tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90728073041820701932024-02-18T21:34:48.146-08:00pelt and other storiesTwo foolhardy snowboarders challenge the savagery of mountain weather in the Dolomites. A Ghanaian woman strokes across a hotel pool in the tropics, flaunting her pregnant belly before her lover's discarded wife. 'Pelt' was longlisted in the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and Semi-Finalist in the Hudson Prize. 'Magaly Park' was Pushcart-nominated in 2014.chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-21114766624228067362016-02-10T06:48:00.002-08:002016-02-10T06:49:29.908-08:00The Blue Period<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Everyone has a Blue Period. I don't mean Blue as in The Blues, but rather a retreat into a monochromed world. That's where I've been hiding. Mostly, I've been hard at work writing new stories, editing this new collection, trying to push this baby into shape. I've had quite a few new stories published, and done more readings in London, where I've discovered that half a vodka tonic is this author's perfect prep for a performance. Plus steady - not teetering - shoes.<br />
<br />
But this is going to be a quiet post. No large ideas or twists, as I feel as though I've stepped aside from the blogging world and spent way too much time hiking on the mountain behind the house. Or coffee-chugging in front of the screen, playing with my characters. Or just getting on - as we all do - with what must be done. The thrill of publication is one thing, but it doesn't happen without the birth of some idea, the formation of a story, the submission of this story, its probable rejection, revision, resubmission.. and then.. and then..<br />
<br />
My story <a href="http://flightjournal.org/2015/11/29/yann-at-night-catherine-mcnamara/">'Yann at Night'</a> came out in Flight Journal, in an issue including an interview with my short story crush, <a href="http://flightjournal.org/2015/11/30/interview-may-lan-tan/#more-227">May-Lan Tan</a>, who says she listens to techno while she writes! May-Lan has a lot to say about loneliness, navigation through languages, and the violence of words. And stories you have been writing since you were four. If you haven't found an author to adore lately, read the interview and try <a href="http://www.cbeditions.com/tan.html">Things to Make and Break</a>.<br />
<br />
<i>'..and if I can ever write anything that affects people the way music does,
that would be the best thing I could do. I think you could spend your
whole life trying to do that. But there are so many limits with
language—that’s why rhythm and melody become very important.'</i><br />
<br />
<i>'I think with any writer, your language is your weapon but it’s your prison as well.'</i><br />
<br />
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I was also surprised to be included in the <b>Arabesque</b> issue of Trafika Europe, a rich collection of mostly Arab-language writers living in Europe. <a href="https://cld.bz/users/user-N5y4U8g/Trafika-Europe-Quarterly/Trafika-Europe-6-Arabesque#230">'Astragal'</a> speaks of the harsh geology of ancient mountains, reflected in the harshness between men and women. Set in the Dolomites where a young girl disappears, the story sets in motion the craving for hope.<br />
<br />
Another piece, 'A Very Tall Lady', was surprisingly commended in the Prole Short Story Competition, while 'Tales from Bodri Beach', which sees a family reunion on a Corsican beach, appeared in <a href="http://issuu.com/lijla/docs/lijlafeb2014vol2no1">Lakeview Journal</a>. So a pleasing end of year for this author. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
But now the time has come to wonder. This blog - <b>Pelt and Other Stories</b> - has provided a wonderful base to discuss short stories and attempt to understand the form, however I think it's time for a new arena - perhaps even a Rose Period? - to speak of these and other things.<br />
<br />
If you've followed me this far, Thank You. I'll soon be posting news about a new author website. chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-72362789263155841192015-10-10T05:38:00.001-07:002015-10-10T06:09:12.624-07:00Hilary Mantel Says<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last year I entered a competition thinking the usual: <i>Why am doing this?</i> <i>I'm just setting myself up for disappointment. I'll never get anywhere. This story is whacky why on earth would Hilary Mantel like it?</i><br />
<br />
Because - yes - it was a competition to be judged by Hilary Mantel! The inaugural Hilary Mantel/Kingston University Press International Short Story Competition, set up by Dr. David Rogers, Director of Kingston Writing School and co-Director of Kingston University Press, and Alan McCormack, writer-in-residence for the Kingston Writing School, who proposed the competition idea. A big one. I know - and with a story called 'The Wild Beasts of the Earth will Adore Him'<b>,</b> set in a small advertising agency in Ghana - fat chance!!<br />
<br />
So of course I forgot about this submission, as one does, and went on through the summer and autumn writing story after story. I was <i>very</i> surprised when I received an email saying I'd made the longlist. This really doesn't happen very often. As much as it may seem otherwise, there are many, many rejections in the way of just one longlisting. These moments are rare, almost the type where you remember exactly where you were when you read the email. (I had to pull over to the side of the road to gasp, in front of the panel beater's.)<br />
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I also wasn't allowed to tell anyone, except the dozens of members of my household over here in Italy (who mostly dont care). I didnt really think anyone would mind. I also started reading <b>Wolf Hall</b>, thinking if Hilary Mantel might be reading my story, then I should be reading hers too.<br />
<br />
(Well, no need to say that <b>Wolf Hall</b> was brilliant and I spent days reading non-stop. Outside in the contemporary world I kept seeing heads on poles along the canal, and I couldn't help wishing Anne Boleyn could somehow escape her fate. She was some dame. I also wondered about the lighting back then - candles and lots of dark corners, things catching alight. There was a world to think about, as well as the breadth of the characters.)<br />
<br />
In the meantime my story went to the shortlist and I was reeling. I hoped hard, but I didn't join the three finalists. My friend Annemarie Neary did, so I was cheering for her. This is when you throw away your writerly dignity and you smell a win in the air - almost like the smell of blood. I've been a shortlisted finalist before, and that's when the desire to win really kicks in.<br />
<br />
But the winner - and deservedly so - was Australian writer Michelle Cahill, whose story 'Duende' was brilliant. Annemarie joined Rick Williams as runner-up. Both authors read their stories - 'One Day in Sarajevo' and 'What Lies Beneath' - at the event I attended last month at Kingston University. Mesmerising, lingering words.<br />
<br />
The anthology is a rich collection (edited by David Rogers and Michael Kerin), that includes the shortlisted finalists of the competition and also the winning entries of the KUP Bonnie Greer Stories to Read Aloud Competition. Here's what Hilary Mantel had to say in the generous and inspiring introduction:<br />
<br />
<i>There are few limits to what a short story can do. One of the greatest of all practitioners, William Trevor, once described the skill involved as 'the art of the glimpse'... Imagine opening a window, on to a wild landscape: that is the kind of glimpse I think he means. Five seconds tells you the country is immense, the gale is blowing.</i><br />
<br />
Remarkable! And well worth a read given the wide reach and varied texture of the stories.<br />
<br />
(I shouldn't <i>really</i> say this, but worth it for the introduction alone.. Hilary Mantel's words<i> 'The Wild Beasts of the Earth Will Adore Him', by Catherine McNamara, was strongly atmospheric from the first sentence'</i> are still making this writer feel quite dizzy..)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Lies-Beneath-selection-Kingston/dp/1899999817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444480976&sr=1-1&keywords=what+lies+beneath+hilary+mantel">http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Lies-Beneath-selection-Kingston/dp/1899999817/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1444480976&sr=1-1&keywords=what+lies+beneath+hilary+mantel</a>chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-68493926753212686862015-08-19T04:30:00.000-07:002015-08-19T04:30:30.941-07:00A Short Story Festival and Two Book Launches<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhfnue6Br3CQ2CNIn66jz9rzk6EDyJvel6mhkBch9lPR_rGH62OWTWT3ORHCAWoTIvZkuHCzFw9SafYaqdMTmfh3IqeD7pN1GkIQOkZmO_1MElUx4tVjJPFSCs-FnI2IsYUwNWu39eeP9v/s1600/logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhfnue6Br3CQ2CNIn66jz9rzk6EDyJvel6mhkBch9lPR_rGH62OWTWT3ORHCAWoTIvZkuHCzFw9SafYaqdMTmfh3IqeD7pN1GkIQOkZmO_1MElUx4tVjJPFSCs-FnI2IsYUwNWu39eeP9v/s1600/logo.png" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It has been the most
