Category: Microfiction

Sibling loyalties and multiple murders: My Sister The Serial Killer & The Night Tiger

17/2/2019

While the title declares the first of these novels, set in Lagos, to be about siblings and killings, it’s not immediately obvious how it applies to the second, set in Perak, Malaysia. A boy who feels guided by his dead twin, a young woman strongly attached to her stepbrother, and mysterious deaths that might be the work of a tiger: does that nail it? Read on!

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Picturing identity: Mothlight & Trick

10/2/2019

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I wondered, initially, whether the fact that these two short novels include images would be sufficient reason to pair them in a post. But, while different in style, they’re both about identity (among other matters). In the first, a young man uses photographs he has inherited to try to understand the woman who kept them, as his own identity seems to merge with hers. In the second, an older man finds his identity as an illustrator losing out to his role as grandfather.

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Teenagers in exile: Shadows on the Tundra & The Key

23/1/2019

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Two books about teenage girls forced from their homes in what initially appear to be very different circumstances. In the first, a fourteen-year-old Lithuanian is transported to the Siberian tundra in 1940; in the second, a nineteen-year-old is compulsorily admitted to a psychiatric hospital in mid-1950s England. The first memoir, the second fiction, both books are about the struggle to survive in alien environments.

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Irish debuts looking back: A River in the Trees & When All Is Said

18/1/2019

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Published this month are the debut novels of two promising Irish writers, both looking back to that country’s history, through the changes wrought by time on a family home. In the first it’s a humble farmhouse and overnight refuge for freedom fighters in the War of Independence, barely inhabitable when an exile considers buying it a hundred years later. In the second it’s the grand house of the local gentry when the narrator first crosses the threshold as a ten-year-old servant, and latterly the hotel where he reviews the eighty-plus decades of his life. And if you’re wondering about the coincidence of the blue covers, why not look back on this post?

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Balancing promo, helping others and self-indulgence in an author blog

14/1/2019

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Many of us do it, but what’s the point of an author blog? Is it to promote our writing, to pass on our accumulated wisdom or to indulge ourselves in a less pressurised mode of publication without worrying whether it gets read? Perhaps it’s all of these in different proportions varying according to who we are and who readers are and our priorities at different points in time. When the balance is right, blogging is highly rewarding; when it’s not it can be a frustrating chore.

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My favourite reads of 2018 Part 4 #amreading

5/1/2019

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Welcome to the fourth and final instalment of my favourite reads of the year. Here I’ll share micro-reviews of my four final favourites (from November and December) along with an overview of all 19. You’ll find links to the full reviews if you’re curious to read more. Plus I’ve got some pretty charts to show how these, and the 147 books I read in total, measured up against the targets I set last year.

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My favourite reads of 2018 Part 1 #amreading

14/12/2018

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When the bots at Goodreads urged me to tidy my virtual bookshelves, 2018 still had another twenty days left to run. Plenty of time to edge closer to last year’s pinnacle of 150 books. But since I’ve already passed 2017’s 5-star total of 12 books, I’ve decided to share my favourite books of the year in four parts. This instalment covers my reading from January to April this year. Perhaps you’ll choose one of these five to help you say No to Christmas!

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The Annethology Christmas message: Just say no!

7/12/2018

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Okay, so moaning about frenzied shopping and family fallouts is as integral to Christmas as turkey and tinsel and, for some, that’s part of the fun. But if the pain of Christmas surpasses your pleasure, I’ll let you into a secret: unless you have young children, or frail parents to whom you haven’t yet paid your dues – in which case, bookmark this post for when you’re free to prioritise yourself – you’re not obliged to join in. Okay, it can be tough to go against expectations, and it might require some negotiation with your nearest and dearest, but isn’t life too short to stick to the familiar, if the familiar isn’t what you want?

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Now with more books than hands

30/11/2018

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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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Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you!

