Birthday

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!

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...

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

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

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

"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 ...

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

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

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

And it isn’t winter yet, but only autumn

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

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

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

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!!

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

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

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!

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