astonishing literary summer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>At first it was the second edition of the
London Short Story Festival in late June, directed by the energetic and generous
Paul McVeigh, and efficiently managed by London’s Spread the Word. For four
days Piccadilly Waterstones was awash with short story writers and aficionados:
old mates catching up or latecomers flying to talks, bright smiles on faces
after invigorating workshops; some of us sneaking upstairs to the cocktail bar
in between sessions, the braver of us shyly approaching festival readers at the
inevitable pub bash afterwards. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Four days of short
story riches, involving newer writers such as May-Lan Tan, author of <a href="http://www.cbeditions.com/">CB Editions</a>’ Things to Make and Break, who read from her chapbook Girly, and seasoned
authors like Ben Okri, who read one of my favourite stories, the title piece
from his collection Incidents in the Shrine. Two exceptional events. There were
also readings from Canadian D.W. Wilson, (his heartbreaking story <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2015/04/2015-cbc-short-story-prize-mountain-under-sea-by-dw-wilson.html">‘Mountain Under Sea</a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><a href="http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2015/04/2015-cbc-short-story-prize-mountain-under-sea-by-dw-wilson.html"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">’</span></a>) and the admirable Kevin Barry, who shuffled away after a brilliant
reading and a run of amusing off-beat writing tips: Barry maintains he writes ‘primarily
out of anxiety’ and puts his ‘blood and guts onto the page’ and thinks ‘more of
food than short stories’ . I took part in one workshop with Mr. Okri which
involved learning how to be attuned to the arrival of inspiration (such as when
one is house-painting!)and how to let go of pre-packaged thought and embrace
ideas fearlessly.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Later in the summer I
was back in London for two exciting launches. I was lucky to have two short
stories accepted by two different publications, <a href="http://www.thesiren.co.uk/product/fugue-vol-ii/">Fugue Volume II </a>(The Siren
Press), and <a href="http://structomagazine.co.uk/">Structo 14</a>. So I rocked up to Bloomsbury one Friday night, and Soho
the night afterwards. Two wonderful evenings of listening to other writers
read, meeting the Editors, and seeing the stories you’ve been peddling in
print. Surely more rewarding than a new pair of heels?</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dM1PcVuW8K68EH8uoKTO3o7NL1RaML4nSQ_9ZxtyhWsM-_r57G_vIAtALoZpOaV_jDUifQw5wD76lWL8ynOdhN9w5xTAMnDICdM2CkOnP-ZZynROzgidNeiMZVukCweVIlAU8_a1fjvg/s1600/FUGUE-2-THMB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dM1PcVuW8K68EH8uoKTO3o7NL1RaML4nSQ_9ZxtyhWsM-_r57G_vIAtALoZpOaV_jDUifQw5wD76lWL8ynOdhN9w5xTAMnDICdM2CkOnP-ZZynROzgidNeiMZVukCweVIlAU8_a1fjvg/s320/FUGUE-2-THMB.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">With the Fugue Volume
I receiving enthusiastic reviews (‘close to being magical’ – Sabotage Reviews),
Lucy Carroll, Editor of The Siren Press, had a difficult act to follow. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember the submission call for Fugue Volume
II suggested the editors were interested in the quirky and offbeat. I sent off
one of my kinkiest pieces, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">‘</span>Three Days in Hong Kong</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">’</span>, and hoped for the
best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was thrilled when it quickly
made the cut.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">How to compile a short
story collection that is original and captivating, that will sell copies for a
fledgling publishing company in a world that mostly disregards the medium? I
always ask myself this when I pick up an anthology – of which there are so many dazzling examples around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I may be biased because my story is included in this book, b</span>ut I think
that Editors Lucy Carroll and Liviu Tanasoaica have harnessed a collective of buzzing
modern energy: alienation and undertow; authors
whose work jars, but gels together.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In the Editorial: <i>The
Fuguists are a diverse group of writers.. try and think of their efforts as a
literary experiment, indicative of a contemporary fascination with character
psychology</i>. In this way we have pieces such as ‘Scarlet Streets’ by L.D.
Lipinski, a blood-dripping sketch of teenhood in an abattoir-dependent town, and
Alyson Hallett’s dreamy homage to Munch’s scream in a layered rendering of
child abuse and murder; and Brandon Robshaw's tale of a lesson plan gone horribly off course. Clare Fisher’s ‘You Are Not Sorry’ portrays a lonely
lying woman in a series of Facebook Messenger riffs, and we are entranced by the
underlying powers that a new home inflicts upon a young married couple in Sally
Oliver’s ‘Hole in the Wall’. There is much awkwardness, tension, and lapses of
reason that betray the fuzziness of the temporal world and the intrusion of marred
realities.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In common, the
characters in the eight stories perhaps seem to be elusive, edgy, even
abrasive. The character voices are intimate, often in the first person,
strident, brittle and aware. The Fuguist world is a modern arena skirted by minor
social despair. Characters crave attention and acknowledgement; communication often
collapses; there is a lack of connection with a harsh, overwhelming outside world,
whether it be through a zombie threat as in Darren</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">’</span>s vivid piece ‘On the House’,
or through the decrescendo of age, as in C.D. Menon’s quiet story ‘Spring Tides’.</span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6SCaysi0aqaQdKnUjU3MOCEJakghrfCD5dvfjwPSJyJtDdJwi-7MVeTyTojWirqv36eLeSlsy1IogdLvGqqJCwfpEYISFIf0VniXF8zm4zDyiLzLcRWo7jRD28LNCA-27GBnyVGy6x65E/s1600/FullSizeRender%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6SCaysi0aqaQdKnUjU3MOCEJakghrfCD5dvfjwPSJyJtDdJwi-7MVeTyTojWirqv36eLeSlsy1IogdLvGqqJCwfpEYISFIf0VniXF8zm4zDyiLzLcRWo7jRD28LNCA-27GBnyVGy6x65E/s320/FullSizeRender%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The collection is discomforting and interestingly paced, images linger and there are no easy exits
for the reader. Stories are captivating and quirky indeed, each one accompanied
by Alexandru’s Savescu’s accomplished and lyrical images. (Here I confess to
blind favouritism and declare that the print for my story </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">‘</span>Three Days in Hong
Kong</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">’</span> – an erotic pastische of Philomena’s nude body roll on a glassy hotel
window – is the one I have fallen for! Well I did say it was a kinky piece..) </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><a href="http://sabotagereviews.com/2015/07/01/fugue-vol-ii-by-the-siren-press/">Sabotage Reviews</a> has this to say:<i> </i></span><i>‘Three Days in Hong Kong’ by Catherine McNamara pulls you strongly into
the place where the code-named Philomena M. waits for her lover. She is
suspended in a glass box – almost as New York magician David Blain once
was – in a hotel room above the city of Hong Kong, trapped and yet in
the end not so. In that place of heightened sensuality she upends the
power balance in the relationship..</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Here’s the<a href="http://www.thesiren.co.uk/product/fugue-vol-ii/"> buying link</a> and Fugue II is also available at all good independent book shops. I’ll talk
about Structo 14 next week!</span><i> </i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Brilliant holiday
news: Litro online have accepted ‘The Architecture of Humans’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The Nottingham Review
will be publishing ‘Hotel de Californie’ in September</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Trafika Europe has
accepted ‘Astragal’</span></div>
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<br /></div>
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-43078713518376478092015-05-12T08:39:00.003-07:002015-05-12T08:41:47.743-07:00Pimp My Short Story<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjStU7y_EWgwmafys-UWT8S-TPSEutp03M2yptCPA-n_AE7pcxi2CNCx1JSrEmfHrqM_PKTMZXfJ10iYU0hI74JwxUjLZxOzak4cuRJ5Uc16BjoEO3V-BelHAbNuVnY0FOMogFsc2NaXEhv/s1600/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjStU7y_EWgwmafys-UWT8S-TPSEutp03M2yptCPA-n_AE7pcxi2CNCx1JSrEmfHrqM_PKTMZXfJ10iYU0hI74JwxUjLZxOzak4cuRJ5Uc16BjoEO3V-BelHAbNuVnY0FOMogFsc2NaXEhv/s320/FullSizeRender.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pimped !</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Less blogging and more pimping. I've been seriously pimping my short stories these days. Meaning I've been revising and rereading and revising and reading-out-loud and printing and scribbling and reprinting. They were all stories that were written last year in a flurry, sent off, rejected (mostly) with encouragement. <br />
