Time to take a look at the books I read last year. According to my spreadsheet, I seem to have only read 70, which is considerably down on 2014’s 95 and 2013’s 92. No idea what went wrong, but it doesn’t really matter as long as I got something out of the ones I did […]
Regular visitors may have noticed a few changes around here lately. First of all, I moved to a much smarter WordPress theme (called, rather splendidly, Hemingway). Less obviously, but considerably more significantly, I’ve added a new item to the menu: Books. See? The thing is, I used to have individual sites for all my books. […]
Today the longlist for this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award was announced, and Dot Dash is on it, which makes a nice double with last week’s Edge Hill longlist. The list itself is even longer than the Edge Hill one, which I guess is reasonable enough given that is a truly international prize […]
… and I haven’t got a coherent blog post for you, I’m afraid. I’m alternating between feelings of wild elation and the feelings of a particularly confused rabbit frozen in the headlights right now, so coming up with anything remotely sensible is beyond me. September’s blog tour is taking shape nicely, though, with a wide […]
Last week I was asked if I fancied being this month’s guest editor for the National Short Story Week web site and I must have hesitated for – ooh – at least a couple of seconds before saying yes. Anyway, the resulting piece is now up on the site – do go and have a […]
Some time ago, my good mate Oscar Windsor-Smith tagged me with this, for which I feel deeply honoured. He also gave strict instructions that I should reveal seven hitherto unsuspected things about myself and then tag a further seven hapless victims myself. I was just about to respond to this when I saw what Claire King […]
If I fall asleep in the middle of writing this, it’s because my brain is still somewhere midway between here and Indochina. I have a number of reasonably heavy-duty posts lined up, including a review of Ed Siegle’s “Invisibles” and a reflection on belatedly encountering the work of Raymond Carver for the first time (or […]
For no particular reason, the day job has gone a bit bonkers at the moment, which means that most of the carefully crafted posts that I had planned have been elbowed out in favour of this general ramble about stuff. First of all, I really had planned to say something about the splendid “Get Writing” […]
Yesterday morning I found out that I’d made it through to the final of “Tweet Me a Story” for the second year running. Many thanks to all of you out there who voted for me, as I ended up as being the “Audience Award” winner for my group (again for the second year running). There […]
Sometimes you don’t need to go looking for stories. All you need to do is rely on your brain to make a few connections. A couple of evenings ago Mrs P was away for the night and I nearly blew the house up (or at least I thought I nearly did, except that Ed who […]