The plot is fairly straightfoward: In 1950 alcoholic actor Frank Elgin (Martin Shaw) is all washed up. Young director Bernie Dodd(Mark Letheren) remembers Frank at the height of his powers and wants him to lead a new play destined for New York. Despite producer Phil Cook (Nicholas Day)'s doubts Frank is persuaded to take the part but insists his wife Georgie(Jane Semour)supports him during a trial-run in Boston. The action mainly takes place backstage at the two theatres, with Georgie and Bernie at odds about who exactly is pulling Frank's strings In fact, Bernie accuses Georgie of 'riding him like a broomstick'. How soon will he fall off the waggon?



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Kate Long is the best selling author of The Bad Mother’s Handbook, published by Picador in 2004. The book was serialized on Radio 4, nominated for a British Book Award and made into an ITV drama starring Catherine Tate. Her other novels include Swallowing Grandma, Queen Mum, The Daughter Game and A Mother’s Guide to Cheating. Kate has had short stories published in Woman's Own, Woman and Home, The Sunday Express magazine and the Sunday Night Book Club anthology. She lives in Shropshire with her husband and two sons.

Which 3 writers, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?

I think it would have to be a selection of novelists who ignited my interest in reading as a child – say, A M Lightner (Star Dog), Joan G Robinson (When Marnie Was There), Elizabeth Goudge (The Little White Horse). I’d like to thank them for getting me started.



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I was really pleased at my progress with the novel today.

Yesterday I had printed off all the chapters, which seemed to take hours, from about 4.00pm when I came back from lunch at Penge Wetherspoons, to 10.30pm. It took ages because I had to set up each chapter separately and tick a box to get 'best' quality print. Teach me to economise on print cartridges.

I kept running upstairs in the adverts during two episodes of Downton Abbey, one which Roy had recorded, to make sure the paper hadn't jammed. The printer's held together with gaffer tape but stood up to the judder. I told Roy I might use some superglue on it.


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I received this in an email. I can’t say I approve. Far too disrespectful – even more than someone writing a series of detective novels featuring Porfiry Petrovich. Some people might find it funny though…

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HOOP ONE – The First Filter Reader

A talented, unpublished writer I know was recently told to enter her work for awards as her prose was ‘the sort that does well in competitions.’ She asked if such prose existed, and if so, what was distinctively competition-friendly about it? How did it differ from other good writing?

My instinct was to reply that there isn’t a single style that wins a judge’s heart: I’ve judged thousands of stories and hundreds of novels for local and national fiction competitions, and have shortlisted work I loved and work I loathed but respected or admired. But I didn't say that. Because however different in tone the top stories are, they do have certain stylistic traits in common that raise them to that crucial top 2%. (With a surprising consistency over the years, only about 2% of entries stand out.) This 2-part post is about what we’re looking for, why, and also why great stories can get overlooked but rarely do.

First - it helps to understand the process.

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It's a hardy perennial of a question among writers, because it matters, from which agent might represent you to what cover your book might get. The forums seethe with arguments about "any book worth reading" to "would you call Dickens literary?" to "pointless pretentious rubbish" or even (seriously) "a book only academics will like".The latter can't be true, because there can't be enough academics in the world to account for the combined sales of Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Barbara Kingsolver, Helen Dunmore, Hilary Mantel, Peter Ackroyd, Barry Unsworth, Philip Roth, Jonathan Franzen, Martin Amis, Beryl Bainbridge, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco... But it is worth remembering that if you like and read literary fiction, in the world at large you are a tiny minority of book readers, and an even tinier minority of human beings. That's the truth.

But I've noticed that inside the book trade (and don't forget that, as Harry Bingham says in Getting Published, writers by definition aren't inside it) no one angsts about this question at all. They might argue about whether a book really classes as "literary", for all those purposes from imprint to bookshop promotion, but they don't argue about what "literary" is. Not that they could tell you, at least only by talking about specific examples; they just know. They're also less and less inclined to tolerate low sales in return for literary prestige, so although the market of readers is undeniably there, they're more and more stringent about whether a literary-seeming novel will get published. So I've been trying to work it all out.

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Can you hear the difference between a circle and a square? Can you see the birdsong? Can you feel a whisper?



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I just got back from Baltimore MD where I had a great reception from Nathan Rosen of www.microhorror.com and we set the 2010 Hallowe'en Competition rolling with a video Read all about it and see the piks at Parallel Oonahverse and while your there visit The Vaults and take a look at some of my work online. I also got to meet the lovely Jody Costa and Jennifer Stakes who is a WW member too - great stuff!

STAY SCARY!

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I admit it, I’ve been neglecting my blog. I could say that it’s because I’ve been busy with other things. Getting started on a new novel. Kids off for half term. A clutch of MA novels to read, assess and mark. A workshop to prepare. The sequel to The Exsanguinist to write. Tax return to submit. A living to earn.

All that’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. In the past, I’ve managed to keep up with blog updates while working on other things, even while holding down a day job. So what’s different now?

The difference is that I seem to have developed a fear of blogging. Let’s call it blogophobia.

The more I tell myself that I need to get some fresh content on my blog, to give people a reason to come back and read, the harder it is for me to face the empty WordPress wizard.

I think the reason for this is that, through the Twisteries, I partially converted my blog into a vehicle for fiction. That was fine while I was working on smaller projects or writing opinion pieces for Aol. But now that I have started writing my new novel in earnest, I find that the challenge of producing two streams of very different fictional content has defeated me.

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