was then tempted to discover how the classical dancer, Patient ID CPN0319141245, Esther G. in 'Honeymoon Without Maps', choreographed her own traumas and you can see the result in her Benish notation. It is an unexpected pattern on the page and even if it is a variant literary form it conveys (for me, at least) the emotional history of the patient in therapy.

As the introduction to 'Sister Morphine' makes clear, such compositions illustrate 'the growing popularity of self-narrative approaches towards a collaborative analysis of self-characterisation in counselling and psychotherapy. Diaries, letters, notebooks (including experiments in automatic writing), personal documents, news clippings, telephone conversations, and recordings in a variety of media are all identified as sources for experiential self-narrative assignments in psychotherapy, and this collection ... explores similar sources to demonstrate how these theoretical exercises can enhance self-understanding in practice.' Note; the exercise in 'automatic writing' may be found in the story-within-a-story composed by Patient ID CPN0338200976: Elspeth P. in 'A Stranger in Blood'; an upbeat narrative of transcendence I should make clear to potential readers.

Incidentally, the narrative, 'Dispossession', I freely admit has parallels with my own upbringing. I'm not squeamish about touching on my own childhood and fractured family relations as clearly they figure under various guises in 'Sister Morphine'. The experiences of an adoptee from birth are known to me at first hand (see 'A Stranger in Blood'). The facts are these ... I was brought up as the 'twin' of my first cousin who was adopted by my mother when her only sister died giving birth (septicemia due to absence of penicillin). We were born ten days apart. Sibling rivalry was compounded by another curious aspect of our upbringing and that was the 'precocious puberty' of my 'sister', which I now believe was due to her living in a household with the presence of an unrelated male (i.e. my father); from the earliest age she was exposed to non-familial male pheromones, an exposure which is now regarded as the trigger for premature pubertal development. At the time she was prescribed Dexedrine (her 'black bombers') for pubescent obesity which my young brother, aged 11, stole for his own experimentation, leading to his lifelong drug abuse. True. And true, too, that rivalrous cousinhood is another important sub-theme in my narratives.

How important is imagery in your writing?

Well. I'm a trained artist from a family of painters and engravers over several generations ... so you can imagine I am looking for the counter-image not necessarily the image itself ... the shadow not the substance, the reflection not the object. There are many examples in my work. Two examples: 'I felt neglected and vulnerable, held together weakly by will alone, like a house shored up by its own shadow.' In a recent work I write: 'I noticed the walls were painted imitation marbling up to the cornices. "We see least with borrowed eyes," my art mistress once said with emphatic earnestness in my last term at school, and I'd vowed then to always question the witness of my own sight.' This is obviously the stuff of all observational writing so I don't claim any special powers just because I was trained as a young student in another discipline. One further point: the expression of the writer's pen in creating an image is very much more controllable than a painter's brush!

Could you describe your general writing background?

The scenes in the publisher's office ('Elegy from a Locked Drawer') are pretty close to my own experience of academic publishing here and in New York; and the antics of performance poets from that period, many of whom I knew quite well, do influence my writing from time to time; the 'cut-up method', 'concrete poetry', 'found poetry', and other experimental writing. However, I hope I've never strayed into obfuscation in my fictions, which I like to regard as plain statements documenting unusual states of mind.

'The Cheated Eye' was my first literary baby, as it were, and first babies are so often the favourites (I speak as a middle child of three: the plain bread in the middle of a perverse sandwich composed outwardly of choice meats, as someone famous once said - I forget the name – who shared a similar familial position; also a sub-theme in 'Sister Morphine'). This work was first published in 1997, so there has been a slow accretion of related fictions over the past decade. In addition, my article ('In Character?') published in the 'Jewish Chronicle' in Chekhov's centenary year (he died in 1904) examined the Chekhov oeuvre and anti-Semitism, identifying significant mistranslations by hagiographers, uncorrected by biographers and editors of his correspondence even to this day; a product of these studies is my unpublished novel, 'D-r Tchekhov, Detektiv', a clinical investigation into criminal pathology.

Who are the authors who have inspired you? What are you reading at present?

The model writings of this kind are Ethelind Frances Colburn Mayne (1865–1941), a great Modernist writer of fiction and very early Freudian (she was the first translator of a number of Freud's works). Mayne's short fiction, 'The Separate Room' is a masterpiece. And Mayne's work ranks with Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, whose classic 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is also a perceptible influence on 'Sister Morphine'.

I will mention, also, lastly, Elizabeth von Arnim as a writer I admire (she was Katherine Mansfield's cousin) and I cite her novel 'Vera' as a model for the expressionistic cinematic effects I not infrequently introduce into my own writings (her first chapter is marvelous in this respect). May I place on record here for the first time my own formula for this kind writing (I have augmented TS Eliot's 'Birth, and copulation, and death, that's all the facts when you come to brass tacks...') and I express it as the 'ABC&D' maxim for thematic concision, when A+B+C+D = Anxiety, Birth, Copulation, Death (designedly the principal constituents of my narrative 'Dispossession' in 'Sister Morphine'). The discriminating reader will quickly spot where I have cloned themes from these writers by borrowing their literary DNA.

At present I am re-reading 'The Arabian Nights'; the story, 'The Ruined Man Who Became Rich Again Through A Dream' has a theme I stole for the final chapter of 'Sister Morphine', but it is unlikely I'll ever find a better theme! Of course, Scheherazade is really the Muse of all women writers, as a Storyteller-Under-Duress. 'MsLexia' ( rather a needy and whiny title for the journal, in my own view) has published works of mine, but 'Scheherazade' would have been a more apposite and affirming title, don't you think? There are elements of Scheherazade's dilemma in 'Sister Morphine' ... the narrator, a grief-counsellor, tells her stories to ward off her own grief.

Also I am re-reading 'Madame Bovery' in the first (and brilliant) English Edition translated by Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor ( I have an original copy; it cost me £250 even twenty-five years ago!). How's this for an image from Flaubert: 'The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace ...' However, I suspect Flaubert may have been chiding the indolent Emma for neglecting to have her chimney swept!

Also from 'Bovary' : '... everyone rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of their heavy boots.' Note the unusual word 'strides', now rarely used.

What are you working on right now? Do you have any set writing plans for the future?

I am currently preparing my sequel to 'Sister Morphine', provisionally entitled 'Cousine Cocaine'. Two passages have been published recently, independent of 'Sister Morphine', and a third passage is nearing completion. The inconclusive episode, 'Thought Police', in 'Sister Morphine', concerning the disappearance of the novelist, Theresa Ollivante, will also be completed for this work; at least, that is my intention. A number of other episodes are also mapped out.

What question are you pleased that I haven't asked you?

If you're so smart why ain't you rich?

(-: Thank you so much, Catherine.

'Sister Morphine' is available from the interesting and innovative people at Salt

'Sister Morphine' by Catherine Eisner

2009-02-15T09:49:00.000Z

As part of Salt’s ‘Cyclone’ blog tour, I’ll be posting an interview this week with ‘Sister Morphine’ author Catherine Eisner.

Dealing with death, desertion and drugs, revenge and revelation, ‘Sister Morphine’ is a unique collection of startlingly inventive and genre-busting tales.

Presented by the author as ‘Case Notes of a Community Psychiatric Nurse’, Eisner’s gathered female patient ‘narratives’ come together to form an intriguing text, littered with mind-games.

I’m looking forward to talking to Catherine about her work . . .