Category: Becoming Someone

Do you listen to the radio? I was weaned on “Listen with Mother” at home on weekday mornings and progressed to “Music and Movement” a weekly treat at infant school. Although we did have television, there was more variety on the radio, as I recall. Nowadays, the only time I tune in is in the car and, since the pandemic, I’m in the car less often. It’s a pity, because I’ve discovered some fabulous music through the radio and, despite the competition from podcasts and the like, there are still some excellent spoken word and magazine programmes on BBC Radio Four. But even in during the old normal, my radio regime was flawed, as I couldn’t always dovetail my journeys with the broadcasts that interest me. I find it frustrating that, stuck in queueing traffic after a choir rehearsal, it’s Hobson’s choice between stabbing rap (no thank you), up-your-arse philosophising and choral Evensong (love the music, hate the prayers).

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

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From lockdown hair to Buxton Fringe

3/7/2020

For those fearing lockdown more than government mismanagement of the pandemic, July 4th is England’s Independence Day. (Apart from Leicester, where restrictions have been tightened due to a sudden surge in coronavirus cases.) If the response to the reopening of inessential shops is anything to go by, a mass of masked and unmasked people will flock to pubs, restaurants and hairdressers, but I won’t be among them. The former would never have been a priority, but I’ve hesitated over the third: I’m fond of my hairdresser, I’ve missed her through three missed appointments, but I’ve grown surprisingly attached to my lockdown hair.

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How would you answer the covid novel’s call?

28/6/2020

History can’t have got the memo. The virus destined to put the world on pause has had us glued to the news: first with the exposure of right-wing government incompetence, then with the spotlight on racism we can no longer ignore. Whether this depresses or delights us, it’s hard to keep up. What’s the role of the writer – particularly writers like me with a tiny readership – in historic times? Should novelists switch to facts from fiction? Should we try to shape historic discourse or step back and observe?

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Do short stories sell? Discuss!

22/11/2019

It’s a year since my short story collection was published, and I’ve really enjoyed having it out in the world. Not only does it look gorgeous, it’s been received more positively than I expected, although that might be down to the fact that my expectations were rather low. As I wrote in a prepublication guest post, Greater than the sum of its parts? Assembling a first short story collection, it wasn’t a long-standing ambition to produce a collection partly because, I assumed, short stories don’t sell. Although mine has sold in very low numbers, I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

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What’s your favourite novel about mental health?

8/10/2019

Having spent the bulk of my wage-earning life in mental health care, it’s not surprising that the theme crops up in my writing. But, as a reader, my professional experience can make me more picky. For World Mental Health Day this week, I’m asking for your favourite novels about mental health, sharing some of my own reading recommendations and illustrating how I’ve drawn on the theme in my fiction. Continue reading also for news of how to be in with the chance of winning a signed copy of my next novel, which is set in a psychiatric hospital in the process of closing down.

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Young marriages under strain: Asghar and Zahra & Snegurochka

10/6/2019

Two novels in which a marriage of a twenty-something man and woman from superficially similar backgrounds shows early signs of strain. In the first, between Muslims in contemporary London, the politics of religion are problematic right from the start; in the second, life gets tough when a new mother follows her journalist husband to a posting in newly-independent Ukraine. All harbour secrets, communication suffers and trust is hard to find. But, with youth on their side, they’ll take something from the experience, whether or not the marriages survive.

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Writing isms: would you risk causing offence in your fiction? #amwriting

13/5/2019

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Much as I despair of living in a country where the birth of a baby is headline news – ditto his naming the following day – I do try to bear in mind that the extended family I involuntarily support via my taxes is made up of human beings, and therefore worthy of my respect. I sincerely hope I’m incapable of channeling my rage at inequality and unearned privilege into a bizarre racist tweet, as a BBC DJ did recently. How could he not know, as he has claimed, that an image of the latest royal baby as an ape would cause offence? But, in reflecting the world as I see it in my fiction, with darkness as well as light, I do risk inadvertently offending my readership, especially in portraying the isms from which, in my other identities, I’m at pains to distance myself.

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Friends reunited: Ponti & Falling Leaves

10/12/2018

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There seems to be a chain of connections between my reviews so far this month; either of these novels, but especially the first, could have been paired At Dusk. Although the school friends in Ponti aren’t reunited until late in the novel while, in Falling Leaves it’s towards the beginning and after a gap of only seven years, the resonance is perhaps equally strong. And, no, they didn’t make contact through a now-defunct social media site, nor at a school reunion, but you’ll have to read on to find out how.

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A message from the past: At Dusk & Where to Find Me

4/12/2018

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Earlier this year, I attended a school reunion. While it was fun to reconnect with friends I’d met up with ten years ago, plus others I last saw in school uniform, there were disappointments. Some of friends were noticeable by their absence and others, as an introvert overwhelmed by the profusion of people, I couldn’t begin to be curious about until the following day.

I thought about this when I came to review these two novels, both about reconnecting with people from our pasts. In the first, a man has largely forgotten his childhood sweetheart, as well as the slum in which they both grew up. In the second, a woman feels a surprisingly strong connection with an older woman she visited for only an hour as a child.

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Where is love? Nothing but Dust & In the City of Love’s Sleep

3/12/2018

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A couple of weeks ago, challenged to compose a 99-word story combining mashed potatoes with a superpower, I chose love. Because, as these two novels testify, along with a third I reviewed at the end of last month, love is rarely straightforward, and for some an impossible dream. In Land of the Living, Georgina Harding shows how a husband’s wartime trauma, in conjunction with his wife’s inexperience, acts as a barrier to intimacy. In the City of Love’s Sleep also focuses on romance, in this case the approach-avoidance dance of a man and woman still legally or psychologically bound to another, while Nothing but Dust is a startlingly honest account of the impact of a mother’s inability to love on herself and her sons.

