This week - Monday 30th March to Friday 3rd April - Amazon are giving away free Kindle copies of my collection of short stories, "Secrets & Wisdom". So today's the last day! Recently I read one of the stories from this volume, "Welshman" (see the link below). Now you have the chance to get the... Continue Reading →
“Tangling with the Epic”
Kwame Dawes and John Kinsella's "Tangling with the Epic" is probably, above all, 'clever'. It is a dialogue between the two comprised entirely of Spenserian stanzas, batted backwards and forwards across a literary net. It is clever in the sense of its formulaic execution, of sticking to the brief. But for me it is also... Continue Reading →
Free e-book this week!
This week - Monday 30th March to Friday 3rd April - Amazon are giving away free Kindle copies of my collection of short stories, "Secrets & Wisdom". Recently I read one of the stories from this volume, "Welshman" (see the link below). Now you have the chance to get the whole collection absolutely free! Partly... Continue Reading →
“On Chesil Beach”
There is a particular skill in taking a relatively small narrative episode and weaving an entire novel from it. In "On Chesil Beach" Ian McEwan displays such talents. The incident of the title - short, climactic, tense, complex, emotional - is perhaps the natural outcome of the story as it is laid before us. How... Continue Reading →
“Paris Echo”
Considering all that he's written, I find it somewhat remarkable that "Paris Echo" is the first Sebastian Faulks I have ever read. Was that a good place to start? I suspect I'll never know. Without doubt, there is much about the book to admire, but the question I'm wrestling with at the end of it... Continue Reading →
Welshman – a reading
I have always wanted to read my short story "Welshman". Written a while ago, it was published in 2017 in my collection of short stories "Secrets & Wisdom". I hope you like it.
The Skip – a reading
A reading of my poem, "The Skip".
Sidings
Sidings they arc from sight with bizarre elegance an overgrown divergence designated to home the unwanted or the forgotten weeds climb rusting axles clogging memories of motion and birds flit in the eerie silence to reserve a first-class nesting site
“The Confession”
Having loved "The Miniaturist" and, off the back of that read "The Muse", I confess to being profoundly disappointed by Jessie Burton's latest, "The Confession". So disappointed in fact, that I've given up on it after about 170 pages. I struggled with the tone, and - I hate to say - so much of it... Continue Reading →
“The Overstory”
Richard Powers' "The Overstory" is a quite exceptional book on many levels. Engaging, principled, well-written, intelligent; the narrative weaves it way through its pages like the roots of a tree - especially in the final section where the tendrils mix and merge and knit. It's obvious why it was shortlisted for the 2018 'Booker', and... Continue Reading →
Forthcoming Public Event!
Really looking forward to appearing on the panel of writers at this free event in Ripon Library on 14th March, being grilled about being a writer - and only having a minute to answer each question!
“Footnotes to Water”
Zoë Skoulding's "Footnotes to Water" is somewhat obsessed with its subject. Water flows through the poems, washing inexorably over you in wave after wave. Which is fine, though a little more variety - if only to better demonstrate the poet's linguistic skill - might be nice. In many of the pieces I struggled with the... Continue Reading →
Anonymous
Later, after the fog had lifted, I discovered I had become invisible. It had tumbled down the hill like an afterthought forgotten by the morning, as if it had missed its alarm call and was trying to make up for lost time, scurrying across the lake to where I sat alone, accompanied only by the... Continue Reading →
Compulsion
Compulsion abstracted from reality he painted consumed by a nameless passion accidentally acquainted no slave to fashion he claimed a lack of choice for rolling with the punches rarely on the verge of controlling unbidden instinctive hunches it’s not important what’s created he claimed his... Continue Reading →
Obituary
fettered by an obscured unnatural view he sought another as if a fresh vista might renew a weary perspective on his mother tongue the tricks he’d sleight-handed since the womb his genius for linguistic husbandry were devoted to a life beyond the tomb his embalming for posterity it was the one thing he... Continue Reading →
On Being Thrown Over
Would your love for me increase were I to die or would my barely-mourned decease erase me from your memory? Would your febrile eyes seek out a physical response, the fuel to weave a quilt of lies made posthumously cruel? Was I no more than ornament, a transient nod to Spring, the blush... Continue Reading →
The Perennial Question: What Next? (part 2)
It was a little over two months ago I wrote the first version of the post below. Given the books I was working on were finally published today - Published Today! - the questions posed below become even more relevant. I'm heading into the bulk of 2020 without a firm plan. I have been through the... Continue Reading →
Published Today!
I am delighted to announce three new books for 2020, the first two of these released today, 1st February 2020! The third is published in a week's time. Liam is haunted by his age and the history it forces upon him. Yet he is also plagued by the need to make more - to generate... Continue Reading →
“Tale Tales and wee stories”
Many years ago the comedian Billy Connolly produced a brilliant TV series, "Billy Connolly's World Tour of Scotland". Many of the stories in "Tale Tales and wee stories" are replays of some of the material from that series, and at its best the book takes you back to those shows; you can picture Billy delivering... Continue Reading →
Park-and-Ride
She speaks with a strange intonation, a peculiarly-located rise in her voice as if the person who taught her English had overlaid the rhythms and inflections of an entirely different language: French, or German, or Pig Latin. It also seems she has never acquainted herself with the full set of letters in the alphabet; some... Continue Reading →
