Way back in 2016 I wrote a short story, Man of War, for Manifold Press‘s Jane Austen inspired anthology A Certain Persuasion. When this anthology was launched at Queer Company 2, all contributing authors were invited to write a short article, related to the story we had written, for the conference programme. As my story was set aboard a Royal Navy
We did a ‘Story Cards’ creative writing exercise at Write Club last Thursday. This involves writing a short piece of fiction (or the start of a longer piece) inspired by an illustrated card drawn from a set (of about 40 or 50). It’s traditional in our group to share what we’ve written in a session like this by reading it
I’ve only been twice before (2015 & 2017), but Eroticon is definitely one of my favourite events, and I’d recommend it to anyone writing about adult relationships. It’s not just the content, it’s the people, but also there’s business-focused sessions you might not expect, and a wonderful community of people with such rich & varied life experiences that it’s a
(Including a few books read between 25th & 31st December) The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St Clair Not quite what I was expecting from the title & blurb, but ultimately more fascinating than I expected because of going into greater depth & detail of the history of colours, pigments, & dyes. Also has relevance to my day-job where I
It’s February, so I thought I’d share a bit about my New Years Resolutions for 2019. You may be wondering “Isn’t it a bit late for that?” To which I say: Not really. I get a bit bored of reading about resolutions in the 1st week of January. All they are at that point is intentions, and yes I know
Today I learned two things in quick succession from this news article in the Graun: There is currently a CO2 shortage in the UK This is affecting the production of a number of food items, due to CO2 being required for use in their packaging, not least of which is crumpets! Oh no! What will we do without crumpets to
This is not the blog post I was going to write. I was going to write about how my outlook has changed over the past year – politics, changes in the genre I tend to hang round in, understanding more about my own writing, and working my way through a few issues in said writing. I was going to write
It’s November 30th, aka the day of reckoning in the world of NaNoWriMo. I’ve not “won”. I did write a total of just over 25k words, which was my minimum target, and I almost achieved my bigger target of writing every day (total of 3 days over the month with no new words added: 1 due to family day out,
Every so often when I’m writing I come across something which, when I look at it again, I realise “Oh! I wouldn’t have thought that a few years ago!” It’s not just age/maturity/extra life experience which causes these moments for me, it’s also where I live, how we live, and sometimes more exactly who else lives here… Our little village
I’ve spent most of the last year writing – or trying to write – short stories. Most failed at the first hurdle: I found out while writing that the story was too long to be short, so those ideas have been put to one side to be worked on later. Thankfully, I did eventually manage to write two stories which