<br />
Well. There comes a point where wildly sending off material that has just been whisked together is not a great idea. Sometimes it has worked for me. Sometimes - very naughtily and with great enthusiasm - I sent off a just-finished text which went well in a competition or was taken by a review. A miracle! But other stories came straight back and I knew they were lumpy and unfinished.<br />
<br />
I confess I find rewriting and revising very hard work. It's a different frequency, isn't it? It has none of the distilled pyjamas-all-day elation of writing. Oh no! It is a plodding, hike-around-the-house-and-come-back process, like checking on a fevered child you wish would just get well. Excuses are sought for more coffee, for proper chocolates. It is necessary to jog at the end of the day rather than scream.<br />
<br />
And there is no way of knowing when you are in the thick of it. Whether you are over-writing, flogging a dead horse, getting mechanical and losing freshness. Who can tell? You have lost the guiding hand of the unthinking first draft and you are doing homework, writing an essay, trying to get it right for your teacher. <br />
<br />
It can feel like that.<br />
<br />
But recently (with the aid of an early evening jog through fields of baby green wheat) I've given up the fight. Pimping is possible. I can add and elaborate. I can slash and burn and delete. I've even become quite mean. <br />
<br />
And, you know, sometimes, a delicately-pimped story can even end up looking like this:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7epxXo0jsqOmmZssXBIut0PtwiBzdQyjL0TO-DZnj7c7C6C-Mh5_KVUmwNiWEoKY-N1z731lSeWX4HqhdZ85UhhSgonLP1xdGuqug1tjVJaxgtCPiVgbwJPzkDPPHxPsLQ5g8DHva-j4/s1600/FullSizeRender+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw7epxXo0jsqOmmZssXBIut0PtwiBzdQyjL0TO-DZnj7c7C6C-Mh5_KVUmwNiWEoKY-N1z731lSeWX4HqhdZ85UhhSgonLP1xdGuqug1tjVJaxgtCPiVgbwJPzkDPPHxPsLQ5g8DHva-j4/s320/FullSizeRender+(1).jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also pimped !</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Happiness is.. My story 'Love and Death and Cell Division' will be published in <a href="http://www.ambitmagazine.co.uk/">Ambit</a> this autumn. And 'The Book of Bruises' will be coming out in the next issue of <a href="http://www.structomagazine.co.uk/">Structo</a>. Hooray!chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-4449833957448243352015-03-14T04:45:00.000-07:002015-03-14T04:45:32.081-07:00An Interview: Love on the Road Anthology 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEGtibVoZrCfvnPztb08bmAnLULgS0HrEE7xlt-f-fEZejfY7gt_r7zl1-cMVnN2oEZbarK5TqImm2NYDEAgJGBQDCiiUUveFUmCf31uD4VVBstK9y3npqbS5voVRtfs5vs7jfWL1mGg9x/s1600/image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEGtibVoZrCfvnPztb08bmAnLULgS0HrEE7xlt-f-fEZejfY7gt_r7zl1-cMVnN2oEZbarK5TqImm2NYDEAgJGBQDCiiUUveFUmCf31uD4VVBstK9y3npqbS5voVRtfs5vs7jfWL1mGg9x/s320/image.jpg" /></a></div><br />
So many times we are told that short stories do not sell, that they are an unrewarded labour of love for writer and publisher alike. And yet. Am I wrong in sensing a slight upswing in short-story-loving these days? <br />
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The <i>Love on the Road Anthology 2015: Twelve More Tales of Love and Travel</i> seems to be a declaration of this sort. A striking collection that editors Sam Tranum and Lois Kapila have noted is a personal project that has grown wings, LOTR 2015 is the second edition of a competition anthology initially launched in 2013. It came to life, one evening, in a humid Kolkata bar. Sam and Lois, avid travellers who have long covered the ills of the world as journalists, decided to look at <b>love on the road</b>. It might have been one of those dreamy bar moments when you make resolutions and leaps in the air, but Sam and Lois went home and set up a competition, gathered respected judges and began reading submissions. And not only have they given voice to two dozen writers in two anthology editions, they are selling copies!<br />
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I entered last year's competition with a story not about love on the road, more like love down the road - meaning many years after the fact. I didn't think I'd have a chance as it wasn't perfumed with romance, and the relationship portrayed had failed. As a finalist I joined eleven other internationals with stories that are so diverse, so off-beat and challenging - nothing to do with smooches and skylines. Just work that is alive, buzzing with the intimacy and fractures and fall-out of love. <br />
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Fellow writers came from all over the globe and have been broadly published, with story lines including a chat-up in a Zimbabwe queue, a gender change within a hetero couple, a Filipino schoolgirl who will soon discover that her 'love' has cost her her freedom, an American writer-vet kidnapped by a crazed surrogate mother, a relationship reassessment on the steps of the Acropolis. Many facets and forms of love are represented in rich, contrasting contexts. These stories speak not only of selflessness and acceptance, but also submission, abuse, appropriation and the darker shades of love. <br />
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Short story writers adore passionate publishers so I decided to grill Sam and Lois:<br />
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<b>1. I read that you encouraged submissions from all English-speaking corners of the globe. How was the response? </b><br />
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Sam: It was easy to get submissions from the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. To reach people in those countries, you just have to post something online it spreads, as long as it's relatively appealing. Reaching out to writers in other places with lots of people writing in English (such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa) was a bit trickier, for two reasons: the call for submission didn't spread as smoothly online, and it's legally and logistically difficult for people in some of those places to pay the reading fee online. So it took a little more work and flexibility to encourage submissions from those places. In the end, though, we got piles of stories from all sorts of places, which was really nice. One of our goals was to include in the anthology a wide range of perspectives on the theme, and I think we were able to do that. <br />
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<b>2. Did you find many common 'love' elements or patterns in the submissions you read?</b><br />
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Sam: The writers who were good enough to submit to our contest were really creative. They approached the theme from perspectives I definitely didn't expect. But there were a few patterns in the submissions. We got several stories set in Paris; I guess a lot of people associate Paris with love. Writers from the US seemed more likely to include explicit sex scenes in their love stories than writers from other places. There were also a fair number of stories set in the US (not necessarily by US writers) in the 1960s, involving road-trips. Most of the stories were fiction, although we were accepting both fiction and nonfiction. <br />
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<b>3. You guys have seen a broad spectrum of human behaviour in diverse contexts through your work as international journalists. Did this influence the type of stories you selected for your final twelve?</b><br />
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Sam: It was curiosity that led me to journalism and to travel, and I think that's true for Lois, too. And it was with curiosity that I approached my judging. I was looking for good writing and engaging stories, but I was also looking for something interesting, something new, something I hadn't read before, something to pique and then satisfy my curiosity. <br />
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<b>4. Did you have any specific interest in place?</b><br />
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Lois: I think we looked for stories where the place and characters and love all mesh well together.<br />
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5. What kind of love made you read on?<b></b></b><br />
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Lois: You know, it's hard to answer that because looking back at the stories we selected, they include all kinds of love. There's the traditional boy-meets-girl in The Queue, which is set in the line for the post office in a town in Zimbabwe. And there's the dark side of love in Not a Finger More which explores an abusive relationship. I would say though that I find the platonic but deep love in Sunrise over Sausalito the most compelling. It follows the relationship between this rich old guy and his orderly, as they check out from an old-people's home and road-trip across the US. It's funny and absurd and sad, and shows how love can appear in the strangest of places.<br />
