2013: Not just another listless year . . .
The publication of Seoul Survivors made 2013 a busy year for my writing career. With the next two SF novels pawing at the door, however, at times I feared my reading was suffering. In line with my random book-grabbing habits, I made a haphazard effort to post reviews on Goodreads, but found it impossible to keep up regular appearances. So…
Midnight Mass and Christmas Thoughts
Midnight Mass isn’t really my tradition. I was brought up a Quaker, and while my ex-Anglican parents would occasionally take us to a hymn service at Christmas, I much prefered being tucked up in a duvet on the sofa listening to Twas The Night Before Christmas, read to us from a little red book with a sellotaped spine. Christmas was…
A Medieval Christmas in Gaza?
Raw sewage and muddy rainwater rising in the fruit and vegetable market. Six hours of electricity a day, while snow blankets the Middle East. Will it be frostbite, corpses and medieval diseases this Christmas for Gaza? The world’s media, of course, pays not a fig of attention to the crisis.* Meanwhile here in Brighton &…
Christmas Spice & Speculation
Here we are once more, gearing up for the annual winter whirl of gift-giving, soul-searching & future-facing. If you’re looking for an unusual present for the person who has everything, I am offering Tarot Card Reading gift certificates this year. Sensitive and compassionate, my readings are intended as opportunities for the querent to pause and…
‘The St Pancras Pianos’ : A Poem
A poem that emerged from a memory cloud as I dashed through St Pancras Station – the first draft was typed into my phone on the Underground and read an hour later at my National Poetry Day gig. As I was Tweeting about the pianos a fortnight ago, it seems fitting to publish it online. (And if anyone can explain…
The Blu Tack of History
Jenny Diski‘s characteristically pithy LRB blog today on Thatcher’s funeral ends with a quote from Peter Hennessy: ‘More of Margaret Thatcher… will cling to the velcro of our collective memory than any other politician of recent times.’ Velcro’s far too suburban for Brighton, of course, where we prefer to camply flick about grotty balls…
Seoul Survivors: We Have Lift Off!
My heartfelt thanks again to everyone who came to the Feb 28th Brighton launch of Seoul Survivors – publication day itself, and also my birthday party. The omens were all good – as guest of honour Julie Lee told me en route from Edmonton, to have both a flood in my flat and a gas leak the day before the…
Birthday Buckets of Books!
Congratulations to Romeo Kennedy, winner of THE SILVER BOUGH. It appears that Romeo’s wild strawberries left the competition stranded in a Bergmanesque void, and for that act of magical conquest alone the prize is highly well-deserved! This week’s competition announcement falls on a Day of Cosmic Potency – well, my birthday – and to celebrate I am giving away two…