Visual Verse: Stay Steady

I published a piece on Visual Verse this month, a flash fiction crime story, Stay Steady. It's inspired by an infamous Grant Wood painting. You can read it here

Do Men Love More Than Women? Blue Fifth Review

My short story, Do Men Love More Than Women? was published in Blue Fifth Review this month. You can read it here. Really happy to have contributed to the collaboration issue of this journal, featuring work by artists and writers. My personal favorite is the text by Tina Barry.

Visual Verse: The Fire Triangle

Have a flash fiction piece up on Visual Verse, The Fire Triangle.

"I kissed Francois. Black-body radiation. Organic matter glowed. Life burnt"

You can read it here.

Litro: Anything Could Happen Here

My short story Anything Could Happen Here, is published in Litro this week.

My piece, The Pull of The Moon, appeared in Litro in their French addition, alongside work by Michel Houellenbecq, a couple of years ago. Litro is, in their words, "A little London Lit mag with a great world view", their stories transport you.... 

You can read Anything Could Happen Here, here.

Visual verse: Loom Love

I'm contributing to Visual Verse again this month, my piece is called Loom Love. I was inspired by teenage outsiders, devious little elastic bands and the image by Sigrid Calon. You can read Loom Love here.

Visual Verse : We Can Be Bought And Sold

I've written a piece for Visual Verse this month, We Can Be Bought And Sold, about the brain, neurosciences and people as supermarket barcodes. You can read it here

A Chuckle. A Dip. A Crack : Visual Verse

Been trying to get back to writing for Visual Verse every month. It's a spontaneous, unpremeditated  experience, there's no time for prevarication, hesitation and reflection, just a little mental churn over ideas (a tiny prayer that the vein tapped will yield some gold) and then fingers on keyboard. Write, write, write.

For the April edition, I wrote this. 

Pontas and The Tide That Took The Sea

Thanks to the Pontas team and Jessica Craig for this great piece in their newsletter about my novel The Tide That Took The Sea.

Schwitters, Vorticism and found language

           

       Once upon a time, in another life, I wrote an MA dissertation on Vorticism, which is held in the  elegant Tate Modern library, where I carried out part of my research. I have always been drawn like a bee to honey by the avant-garde artistic movements from the début du siècle. Dadaism holds a special, undone, ripped up and shuffled place in my heart. This week, I was flipping through the pages of Coutts-Smith book about this anarchic and nihilistic movement which took place between 1916 and 1923. Reading, I came across the German artist Kurt Schwitters, renowned for his opening up of art, its materials, subject matters, ideas of aesthetic. In this assemblage vision the debris of contemporary society: the broken, the abandoned, the useless and the over-looked, are re-presented, transformed and transcended. 

               Schwitters extends this practice to language, travels for hours on trains, circling the city, listening to snatches of conversation, chatter and gossip, lyrics and songs. Overheard fragments are collaged together, language re-found. I have been mulling this idea around in the back of my head, the idea of finding language, words and stories, over, under and around the page. Outside and inside. And, also the idea of reclaiming the discarded and the lost.

L'hôpital Le Dessous des Cartes

L'Hôpital Le Dessous des Cartes, hit French bookshops last week. I co-wrote this French roman, a semi-fictional, semi-academic dramatic exploration of the dilemmas facing contemporary French hospitals. 

You can read more about the book here

Visual Verse : A Feast of Tongues

So happy to be back contributing Visual Verse. You can read my piece A Feast of Tongues here. Aunt Dorothea is writing once again about grief, donkeys and swimming pools!  I was inspired by the Raymond Carveresque photo by Dominic Goodman and a recent venture into Marina Warner's Signs and Wonders. I came across her years ago when she gave the Reith Lectures Managing Monsters. In  A Feast of Tongues, I was thinking about Aesop, fables and all that they can be.

In other news (in between sick children, non-writing work and the shenanigans of everyday life) I am back writing my detective books. So will dip into Raymond Chandler, San Antonio, Fred Vargas and maybe some George Perec (the latter for something unpredictable and wild). 

Pontas

I am thrilled to say that the brilliant Jessica Craig at the very excellent Pontas Agency in Barcelona is going to represent me for my novel and detective books. I am very happy.

You can read about them here.

Visual Verse : Tectonic Love

        Busy, busy, busy with so many things, but, couldn't resist the latest prompt from Visual Verse. In their own words,

"Visual Verse is a celebration. Of the drama of seeing and the desire to express it. Of the things that inspire us, move us, and that we find hardest to articulate".

You can read the latest in Aunt Dorothea's epistolary adventures here.

Like Something You Wanted: The Irish Literary Review

I have a short story, Like Something You Wanted, published in the recent edition of the excellent online Irish Literary Review. You can read it here.

Visual Verse : JUST ONE MORE BRUSH, HE KEPT WHISPERING.

In the midst of a mad month of many things, I've written a new piece for Visual Verse. I love this project.

You can read the latest from Aunt Dorothea over here.

The Watching Crowd

Awkword Paper Cut and Michael Dickes invited me to contribute to their September issue.

You can read my piece The Watching Crowd and listen to me reading the story here. 

AwkwordPaperCut

The September edition of New York's AwkwordPaperCut is out. You can read it here. There is video poetry, art, music, story-telling and more.... I was invited to write a piece of flash fiction on the theme of the Mob or the Herd, you can read (and listen to) my story, The Watching Crowd.

Visual Verse : The Cerulean Song

I have another little piece over at Visual Verse this month. You can read my text, the latest installment of Aunt Dorothea's letters to Clementine if you click just here.

Visual Verse is an inspiring project; brilliant to read, look at and write for. Check out some great writing by Edan Lepuki, Sohini Basak and others....read, read, read...

Writing news: Visual Verse

     I have another piece on the brilliant website Visual Verse. I am using each inspiring image, as a woman writing postcards home each month! Follow part two of the journey here. Or here: http://visualverse.org/submissions/vive-la-reine-long-live-queen/

And just as a little appetizer, here are a few words describing the latest adventures of Aunt Dorothea :

To my dear niece Clementine,

     Our trip to China has been postponed, for the moment Albert and I are stranded in Paris. The summer days are long and hazy, the streets tainted with the colour of treacle. I do love it here in July. Albert spends his time playing chess with Boris, an organic farmer who comes to visit his family in the Marais quarter every summer. Albert and Boris are to be found each morning at ten, on the terrace of the Café des Amis. They sit hunched over their game of chess, ignoring their steaming cups of espresso, until the liquid turns cold and bitter.

     I watch them from afar, sipping my petit crème. I read Le Monde and peruse the pages of Paris Match. The chess pieces slip and slide across the chequered board. The knight hopping, the castle commandeering, the poor little pawns the foot soldiers of the game, murdered on mass by the others......

Awkwordpapercut

I was invited to contribute to AwkwordPaperCut. You can hear me reading my text on this podcast. 

There is very cool music, vivid words, evocative sounds...there is Michael Dickes and Bill Yarrow, and Ken Brecher talking about storytelling in the modern world. 

Listen, listen, listen...