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6. Is love better on the road?<br />
<b></b></b><br />
Lois: No, it's very uncomfortable. Sorry, bad joke. I guess that's a personal thing and it probably depends on whether you meet somebody for a holiday romance, and why you are travelling. In some ways, it's dangerous to travel with a partner. We often look silly out of context. We've adapted to where we live, and when we travel we can look helpless and ridiculous. You get sunburnt, or can't hail a taxi, or get sick and green. If you're going on holiday, it's usually short-lived. But for those who are forced to move from a home country to a new place, it can be a real strain on a relationship I think. If you can't find a job, or wrap your tongue around a language. You might have defined yourself as a useful person and partner, and suddenly you're flailing. <br />
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Thanks Sam and Lois for taking the time to reply! The best way to buy a copy of Love on the Road 2015 is through <a href="http://www.libertiespress.com/shop/love-on-the-road-2015">Liberties Press Ireland</a> so get those fingers typing!<br />
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-85506589683776738372015-01-03T01:16:00.000-08:002015-01-03T01:16:15.197-08:00A Short Story Writer's List of Heady New Year's Resolutions1. Enter short story competitions - going by the premise that if you don't enter 'em, you can't win 'em, consult <a href="http://paulmcveigh.blogspot.com/">Paul McVeigh's fantastic blog</a> or Tania Hershman's brilliant <a href="http://shortstops.info/blog/">Shortstops</a>, and keep abreast of latest deadlines<br />
2. DON'T enter short story competitions with a story that deep down inside you know is not suited to the review, the judge or the theme. It's a waste of money, no?<br />
3. DON'T ever expect to win a short story competition. Not many people do. And DON'T be disappointed when you don't.<br />
4. Submit to reviews everywhere. Just put on your secretary hat and do it. Remember that piece that was rejected eight times and is now coming out in an anthology?<br />
5. DON'T tailor your story to a word count.<br />
6. DON'T begin a story until it is ready to spew out of you, and until you can in some way convince yourself that it is worth the trouble of being written down. Don't talk about your story until you are through with it. Feel it, live it, breathe it, protect it. Don't drink or go out or abandon your idea until you have served its creation.<br />
7. If you don't feel your ideas are strong enough, get off your writers' bum and back out into the world. Talk to people, or better, listen to their stories, their voices. Watch their eyes and hands.<br />
8. Read more. Read all those damned books you ordered. Read classics. Read philosophy. Feel stupid, feel enlightened.<br />
9. If you meet a short story writer, order their book. Blog about it. Support your kind.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0qGV0EMHpSoV7T8mQd6h4x8W44rzzG9GR0X7rSeGo-15JX2uaT8kjPmMlFC3EDqX7JB_pnrn2i2VHjoOUqOI7lUfnvzLRvC6I7qnFEwmV8U93NF8vNde_jbsjzmBVtmRm5-TtsOoJtBhH/s1600/john+mcenroe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0qGV0EMHpSoV7T8mQd6h4x8W44rzzG9GR0X7rSeGo-15JX2uaT8kjPmMlFC3EDqX7JB_pnrn2i2VHjoOUqOI7lUfnvzLRvC6I7qnFEwmV8U93NF8vNde_jbsjzmBVtmRm5-TtsOoJtBhH/s320/john+mcenroe.jpg" /></a></div>10. Go to as many author events as possible. Remain starry-eyed when the big authors talk. They are your rock stars.<br />
11. Remember you are little. But remember, Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks within, awakens (Carl Jung)<br />
12. Understand what your true goal is, in all of this. Work towards it daily.<br />
13. Remember you are a craftsman. Your tool is the DEL cursor. Kill off your darlings.<br />
14. In your bleakest moments, speak to a writer mate. Their week has probably been just as crummy as yours.<br />
15. Every so often, congratulate yourself on coming this far. Then hide the vodka bottle.<br />
16. Jog or swim every two days.<br />
17. Keep your best and purest energy for your work. Be selfish.<br />
18. Trust the meanderings of your brain. Take measured leaps.<br />
19. Appreciate the wonder of those around you.<br />
20. Never give advice or follow a scrap of it.<br />
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Good luck to all short story writers in 2015 and may you dig deep into life's bucket of ideas.chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-55684014035675273952014-12-16T05:53:00.000-08:002014-12-16T08:49:24.786-08:00A Year of Short Story Wonders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This year has been wondrous. In a short story way. I’m not normally one for summaries and list-making madness at the end of the year, I’m someone who rather looks ahead, sees inadequacy and shortcomings everywhere, likes to get it all behind and start afresh. But something someone said to me a few days ago made me stop. I realise I’ve surrendered myself to the short story this year. I’ve been beating them out like a shoemaker stitching up leather. I’m grateful for a clutch of shortlistings and one tiny win. I’ve done workshops and readings, been to enriching festivals and, best of all, have met more short story writers than you can poke a stick at. There is a little drummer which is my beating heart that says, <i>Short stories Cat, keep at it!</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It all begins with Cathy Galvin’s Word Factory. This year I’ve tried to go to as many Word Factory events in London as I could. I love their mix of intimacy and awesomeness. Hearing towering authors speak and read their stuff, and then sharing latest rejection or publication news with writer mates. We are instructed, inspired and coddled at the same time. Obviously it makes writing less of a solitary experience and one goes home with renewed drive, but it is even more refreshing to see big authors who have two arms and two legs and are dressed like us; and to wonder about the spark or <i>frisson</i> that really propels their work. Some were nervous, some splashy; many shared largely and with great humour. It is such a gift to listen, to have unvoiced questions answered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then there was Vienna. I think that steamy Austrian week is still glowing in many a writer’s mind. The 13<sup>th</sup> International Conference for the Short Story was a massive event with ongoing and truly international ripples. Many of the writers who took part have turned into great friends and we’ll see how many of us (fingers crossed) are able to attend the next instalment in Shanghai. Tireless Sylvia Petter was a wonderful organiser and brilliant host, and the warm Vienna evenings so dreamy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And there have been workshops. I confess I signed up for more than one because I wanted to see how the instructing author – usually one who intrigues – might toss out writing scraps to hungry participants. I wanted to see if they would reveal points about their process of writing. Or perhaps I just wanted to see the magic up close. I was mostly satisfied. Cate Kennedy and Simon van Booy provided many, many glimmers, and though I felt like a short story groupie with a stupid grin, I did take precious morsels home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The London Short Story Festival was a highlight, one I won’t be missing next year. Director Paul McVeigh has an infectious passion for the form and brought the <i>crème de la crème</i> to the floor. Listening to Claire Keegan read I felt lifted into her world of sharp smells and observations, cutting notions of the human; her salty charmed voice. Her book <b>Walk the Blue Fields</b> rode into me.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Daphne du Maurier</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">And there has been reading. Not all short stories of course. Sometimes it is good to plunge into a novel when one is being summoned by the jolting demands of writing a story. I loved Shirley Hazzard’s </span><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">The Bay of Noon</b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"> for language and insight, Elizabeth Harrower’s </span><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">The Watch Tower</b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"> for mood and description and her writhing characters; Daphne du Maurier’s collection </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"><b>Don’t Look Now</b></span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"> which still rings in my mind; Murakami’s New Yorker story </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-haruki-murakami-2014-10-13" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">'Scheherazerade'</a><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"> and his mesmerising tome </span><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">1Q84</b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">, read under my orange umbrella on a Corsican beach; Richard Ford’s collection </span><b style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;">Women with Men</b><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"> bought in a secondhand bookshop in Paris this autumn.. so many and never enough.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And now to the silly season. May you receive many, many beloved books and have the time to savour them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-2883614348575018272014-12-01T10:42:00.000-08:002014-12-01T10:42:36.342-08:00Ben Okri: A Timeless Magic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What were you reading twenty years ago? Do you have it somewhere? In your attic, a row of yellowing paperbacks sharing a shelf? The first page inscribed with your old married name, so much tidier than the scrawl you've developed now? Do you still have the precious books you never lent to anyone, the ones you kept for keeps?<br />
