Sometimes, with some authors, when you finish one of their works you have to give it time to settle, let it 'become', before casting judgement, so to speak. Steinbeck is one of those authors. I love his narrative and prose, of that there is no doubt. Steinbeck takes you to where 'there' is. As @williamCKent (a friend on Twitter) who described on reading the Grapes of Wrath: 'I felt as if I needed to dump the dust from my shoes and was always hungry...' Quite perfectly put. St

I’m submitting... It’s fiction, a novel, but that’s not what I’m writing about. Today my blog is about trying to find a comprehensive...

This week I borrowed a few shorter pieces of works and short story anthologies from the library. These included more shorts by Du Maurier (whose work I love), Steinbeck and Susan Hill, however I also picked up Virginia Woolf. I have never read Woolf’s works before. Of course I’ve heard bits and pieces, snippets of fact about Virginia Woolf; a foremost author tackling social injustice and women’s, indeed people’s rights with a delicate pen. A lady and pacifist of the intel

I really enjoyed this book. A novel or a novella? At 29,000 words I guess the latter in this day and age. Even my slow and healing brain coped with ease. I was finished in three days and it's an excellent read that tackles some difficult topics still relevant today; namely racism, euthanasia, mental health and the burden of love. Very cleverly done too with the mirrored arc of an old dog and simple man; both loved and not 'mean', but beyond a use-by date. The writing is done

As per my weekly routine, I joined with other writers and Twitter friends for #storycrafter yesterday. It was all about fear and how it...

I seem to have been editing for an age, but come close now to being satisfied with a final edit of ’76 and the Odd 93’. I first penned this manuscript between 1993 and 1996. A cathartic exercise drawing on my experience of more than a decade of what the doctors tell me was severe emotional, mental, and physical abuse; my childhood. And I’ll be glad to finish it. A crime-noir piece of fiction, it’s very dark and cuts a bit too close to the bone. That said, I’ve learnt so much

I'm really busy editing and so my life is pretty much that at the moment. So I have chosen to share an old post from January 2015 and an experience I had that week with my mental health disorder and some severe depersonalisation. Then I was wrongly diagnosed; now I am more accurately categorised as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) with a host of additional issues as a result of severe mental, physical and emotional abuse as a child. I'm still learning and trying to cop

Originally written in mid-2016, this is an old post lifted from my old site. I hope you won't mind. It revisits my return to reading after not having been able to concentrate enough to read for quite some time; that and my first taste of Daphne du Maurier. And I am now a huge fan of her writing. I hope you enjoy it. After returning to my blog last week (back in 2017) I realise how much I miss writing it. In truth, I’ve been blinded and consumed by edits on two novels I’ve

Today I treated myself. No writing. Well, what I mean is no creative writing as yet. There’s still four hours of today left, and after teasing the blog out I might be inspired. It’s my first day off in as long as I remember. Not that a writer ever truly stops. I read Poe, his short: ‘The Masque of the Red Death’. Made notes for my own edits and loved it; the simplicity, brevity, an inevitability to Prospero’s failure to escape the horror of life. There is nothing, no act an

This week I’d like to raise awareness of... ‘Inside the Bell Jar’ A literary journal and brave new venture, this online journal aims to deliver an honest and, at times, quite harrowing insight into the complexities, range and challenges of mental illness. Released quarterly by Editor Sami Clara, it brings together the stories, poems and art of creatives who suffer from mental illness, or who are affected by and close to sufferers of mental illness. This makes for raw readi