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Now with more books than hands

30/11/2018

Out on the soggy trails near my home a couple of days ago, I fell into conversation with a man walking his dogs. Discovering he was a visitor to the area, I wished him better weather before he left. When he replied that there’s no life without rain, I was ready to play my part in a climate-change script. So I was surprised, and somewhat disappointed, when he said he’d tell me something that had been kept from people since the beginning of time.

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Afterwards: Land of the Living by Georgina Harding

29/11/2018

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Should these things be said, or not be said? If they were said in this dead time of the night, would the night take them away? As if the blackness might absorb the black and then in the morning it would be gone, but he also perhaps gone, sucked away in it.

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With gratitude on launch-day and beyond

23/11/2018

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While our American friends have been stuffing themselves with turkey, we can all take a moment to appreciate what we have. With my short story anthology published today, I’ve a lot to be thankful for, not only for the fact of being published – and read – in this difficult climate for authors, but for the support from the blogosphere in the run-up to the launch. In Monday’s post – Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you! – I shared the links to the first few stops on my blog tour; today I’m sharing a few more, along with a reminder of the party, where I’m putting my gratitude into action by donating to Book Aid International.

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Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you!

19/11/2018

I’ve been so busy with preparations, I’d forgotten how it feels when that first box of books arrives. So I was especially touched when the delivery man remembered bringing my debut more than three years ago. If a man who doesn’t even know me could connect with that excitement, surely I could too. If that weren’t enough to celebrate, this is my 700th post!

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Into the light

5/11/2018

Like a satisfying story, the journey to selfhood often entails working through conflict. Sometimes, it’s only through opposition that we begin to discover our own values and beliefs. This can be frustrating to witness in others, especially those for whom we’re responsible: think of the tantrumming toddler or the belligerent adolescent. But, while others can guide, prompt and set boundaries to prevent us harming ourselves or others, we must all forge our own paths to the someone we become.

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I’ve now chosen the charity to support through my online book launch

30/10/2018

I was thrilled with the response to my request for recommendations of reading charities for me to support through my forthcoming book launch both the blog comments and Twitter. So many worthwhile causes, I could happily have gone with them all. Before revealing my final choice, let’s have a drum roll for the nominations that didn’t make it. Who knows, perhaps I’ll work my way through them with future books?

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Can you write a fractured fairy tale?

25/10/2018

It’s rutting season out on the moors again. The first time I heard a bolving deer (no, that’s not a mistype), I thought it was a motorbike. On Sunday, it made me think of the troll who hides under the bridge to scare the billy goats gruff. Or maybe not, if it’s the poor misunderstood creature in Norah Colvin’s fractured fairy tale. Now she’s inviting you to write one too. But beware, you have only 99-words to play with and I’ll be helping Norah, along with children’s author Robbie Cheadle, to select the best.

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Can you recommend a #reading #charity for me to support through my #booklaunch?

22/10/2018

When my publisher suggested releasing an anthology of my short stories, I didn’t plan to do much promotion. In the UK, short story collections are notoriously difficult to sell. But when I thought about the unpaid time and effort she’d put into editing, and the money into another gorgeous cover, as well as the enthusiasm of my readers for a third book, I reconsidered. My short story collection, Becoming Someone, scheduled for publication on November 23rd, deserves as much chance as any other book. So I got creative.

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Not all may have prizes … but how does funding play a part in who enters the race?

16/10/2018

With the Man Booker Prize winner announced tonight, my fingers are crossed for Washington Black, although I’d raise a cheer for either of the other contenders I’ve reviewed (The Mars Room and Milkman). Right now, my thoughts are also with those authors who not only don’t succeed in dazzling the judges, but don’t even get the chance to step onto the stage.

You’re familiar with those email scams, aren’t you? Congratulations, you’ve won a prize! Just send us a cheque to cover administration costs, and we’ll deliver it. Feels good, doesn’t it? Until you wonder whether the winnings will cover your fees. But that wouldn’t happen in the literary world, would it? Awards are dispensed purely on merit, surely? No paying for prizes there?

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Taking our characters to work

10/9/2018

If there is one area where struggling-to-be-noticed writers have the advantage over those who’ve been published since they were barely out of school, it’s our inside knowledge of the world of work. Coming to writing later in life, or merely being part of the majority unable to support themselves through writing, we have the experience to bring our characters’ jobs alive. But there can still be challenges in taking our characters to work.

For example, while setting your novel in your current workplace obviates the need for a research trip, you might have to smooth some colleagues’ ruffled feathers once the book is out in the world. From another angle, if you’ve gained your work experience in settings crowded with colleagues, you face the challenge of rendering it authentically without overwhelming the reader with an overabundance of characters.

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What’s in a name?

24/3/2018

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Despite some concerns about how I prioritise my time, I recently allocated several hours to a task that is either brilliantly forward thinking or the biggest waste of time since ironing underwear (not guilty: I struggle even to assemble the ironing board). In the process of editing the short stories in my forthcoming collection, Becoming Someone, I altered the names of a few characters to avoid duplication. So far, so sensible. But I couldn’t leave it at that. I also trawled through my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, my second novel, Underneath, and my current WIP, with the aim of abolishing overlaps across my published work. Is this evidence of a professional approach to my writing or an overly obsessive and perfectionist personality?

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Two mysteries against a backdrop of rampage and riot

11/11/2017