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I went up to the attic a couple of weeks ago. It is a cob-webbed, soundless place. I brought down two Ben Okri books I found, <b>A Way of Being Free</b> and <b>Incidents at the Shrine</b>. I couldn't find <b>The Famished Road</b> and <b>Dangerous Love</b> which I know I used to have. Were they lost along the way? After several big continental moves I'm surprised when I find any of my old books.<br />
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Twenty years later I quickly found that I was not the same reader as that young woman living in Belgium. I have published books now - nothing as lyrical and accomplished as Mr. Okri's works; and although by that time I had studied African independence movements and thought I knew a little, I was clueless. I also had no idea I would soon leave for West Africa where I lived a full, life-changing ten years. That young woman was still a scrap of a thing, with only superficial stints in Paris and Mogadishu under her belt.<br />
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Rereading these two works I felt a curious melding between my original impressions of both books, and changes in myself as a reader. With the short stories, I found that the shifting, charged realities, the sharp tones of danger and dissent, and characters whose humanity was recognisable and stark, all found quick entry points and made resounding music - the dance between reader and author in a way more complete. Okri's essays, too, spoke to a more mature reader, and an older, more knowing writer now familiar with hard work, tiny successes, defeat.<br />
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From Okri's essay 'Newton's Child' (<b>A Way of Being Free</b>), essential for any writer:<br />
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<i>The best kinds of books.. have a delightful mystery about them. They inexplicably create powerful feelings, images, moods, worlds, and parallel narratives the farther away in time you are from the reading. They grow in time. They keep re-creating themselves in your consciousness, they keep growing, keep becoming other books, till they become part of your experience, like something lived, or dreamed, or suffered.<br />
Further encounters with such books make them more. There is no final point of understanding with books that live.<br />
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The highest kind of writing - which must not be confused with the most ambitious kind - belongs to the realm of grace. Talent is part of it, certainly; a thorough understanding of the secret laws, absolutely. But finding the subject and theme which is in perfect harmony with your deepest nature, your forgotten selves, your hidden dreams, and the full unresonated essence of your life - now that cannot be reached through searching, nor can it be stumbled upon through ambition. That sort of serendipity comes upon you on a lucky day. It may emerge even out of misfortune or defeat. You may happen upon it without realising that this is the work through which your whole life will sing. We should always be ready.<br />
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Inspiration is harmony. The mind loves patterns.<br />
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<i>Better a complex mind behind a seemingly simple thought, than a simple mind behind a seemingly complex thought. The mind should always surround what it expresses. Accidental perceptions can sometimes be profound, but it is always best to make accidental perceptions into a leavening agent, to extend its radiance and influence through the texture of the work. There are few things worse than being exposed by the unabsorbed felicities of chance.</i><br />
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November's Word Factory evening included a reading by Ben Okri. Imagine my fascination when the great man read a short story, a parable almost, to the entranced audience. Inspiration personified. An unsteadying evening. Many of us bought copies of Okri's latest novel <b>The Age of Magic</b>, which I have begun reading at a snail's pace: I don't want to finish it!<br />
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Ben Okri's love of his craft is passionate and graceful, his words feel timeless and touching. Here are two more treats from the essay 'The Joys of Storytelling I' (<b>A Way of Being Free</b>):<br />
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<i>We all live out lives on this side of the mirror. But when joy touches us, and when bliss flashes inside us briefly, we have a stronger intuition. The best life, and the life we would really want to live, is on the other side of the mirror - the side that faces out to the great light and which hints at unsuspected paradise.<br />
The greatest stories speak to us with our voice, but they speak to us from the other side.</i><br />
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And this one surely has my name on it:<br />
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<i>Storytellers ought not to be too tame. They ought to be wild creatures who function adequately in society. They are best in disguise. If they lose all their wildness, they cannot give us the truest joys.</i>chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-78548299169480266002014-11-11T08:41:00.001-08:002014-11-11T08:47:16.468-08:00This Short Story Writer Goes to MarketThis year has been a year of much short story movement, interspersed (I promise!) with long stretches in ugg boots at my desk. But sometimes a girl has to catch a ride, catch a plane, catch a ride, and get off the continent back to her spoken language. <br />
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Last month I ventured out again and it is always a treat that fires me up when I come home. In fact I am chained to my screen even more avidly each time I come back. Each story has to be better, stronger, more accessible and startling and vigorous than the last, with no showing off (all my darlings headless and buried) and ideas gently wafted under the reader’s nose… <i>dream on Cat</i>…<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCK6pH5CyUY2p1qEme8FNLL5B-_cyAYx4ZpMfA4HHX9FQISl1ntGxTZQkul0xPfoyhQW6mf1d5G2Idi2qigahBcT3VmHvlqA1S8pJSNjGan0uov_xNeMhlOyFJ5wNCqEiMbNm_W6jBVVs/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCK6pH5CyUY2p1qEme8FNLL5B-_cyAYx4ZpMfA4HHX9FQISl1ntGxTZQkul0xPfoyhQW6mf1d5G2Idi2qigahBcT3VmHvlqA1S8pJSNjGan0uov_xNeMhlOyFJ5wNCqEiMbNm_W6jBVVs/s320/photo.JPG" /></a></div>So I went to Plymouth for the International Book Festival, where this year’s stunning <a href="www.shortfictionjournal.co.uk/">Short Fiction 8</a> was launched. My story ‘Adieu, Mon Doux Rivage’ was a shortlisted finalist and I read out the section I will include below, sharing the stage with contributor Mariko Nagai and super editor Tom Vowler. SF8 doesn’t usually publish authors two years running and my Pelt story ‘Montgomery Akuofo, Father of Twins’ appeared last year, so I was highly honoured to be somehow breaking the rules. Grand thank you to editors Tom, Anthony Caleshu and Jamie Edgecombe. And how lovely to meet up with Vienna (the <a href="www.shortstoryconference.org/">13th International Conference for the Short Story in English</a>) veteran Lucy Durneen!<br />
