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News, News and more News

 Lots happening the last week or two. Both the Horncastle News and Lincolnshire Echo featured pieces on my upcoming appearance at the first ever London Short Story Festival alongside Adam Marek, Robert Shearman and Tania Hershman. There are still tickets available for the  event so if you like short stories with a dash of the weird…

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A Song For Issy Bradley – Review

 The title of Carys Bray’s debut novel could not be more fitting. A Song for Issy Bradley tells the story of a family facing that most difficult of events, the death of a child, and it does so through the voices of both the parents and the surviving children. The multiple voices form a chorus that builds,…

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The Unnerving Tales of Yoshihiro Tatsumi

 My 2014 Thresholds Feature Writing competition shortlisted essay about Yoshiro Tatsumi’s The Push Man and other stories went on to win a runner-up prize and is published today on the Thresholds website. I’m thrilled to make it this far for the second year running. You can read The Unnerving Tales of Yoshihiro Tatsumi here. While…

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Fiction for men who don’t read

 It’s World Book Night and this year’s celebration is themed around getting men to read more. In response Paul Mason asked Channel 4 News website readers to nominate book suggestions for a man who does not read novels. You can read about the response here. Great to see David Mitchell, Cormac McCarthy and Joseph Heller…

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Books in the Wild

 It’s just over a month since Looking Out of Broken Windows was published and in that time it’s turned up in all sorts of places. The first (pre-publication) copy in the wild was seen hanging out on the doorstep of the Oxted Book It! Lit Fest in February, where it was waiting for Vanessa Gebbie:  …

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Willesden Herald Prize Results

 The results are in. This year’s winner of The Willesden Herald Short Story Prize is Ward by Nick Holdstock with Postman’s Knock by Angela Sherlock and Such Is Her Power by Joan Brennon taking the joint second place prizes. Congratulations to all. The results evening at the Brent Artists Resource was a wonderful experience. Meeting…

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What’s going on?

 In February this year I had the great pleasure of attending the inaugural Book It! literary Celebration in Oxted, Surrey as a guest author. As you can see from the programme there was a week long series of events, on all aspects of literature. I was invited to lead a writing workshop and appear as…

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And the winner is….

 As part of the recent Looking Out of Broken Windows blog tour anyone who commented on one of the blog tour posts was entered in a draw for a signed copy of the collection. The names of those who liked the Looking Out of Broken Windows Facebook page during the month of March were also…

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Comic Books, Sureallism, Titles and Other Writery Stuff

 I’m over at Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s blog today, on the final stop of my Looking Out of Broken Windows blog tour, talking about finding titles, finding time to write, fitting stories together and the more surreal elements of my short fiction. The questions were challenging and thought-provoking and I hope my answers give some insight into the…

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Beautiful Words Book Review

 Do not read this book. Seriously. Do not read Beautiful Words by Nik Perring. This unorthodox manner of opening a review of this collection of words, some meanings and some fictions is not meant as some tricksy reverse psychology. I genuinely do not want you to read this book. Let me be clear though. I like…

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Smash Lits interview and Book Launch

 The penultimate stop on the blog tour went live yesterday on Sara Crowley’s excellent blog. It’s the first of a series of interviews she’ll be running under the Smash Lits banner. Here’s what that means exactly: (from Sara Crowley’s blog) ‘I enjoy reading writer blogs and interviews, and I like to review and interview other writers…

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Tools of the Writing Trade

 Today’s stop on the blog tour is over on the newly revamped blog of writer Neil Baker. Neil is an absolute gent and a very talented writer. He has given generously of his time to read and comment on my short stories prior to my subbing them and in doing so has helped me improve…

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Lit Pub review of Looking Out of Broken Windows

 The Lit Pub review of Looking Out of Broken Windows went live on the site yesterday. Reviewer Christopher Allen totally gets the book, which is perhaps understandable as he is the Metazen editor who first published two of the stories in the collection, Baggage and Ultrasounds I,II and III, way back in 2010. He was…

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Looking Out of Broken Windows soundtrack

 Today I am over on the very brilliant Vanessa Gebbie’s blog as part of the blog tour, talking about how music helps shape my short fiction. It features, amongst other things,  the following Spotify playlist of music I write to. Think of this as the unofficial soundtrack to Looking Out of Broken Windows: Enjoy. And…

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LOoBW Publication Day

 It’s finally here. Today my debut collection of short fiction is officially published. Looking Out of Broken Windows is my first book. Way back in September and early October 2012 it started taking shape as a Scrivener file made up of all the stories I thought might make a decent enough collection of my work…

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