19/11/2018

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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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Bridging: Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants & Connect

13/11/2018

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Excuse me for bridging such different novels, although both are about the challenge of connection, one looking to the future and the other to the past. In the first, translated from the French, a famous artist juggles the contradictions of Christian and Muslim cultures when he’s commissioned to design a bridge between two shores of a capital city. In the second, a teenage boy more comfortable in the virtual world than the human, ends up fighting for his life when he forges stronger connections between the hemispheres of his brain.

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Into the light

5/11/2018

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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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Can you write a fractured fairy tale?

25/10/2018

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

16/10/2018

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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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Does your inspiration come mostly from inside or outside?

4/10/2018

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October brings the Flash Fiction Rodeo to the Ranch, with the weekly challenges suspended and the ring cleared for competitive wrangling words. Now, I’ve entered writing competitions in the past – and even won one or two – and, after initial scepticism, I’ve grown addicted to submitting my 99 words. But last year, unable to bring the two together, I could only watch from the sidelines. This year, I’m joining in.

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Reading the world

21/9/2018

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A recent comment from Norah Colvin got me wondering (as they often do): how many countries had I visited recently in the pages of a book? Perhaps I’d set myself a reading goal for next year: around the world in eighty books! As a comparison (or perhaps as a way of avoiding knuckling down to some real work), I thought I’d check where I’d travelled so far this year. Omitting mainland UK and the USA, where I find myself all too often, I’m not even halfway to eighty, but it’s nevertheless a spread.

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Taking our characters to work

10/9/2018

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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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Pushing through the publishing bottleneck: is there an ingredient X?

1/9/2018

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Yesterday, on the last day of meteorological summer, I shelved my 100th book for the year. But even a reader as voracious as I am will never find time to read all the books she might enjoy. While the superabundance is great for readers, it’s less so for writers competing for their attention and time. However big and colourful our books, we’ve only one shoal in a pond so extensive we may never see, let alone touch, its banks.

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Should I stretch this short story to a novel?

27/8/2018

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One moonless night, when her daughter was but a few months old, Eve clawed back her silken baby skin and planted a bomb in her chest. It wasn’t as difficult as you’d imagine; a baby’s body is more malleable than an adult’s. Getting under her daughter’s skin was rather like peeling an orange. Or picking at the flap of a sealed envelope to slip an extra something inside.

It was only a small bomb, the size and shape of a button battery, albeit large in relation to her daughter. It was bigger, for example, than her daughter’s dainty fingernails, bigger than the snub of her nose. But, like a school uniform, the child would grow into it, grow until the bomb was eclipsed by the face of her wristwatch or an ornament she might hang from her ear.

I wouldn’t blame you if the opening has put you off my most recently published short story (or the length at over 3000 words) but, if you do choose to read it, you might be able to help me decide where, if anywhere, to take these ideas next.

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How to have a fruitful research trip

19/8/2018

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Your characters are acquiring quirks and foibles. You’ve got an arc, however wobbly, from beginning to end. A couple of twists are lurking in your sleeves and you’ve got a sentence, or maybe more, that sings. But your setting’s an empty stage, or weighed down with enough clutter to break the boards. Perhaps it’s time for a real-world site inspection visit to check out what your novel does and doesn’t need. Read on for my reflections on how best to go about it, stemming from my (not-so-)recent trip to Cumbria to soak up the atmosphere and check a few facts for my hopefully third novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home.

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<<Previous

Sibling loyalties and multiple murders: My Sister The Serial Killer & The Night Tiger

Picturing identity: Mothlight & Trick

Teenagers in exile: Shadows on the Tundra & The Key

Irish debuts looking back: A River in the Trees & When All Is Said

Balancing promo, helping others and self-indulgence in an author blog

My favourite reads of 2018 Part 4 #amreading

My favourite reads of 2018 Part 1 #amreading

The Annethology Christmas message: Just say no!

Now with more books than hands

Becoming Someone is coming to an armchair near you!

Bridging: Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants & Connect

Into the light

Can you write a fractured fairy tale?

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

Does your inspiration come mostly from inside or outside?

Reading the world

Taking our characters to work

Pushing through the publishing bottleneck: is there an ingredient X?

Should I stretch this short story to a novel?

How to have a fruitful research trip

2019 Reading Challenge

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