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If you are a lover of contemporary short story variety and vibrancy, do order a copy and enjoy the work of top-ranking writers including Deborah Eisenberg, Alison Moore, Alex Preston and Adnan Mahmutovic. Short Story Superhero <a href="http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/shorts/">Scott Pack</a> is reviewing the collection this week, with one tantalising story a day.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiOQwGfq4LHzCtIXViGJtMtT5JxxaFC-wGIJplHXqgs633fQAPoAsvsLn_-SaDiW11IvnciBJvePZ8xDDmHyRQ6TQtNKHkdFZMDe1l-qQGhsMRTuZbEKRd7TPSTfYxued6ZLSLJGgHz3Fn/s1600/image.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiOQwGfq4LHzCtIXViGJtMtT5JxxaFC-wGIJplHXqgs633fQAPoAsvsLn_-SaDiW11IvnciBJvePZ8xDDmHyRQ6TQtNKHkdFZMDe1l-qQGhsMRTuZbEKRd7TPSTfYxued6ZLSLJGgHz3Fn/s320/image.jpeg" /></a></div>And then I found myself at a poetry festival! <a href="http://tearsinthefence.com/">Tears in the Fence</a> – edited by the brilliant poet David Caddy – celebrated thirty years of independent publishing last month and being a two-time contributor (short stories x2!) I thought I might pop along and try the waters. Held in beautiful Dorset, writer mate <a href="www.alisonlock.com/">Alison Lock</a> and I read to a warm group on a chilly night, much aided by Badger Ale (and later, hot chocolate and an Abba documentary!). Apart from listening to some astounding work, the evening taught me a lot about eloquence and performance. The poets brought a colourful charge onto the stage and had to express and be their work. By comparison we short story readers had to step aside, read rather more blandly, and let the words expand the story, drawing the listeners into our world. An interesting and very marked difference!<br />
(ps: thanks to Lesley Burt for that photo)<br />
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Meanwhile back in Londontown there was a <a href="www.thewordfactory.tv/">Word Factory</a> event. Readers will know how much I love this literary salon, organised by Cathy Galvin and Vice Director Paul McVeigh, with a team of wonderful helpers. This session began with original thinker and Sunday Times shortlistee Adam Marek, followed by Tessa Hadley whose beautiful works appears in The New Yorker, and David Constantine, remarkable winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. <br />
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This country mouse can’t think of a better place to be than central London with a glass of red and three excellent short story writers talking shop - and great Chinese afterwards!<br />
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from Short Fiction 8<br />
Adieu, Mon Doux Rivage<br />
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There are four of us on the boat. Jean-Luc and myself, and Belgian music manager Raoul Vidal and his Japanese soprano wife Mieko Inoue. Raoul, big as a cupboard, stands on the deck with arms folded, squinting back at the coast. After a few days he’s discarded his shirt. When Mieko comes on deck he bends over her like a poised wave and whatever they say is soundless. Jean-Luc has read up that she sang at Covent Garden twice, but he is pretty sure her career has flatlined. Jean-Luc has a nose for these things. He was the drummer from my old band in Marseilles. <br />
They’ve booked for a week long cruise, emailed me strict diet instructions (no gluten, no sugar or cheese, preferably grilled seafood). Looking at Raoul, I’d say he was brought up on moules frites and tankards of beer. I once toured in Belgium with an all-female group and this is the truth: they fry pigs’ blood sausages in butter. This is something that should be explained. <br />
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Raoul has picked me up a few times when I am having a quick puff at the stern. They are just small criticisms or needs. <i>Do you have sanitary napkins? Could you chop the cabbage in the salad a little finer for Mieko’s digestion?</i> All over his body his skin has surrendered to the sharp summer sun and it explodes in blisters wishing to be pricked. His nose is peeling and he doesn’t care, which in turn means that Mieko doesn’t either. He asks, <i>Do you have any copies of</i> The New Yorker<i>?</i> I shake my head. I imagine he is used to long lunches.<br />
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Their suite at the bow of the boat must be pleasing to Mieko. She stays there a lot. On my way to the laundry cupboard I think I hear a sound – a voice ascending – but this ceases on its path. The boat moves on with a steady rolling. When I back into her with clean linen in the galley I hear a word that is released at great cost: Sorry. She looks at me at with my pile of clean towels and fresh sheets. It seems as though she wants to take this word back. I should ask if there is anything she needs or remind her to ask me for sea-sickness tablets if she feels unwell. She is carrying a big hat and a Japanese novel. Most probably because my ragged blue-painted nails are on show and Jean-Luc says I have feet like a platypus, I have made it my mission to see the opera singer’s toes. Mieko wears a pair of closed black espadrilles and her feet are pressed into their jute spirals.<br />
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Jean-Luc has given Raoul a Michel Houellebecq novel in French, the one where they massacre the tourists. Raoul sits on a bench and reads it through like a man on a train, his back in burning shreds. Mieko drapes herself on a deckchair fully clothed. For a long time she does not read. They sit far from each other on the deck. Before it’s time to prepare lunch I sit with Jean-Luc at the stern. We’ve just come through a rough patch. Jean-Luc misses the band life. He came to sailing late and has doubts on the water. He doesn’t like me second-calling him and stresses out when we anchor or come into port. Jean-Luc puts his hand on my thigh. As his fingers dig in I watch the fuzzy-edged scorpion inked into his skin. His nails are broken and black. The wind is high, higher than he’d like, and he has cleated both sails tightly as we cut as close as possible to the coast. We can see the point of Nonza now, the town stranded high above the pebbled black beach as though washed up in a storm. Once we are in the enclave I will set up lunch, the sole meunière Mieko just tolerates, with an avocado salad that perhaps she will not. Though initially she said she would eat prawns, her face dropped yesterday when I grilled a dozen scampi. Raoul removed the platter. <i>There has been a misunderstanding,</i> he said, after tilting the plate in the wash. <i>Mieko does not eat prawns</i>.<br />
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-5476014449328813212014-10-11T07:33:00.002-07:002014-10-19T03:02:08.100-07:00Two Australian Guys<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<div style="line-height: 150%;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">At this year's International Conference of the Short Story in English, held in Vienna last July, I met two Australian authors. I don't meet Australians very often, let alone writers, so it was interesting to hear their take on the business of getting short stories together, and sending them out into the world. I read both Andy Kissane's and Cameron Rayne's collections while on the famous Corsican camping trip, and it was a treat to be transported back to Australian tones, smells and energy.</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> </span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNgAXNFXngon0_tyfZKqlumvy4zLHegwY6Iovu27pfhzgibUU2Rxjwhs2iA2QdeVRgvyN_4P4KxnWMlM57gPjtZbvo3x8OEQbfi9XElp5ShYptv_5Xmj4-oqR9qHDIKS9SqwKmH24D-5J/s1600/Kissane-The-Swarm-web-size-copy-219x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNgAXNFXngon0_tyfZKqlumvy4zLHegwY6Iovu27pfhzgibUU2Rxjwhs2iA2QdeVRgvyN_4P4KxnWMlM57gPjtZbvo3x8OEQbfi9XElp5ShYptv_5Xmj4-oqR9qHDIKS9SqwKmH24D-5J/s1600/Kissane-The-Swarm-web-size-copy-219x300.jpg" /></a></div>Based mostly in Sydney, Andy Kissane's book <a href="http://andykissane.com/?page_id=213">'The Swarm'</a> is a skilful unravelling of the stinging discomforts of love, its jostling and snagging moments; the extreme hunger of creative or physical desire that can thrust a man or woman beyond the perimeter of family. A cellist is driven by heartbreak to sell his beloved instrument; a slack husband falls for a food-obsessed office colleague; Marc Chagall introduces chickens into a Sydney flat and floats over the urban sky; a university lecturer falls hard for a sexy student while agonising over rape and violence in his own creative work. Kissane's quiet characters struggle with a swarm of elements: heartbreak, loyalty, reproduction, social conscience; as well as the lost pulse of coupledom, the loss of health, of youth. <i> </i></span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><i>Looking at the three of them, I felt this rush of emotion that I couldn't begin to name, except with words like shame and remorse and each word seemed weak when compared with the depth of my feeling. There was a longing to be with them, to feel the way I'd felt when I'd snapped the photo</i>. ('Two Many Cream Buns')</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Kissane's Sydney is scented, suburban, vivid, dishevelled.<i> It was a magnificent tree and Xavier was glad it was still standing, rising above the sandstone retaining wall for thirty or forty feet, so the canopy of the tree was level with the top floor of the house.</i> ('The Fibbing Bird') His language is intimate, we are between friends here. <i>How to record a relationship? People often reminisce about how they met: at an auction of second-hand furniture; in the kitchen at a drunken party.. We look for these landmarks to explain how it all started, where we took off from, how we clicked.</i> ('In My Arms') </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I also liked the non-nonsense immediacy of Kissane's openings: <i>Paul took her order and brought the Portuguese tart and skim latte back to her table.</i> ('Old Friends') And his fast-paced first paragraphs as he heads full-on into the many discomforts of love and family. Even his endings are a treat, sometimes imploded with humour and ironies: <i>If she had screamed at me like she normally did, I might have known how to respond, what to say, but the crushed look on her face, the tiny squeak of her voice was the most shocking sound I have ever heard. </i>('Too Many Cream Buns')<i><br />
