At Nottingham Uni...

Reading and chatting writing with marvellous Alison Moore at Nottingham University in May

Good (ghosts) things

So, in the run up to the launch, plenty of great stuff happening to be extremely grateful for...

First Amazon review!! (because, you know, already released on Kindle folks)

Scarily honest Scottish Gothic rural myth, 28 Mar 2012

By

newnatbooks

This review is from: The Lives of Ghosts (Paperback)

Human forms loom out of the mist in Megan Taylor's evocative tale of loss and its dreamy nightmare consequences. Imagine a gloomy lochside house, a grinding car and a rattling train combined with imagery as sharp as a fisherman's fly and as earthy as the mud on his boots. The impossible distance between child and adult provides difficult reading for parents but stay with it and the percentage left on the eReader dwindles like the fuel gauge on a sports car.The Lives of Ghosts Megan's acrobatic trapeze act of multiple metaphor is infectious and brings about an unlucky sequence of events to blowtorch the reader's tongue and twist something deep inside the heart. Characters stumble about wildly out of control. Thank goodness real life isn't like this. It is? Help me someone


:-) haha! How fab is that? I am acrobatic! I am a blowtorch! Who knew?
Thank you so very very much
& 5 stars (which always makes me think about a certain ancient school disco, but less said about that the better)

And a wee mention of my Ghosts in the Guardian (!) for a piece about magnificent MMU

yay!

And in addition to the NWS launch, a reading alongside the frighteningly talented Alison Moore at Nottingham University - more on that to come...

Creative Nottingham

I've been blogging for the very kind, supportive and important folk at Creative Nottingham, about Ghosts and about my writing, and a little of what this fine city means to me...

http://www.creativenottingham.com/art-craft/literature/the-lives-of-ghosts-megan-taylor/

Kindles and Kindness

So, there was talk of The Lives of Ghosts being released a little earlier exclusively for Kindle - and lo and behold, it has already happened!

The Kindle edition of my third novel is available right now, right here -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Lives-of-Ghosts-ebook/dp/B007GQ0GXW/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1330940103&sr=1-4

Blimey, Amazon can be speedy, and publishers even speedier. And wonderful (thank you Weathervane Press!) I also recieved a package of print copies on Friday morning. My book - my actual book - went for a long, damp park walk and think with me on Saturday morning. Nevertheless, I remain in a daze, am immensely proud and grateful, but still can't quite fully believe it truly exists (perhaps the reality will sink in when I take it out on the town for whisky?) I'm a very lucky woman.

And further kindness - the incredibly talented and prolific Caroline Smailes took time out of her incredibly awesome book busy-ness (she has her latest 99 Reasons Why and Freaks both due for release this month) to read my Ghosts. This is what she said:

'Stunning, absolutely stunning, this chilling tale is woven with sparingly eloquent prose. It is fearless, it is believable, it is captivating. I am left with an ache. I understand human suffering just that little bit more.'

I really can't tell you what this means to me. Overwhelmed.

Thank you X

3...2...1...LAUNCH!

Hello.

I have confirmation about my Ghosts launch.

From 7.30, April 26th, at Nottingham Writers’ Studio

Apart from the regular wonderful crew, NWS will be open to non-members for the evening (EVERYBODY welcome!), although please get in touch if you’d like to come along so that I can pretend I can do maths and tell people about numbers. Or something.

(and aside from anything else, how much wine to accrue? And not just for me – so who knows??)

Megan xx

Workshops and Wonders

Firstly, I’m looking forward to running a workshop about Openings and Images with Lee Rosy’s fabulous writing group in Nottingham next Wednesday. We’ll be playing with hooks and pictures – in particular, I might be hijacking (/honouring) some stunning Gregg Crewdson prints for inspiration. Shiveringly brilliant images such as this...

If you would like to find out more about Writing at Rosy’s, please investigate here –
http://writingatrosys.wordpress.com/

And also!

Wondrous things reeling along with my Ghosts. There’s a press release. There’s a Facebook page (possibly!). There’s pre-ordering available (already!) on Amazon and at the Weathervane Press bookstore. There’s me going woah! But mainly going wow!!

(and it seems there might be a general over-enthusiasm about !exclamation! marks!! too)

Thank you tons for all the support already. You’re great, you are.
Xxxxxxx
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
x

Coming Soon...

Out 26th April 2012

A New Year... A New Novel

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...

Wimbledon

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)

In Celebration of Hallowe'en

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.