This morning I discovered that I use the word "perhaps" far too much in my writing. So I deleted all of them.

This morning I discovered that I could write the ending to a story whose middle I didn't know, and then the ending became another story, something that wasn't and now is.

This morning I discovered that the middle of a story whose beginning and end I have only needed to be one line, and it tied them up and there it was, done.

This morning was a good morning. Last night I said "First thing, I'm going to take my coffee and my laptop and go into my study", and this morning I did that, for the first time, straight down into the cellar. Now I can go back up again, a good morning.

Writers' service announcement:

I found this great blog, Mira's List, where Mira lists Grants, Fellowships and Residencies for Artists, Writers and Musicians, updated very regularly. What a gem! (Am rather intrigued by the 6-month residency in France that she just posted: "Short story projects are preferred but not essential." How often do you read that, gentle reader?!)

Also - Upcoming Deadlines - always good to get entries in early:
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Find out who has won our fabulous prize draws for copies of SADOMASOCHISM FOR ACCOUNTANTS by Rosy Barnes and LUXURY by Jessica Ruston!

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‘Where did you buy your sandals?’ The question, spoken in Italian, caught me off-guard. Surely the elegant teacher standing next to the overhead projector didn’t covet my battered Clarks? My Italian may be rusty, but I can recognise ‘where’, ‘buy’ and ‘sandals’.


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A new website launched today, and I know some of those involved so I thought I would give The Faster Times a plug here.

The Faster Times is a collective of great journalists who have come together to try something new. As we launch this July, we will have more than a hundred correspondents in over 20 countries. We have someone on the ground in Kenya and someone else reporting from Lebanon. Our arts section will cover not just film and books, but also theater and dance and photography. We will launch with seven writers on books alone. These writers are not “citizen journalists” but among the most accomplished and recognized names in their respective fields.

The website seems to be a sort of Huffington Post-ish let's-write-about-everything type of site, covering World, Politics, Business, Science, Food, Arts, Books, Parents, Sports, Travel and Advice on their top menu bar above the logo... and Health, Tech, Nonsense, Love and Death, Design, Insider and Surprise Me on the menu bar just under the logo.

Intrigued as I am by "Nonsense"(!), I am obviously most interested in the "seven writers on books alone" part! So I wander to the Books page, and here I find that one of the main sections is Indie Books. And here is an article by the Indie Books editor, Rozalia Jovanovic, on why she loves small presses:....

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Titles are the bane of my life. Right now I’m about to start plotting a new serial. It will contain – should it ever see the light of day – a police inspector, a low-life who’s spent more time languishing at Her Majesty’s Pleasure than in his own front room and a…. No, that’s enough, or I’ll jinx it.


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I am not, if I’m honest, what you would call an organised person.
Open my handbag and you will find neither diary, nor pen. A stash of wine gums, yes, maybe the odd out of date voucher.
I do not remember to charge my phone or fill the car with petrol.
I have friends who keep colour coded wall charts that tell them where every member of their family should be at any given moment. They organise children’s birthday parties with the military precision of an invasion.
Invitations, check. Matching napkins and paper plates, check. Wholesome and varied sandwich fillings, check.
I have twins and the night before their last birthday I was up till four turning two Swiss rolls and a packet of Smarties into a replica of Hogworts. Authentic it was not.
I berate myself constantly, promise to change. But I don’t.
Tonight is my publisher’s annual summer party. I have known about this for A WHOLE YEAR. As we speak, authors and agents are getting their hair cut and slavering themselves in Fake Bake. It is with no pride that I admit my ‘good frock’ is in the bottom of the washing basket and my roots are so dark I look as if someone might have taken an axe to my head.
My mate and fellow thriller writer, Lee Weeks, will glide in like an extra from Sex and the City. I on the other hand look not unlike Myra Hindley in her famous mug shot.
There is, however, one aspect of my life which I plan meticulously: my writing.


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Tomorrow, friends, July 9th, is a rather special day. It's the day when the lovely and talented Jess Ruston's debut novel, Luxury, is published. And what better way to celebrate than to invite her over to my little blog for a chat? (All right, quite a few, but that doesn't make this any less fun!!)

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I am so excited about receiving Shaindel Beers' poetry collection, A Brief History of Time.

This is her reading 'Ha' - I utterly love it.

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I am back at work in my cool cellar/study, just the right temperature when it's 27 degrees outside. Since the lovely news about the Binnacle Ultra-Short comp, I have done a u-turn on my previous decision to stop writing flash fiction. The universe seems to be telling me that I'm pretty good at it, and I do love writing flash, so I'm going to keep on doing it.

I started today by writing a 25-word piece for Hint Fiction, a new anthology forthcoming from W.W Norton. If you link to the Hint Fiction page from your blog, they allow you to submit three pieces instead of two. Details:

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One of the first things people ask me when I describe my novel, Luxury, is ‘is there lots of sex?’. Maybe my friends and acquaintances are just a filthy bunch, but I suspect it’s more universal than that. So, let’s talk about writing sex…
As well as being one of the things everyone asks about, it also seems to be one of the things most writers worry about. Is there too much sex in my book? Not enough? Is it convincing? Is it cringe-making and worthy of winning the Bad Sex Award? Will everyone who reads it think that every bit of sex is autobiographical? And finally, what will my granny think?
Because Luxury is a bit of a ‘blockbuster’ novel – big characters, big swathes of time, lots of juicy betrayal and revenge and passion – people expect it to have plenty of sex, so I’ve had to face up to all the questions above. I don’t have any grandparents, but my father kindly proof-read the text for me, and I seriously considered blacking out ‘certain’ pages with a marker pen. The sex in Luxury tends towards the overblown and over-the-top, but I’m afraid the answer to the penultimate question is, almost certainly, yes. People always assume novels are more autobiographical than not, in my experience, especially first novels, so I expect plenty of raised eyebrows after my friends have read it (However, I would like to state for the record that I have never had sex on the bonnet of a Bugatti Veyron…).
So how do you make sex scenes work as part of a book, rather than ending up with something that feels tacked on and awkward?
On one level, it’s like describing any other sensory experience such as a meal or a sunset. Avoiding cliché and bringing depth and fresh thinking to the matter will help.


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