</i></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And for a gal who's homesick for her home town (Sydney), sentences like these had a wonderful resonance: </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Occasionally, we'd stop and rest on a sandstone outcrop under the shade of a gum tree, surrounded by bush. Listening to the birdcalls, you would scarcely credit that you were in the middle of a city of four million people, with its working harbour, its slums and its widening gap between the rich and the poor. </span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">('In My Arms')</span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br />
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</div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnQV6h-keTllSMnfsI58tsTK0RFQobsSYY6qpR8zPT8L0hajbKSmjGZVtxn4vCK8JRY0wbmJvac_CViOJR3xEwwJwRJB5EvkXdEQUIzTmrz-YMz0AlGndqCwAwZnMjEJ6z0Qm37UBkB62/s1600/raynes_cameron_kerosene.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnQV6h-keTllSMnfsI58tsTK0RFQobsSYY6qpR8zPT8L0hajbKSmjGZVtxn4vCK8JRY0wbmJvac_CViOJR3xEwwJwRJB5EvkXdEQUIzTmrz-YMz0AlGndqCwAwZnMjEJ6z0Qm37UBkB62/s1600/raynes_cameron_kerosene.jpg" /></a></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In a different key, Cameron Raynes' collection <a href="http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=972">'The Colour of Kerosene'</a> is set along the continent's southern and southwestern coast and also ventures into the interior. His fearless, cutting language </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">vitalises characters as they struggle </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">as much against each other and their stark history, as against the merciless environment. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">His arms were brown, scarred, his forearms as thick as pythons. Not the defined, neat muscles of the gym, they were arms you got from working outside, straining fences, hoisting bales of hay, holding an animal still while someone else worked on its horns, teeth, or balls. </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">('The Colour of Kerosene')</span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br />
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</div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Raynes' jarring opening story, 'The Colour of Kerosene', winner of the Josephine Ulrick prize, speaks of Luke, a taxi driver who accepts a fare deep into mallee scrub and almost fails to return. He brings Jess back with him to town, abused, maltreated step-sister of the despicable Pete, with Luke's losing streak of blackjack losses scrawled on her thigh. It's a searing, chilling escape. </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Raynes' vigorous stories cover broad ground, dealing with suicide, fertility, violence, social degradation, developers, money, illness; </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">as well as prisons, probation and Aboriginal child offenders</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">. Families might be broken or disturbed: </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">three generations of long-term-unemployed living under the same roof, a pitbull chained to a star picket banged into the middle of a leafless backyard that would turn into a quagmire in winter.</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> ('Lives Less Valuable') And violence often lurks at the heart of each story: </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">a man can get pulled out of a car in a country town and beaten 'up like shit' for killing a dog on the road; another man hauls off a dog that has mauled his daughter on the beach</span>, and drowns it in the sea. <span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><i>I've never been inside Colac before. Polished jarrah boards - but everything else speaks of ambulances at four am - plastic chairs, bamboo ashtrays, tables bolted to the floorboards. Nothing that could maim if thrown. </i>('Lives Less Valuable') </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">There is a marked contrast between the haves and the have-nots, whether in terms of personal or physical riches: <i>A pudgy little bloke in a green and white checked shirt got up from the next table as the passengers clambered out, all stretches and groans. He stood there, waiting, and then a girl came out of the bus, about twenty, no hips, skinny as a rat. She went straight for him, hugged him, and belted out a smile that could save your life. And here's me, wishing I was him. </i>('You Matter to God')<i><br />
</i></span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Or in 'The Eight-Hundred Dollar Cat', where an exasperated painted pisses on his buyer's overpriced feline.</span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><i>I wondered how it would feel to own such a house. Would it make you stand taller, straighter; would it allow you to look more people in the eye?</i> </span></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br />
</span> <span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Raynes' characters are often wounded by life and overturned by relationships that have run aground. His powers of observation almost hurt.</span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> A tiny muscle in the corner of her mouth ticked away and Dan could see she wasn't happy with where her four years of uni had landed her. </span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">('Lives Less Valuable') </span><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br />
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Both 'The Swarm' and 'The Colour of Kerosene' have been published by smaller Australian publishers (Puncher & Wattmann Fiction, Wakefield Press) and bring gritty, sensual worlds to life. If you are a homesick writer like me, interested in returning to a faraway world, both books introduce striking and enduring characters and themes. Or if Australia is a clichéed concept whose deep, dirty truths you think you might like to savour, both books are contemporary and potent.<br />
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chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-65340835246871123192014-09-25T05:23:00.000-07:002014-09-25T05:23:53.377-07:00A Secret Life: Finding Vivian MaierMany questions fleet across the mind of the person who chooses to follow some sort of creative vein in his or her life. And this happens every other stinking day. No?<br />
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<i>Why the f*** am I doing this?</i><br />
<i>Is this original?</i><br />
<i>Is this worth the time of day?</i><br />
<i>Shouldn't I get a real job?</i><br />
<i>Do I believe in myself?</i><br />
<i>Am I good enough?</i><br />
<i>How the hell do I finish this?</i><br />
<i>Why the f*** am I STILL doing this?</i><br />
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I'd say this is a healthy way of going ahead. Self-doubt is a better editor and BFF than over-confidence. Ideas must be questioned and shaken down. Belief ought to be able to sail through cascades of depression. And our arch enemy and twin sister REJECTION must be embraced, strangled and sent packing.<br />
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But not for all of us, this quest for publication, sales, reviews, acknowledgement. Some of us are secretive. Alarmingly so.<br />
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The other Sunday morning I turned up to a Saint Germain cinema with three other people and saw a documentary called<a href="http://www.findingvivianmaier.com/"> 'Finding Vivian Maier'</a>. You might want to jot this down. Or follow the link, godammit, so much less romantic..<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0S-2Ci80x_peyKy5VWuPk76O1UlimlMGOOn_huDxjxddWazxdmkGhpp0Zkei4SN89lsMgDIg-affjPtE2Y3LJN1hQRlqTqUCSF1G2oXHz7wEMOrl2YIiO2eYEhXxxP6wQHOvok6WUjub/s1600/vivianmaier.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0S-2Ci80x_peyKy5VWuPk76O1UlimlMGOOn_huDxjxddWazxdmkGhpp0Zkei4SN89lsMgDIg-affjPtE2Y3LJN1hQRlqTqUCSF1G2oXHz7wEMOrl2YIiO2eYEhXxxP6wQHOvok6WUjub/s1600/vivianmaier.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
A young American guy called John Maloof, who grew up following his Dad around flea markets, bought up a stash of negatives and discovered a monstrous and brilliant body of work of an unknown American photographer called Vivian Maier. Her work, mostly street shots taken in Chicago, spanned from the uptight fifties to the cool seventies and opulent eighties, until she tapered off and died in poverty beside one of the great lakes. The documentary was about this young man's piecing together of Maier's secretive, sour and slightly manic life. It was about him trying to find the pulse of her decades of humble babysitting, and how this rubbed against her obsessively raw and telling images, all of which were hidden away within the stashes of newspapers and hats and brooches and boxes and negatives and rolls of undeveloped film she left behind in storage facilities to be auctioned anonymously.<br />
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The woman was a grand artist. Browse through her photographs and you will have humanity slap you in the face. Read a little about her life and you will feel queasy questions forming. Why did she live behind herself, as it were, her passion almost a hidden crime? Why did she never relate to the social world she documented so ably, except through the lives of the children she minded, occasionally roughly, and definitely in an unusual way. <br />
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Was she an abused woman whose oxygen came through this outlet? Did she ever try to obtain recognition and, if not, why not? Did she believe in herself (I think the answer is yes - her confidence is almost chilling).<br />
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It is an intriguing story, well told, compelling, saddening. No twists. Alarming work. It makes one wonder: what is the real driving force behind the artist? A perfection of the work and its aims? Can this be enough? Should this be enough? What did this woman feel about this life-force running through her? Did she not require the company of like minds? Or was her work made so much stronger for being shielded? An evolution without distraction, stories adrift and all the more powerful?<br />
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I confess I have always found photography to be so close to short story writing. Another language - yes - but the same boisterous, finger-shaking family at the table. Just think: the importance of framing, the capturing - even stealing - of a moment, the fact that there are a range of varying viewpoints and only <i>one</i> will give the dazzling result of a work that is infused, charged and possibly timeless.<br />
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Thank you John Maloof for finding Vivian Maier.chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-47599153038277692462014-08-01T09:51:00.000-07:002014-08-03T02:18:53.988-07:00Vienna, an Island of StoryA couple of weeks ago I caught the midnight train to Vienna. As usual (this is Italy) my booked seat had been hijacked and I had to fight for another. As usual, I hadn't downloaded a map or bought a guidebook and didn't have a clue where I was going. My guardian angel took the form of a young Albanian football player who had drifted to Austria from Italy, so I was escorted into central Vienna where I - as tired short story writers do - fell asleep in a park.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxLzepGhf3hZaQmvp7L3Fwok659qf3FuqrOE3XomOaLqNg13ZkQvPA-usTu-lmTYtWNjLrpxR2VSzGdO8uPrHWMobt9ou_Wm2UxsTEMzwxaesTH3P9atEYf5UJDI5It6LD9V6pxuT_4W4g/s1600/Vienna+Conference+2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxLzepGhf3hZaQmvp7L3Fwok659qf3FuqrOE3XomOaLqNg13ZkQvPA-usTu-lmTYtWNjLrpxR2VSzGdO8uPrHWMobt9ou_Wm2UxsTEMzwxaesTH3P9atEYf5UJDI5It6LD9V6pxuT_4W4g/s200/Vienna+Conference+2014.jpg" /></a></div>This conference had been long time coming. Held every two years, the 13th International Conference of the Short Story in English is a celebration of the form, involving writers and academics who are shameless lovers of the short story. This year's event took place in Vienna, directed by Dr. Maurice A. Lee and his second-in-charge Sylvia Petter, with a dense and enlightening programme of lectures and readings, much coffee talk and discussion, after-hour readings and soirées, and a wonderful closure dinner ending a fantastic week. The Conference also produced an anthology entitled <b>Unbraiding the Short Story</b> and held a competition on this theme.<br />
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Hands up who wants to attend the next Conference in Shanghai?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYaaxK-elDvfyzBoOFsablaGjQVj9r4dsR7YGPdZLShGrPML1JAwcWd9Is6p6Q7lp_j0Evwq_WTG3mW_uscwqNioC1PjglBNEMKxoCsa9b9vSLdLwKbV-9U3VG2IoBJsk0w8TUQGfdU7L/s1600/viennasummer14+015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYaaxK-elDvfyzBoOFsablaGjQVj9r4dsR7YGPdZLShGrPML1JAwcWd9Is6p6Q7lp_j0Evwq_WTG3mW_uscwqNioC1PjglBNEMKxoCsa9b9vSLdLwKbV-9U3VG2IoBJsk0w8TUQGfdU7L/s200/viennasummer14+015.jpg" /></a></div>Though I was torn between attending academic events and readings by fellow writers, I ended up taking part in an endless mix of sessions. Big-time writers such as Cate Kennedy and Robert Olen Butler were in attendence, so imagine my <i>frisson</i> when I joined Cate's workshop on dialogue (tongue-tied Catherine didn't produce a thing) and soaked it all up like litmus paper. Thanks Cate! Without sounding like a groupie I did go to Cate's reading as well, where she read one of my favourite pieces 'What Thou and I Did, Till We Loved' and had a bunch of us in tears.<br />
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Many thanks to Sylvia Petter and her team, who kept a very large and varied show on the road. I managed to see quite of few talks including those by fellow Australians Cameron Raynes on 'Pitch-Perfect Endings and the Oldest Story of All' and Andy Kissane speaking about 'Dreaming Australia: David Malouf's <i>Dream Stuff</i>'. And a range of readings by Adnan Mahmutovic, Alison Lock, Zoe Gilbert, Vanessa Gebbie, Jean Almeida. Milling around before and after - and in the <i>biergarten</i> beyond - I met up with literary mates Paul McVeigh, Alison Lock, Tania Hershman, Vanessa Gebbie, Nuala Ni Chonchuir and Alison MacLeod, and new short story friends Jose Varghese, Lucy Durneen, Anna Solding, Rebekah Clarkson, Bronwyn Mehan, Jarred McGinnis, Rhoda Greaves. The list could well go on. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN6Uql2XsuC3L_iwz92c7KRP0rnv8p2ov-ug9BMW0R56YFnts0utARbmAHlY71abHMbpvp7AbZzOPhIbBrfMskfCnRzgEct8jBSfkBVf8KcyMgN2Xc3q4MFxnpy6TijfaMirICvDkr1ymy/s1600/viennasummer14+001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN6Uql2XsuC3L_iwz92c7KRP0rnv8p2ov-ug9BMW0R56YFnts0utARbmAHlY71abHMbpvp7AbZzOPhIbBrfMskfCnRzgEct8jBSfkBVf8KcyMgN2Xc3q4MFxnpy6TijfaMirICvDkr1ymy/s200/viennasummer14+001.jpg" /></a></div>For anyone outside the short story world conversation topics may have seemed a little repetitive (<i>Have you read this? Who published that? How are sales going? I loved the second story in that collection!</i>) however we did branch out to discuss other issues such as writerly tattoos, what time that mojito bar opens, and who's going to the open-air Frank Sinatra film later on?<br />
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But that might require another blog post. <br />
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chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-26439035696314629362014-07-02T06:36:00.002-07:002014-07-02T06:36:26.110-07:00For the Love of Short StoriesSome people love short stories. They just do. It's like loving apricots, or rainy days, or a good Traminer. It is an indisputable love, a love that is self-serving and self-perpetuating.<br />
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A bunch of these people gathered at Waterstones Piccadilly on 20th-22nd June for the inaugural <a href="http://www.lssf.co.uk/"><b>London Short Story Festival</b></a> - to listen, read, workshop, chatter, celebrate, share. It wasn't a fancy gathering. I'd say it was earnest and discreet. There were some big short story rock stars, as well as smaller people with just a story or two published. I think there was a good warm feeling in the air.<br />
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Organised by tireless short story champion Paul McVeigh and London's Spread the Word, there were talks about the weird and wonderful in the short story, about idea generation and the current boom in opportunities for short story publication, about compiling a collection, about voice, about approaching agents and publishers and writing for radio, about the current crop of brilliant Irish short story writers. These were delightfully chaired by - among others - Tania Hershman, Vanessa Gebbie, Paul McVeigh, Anita Sethi and Alex Preston. There was a series of workshops with authors Claire Keegan, M.J. Hyland, Claire Wigfall, Frank O'Connor shortlister Colin Barrett and Jacob Ross, plus free writing workshops with expert teachers and a Speakers' Corner where stories were read to aficionados - by intriguing writers such as Ruby Cowling, winner of this year's White Review Short Story Prize. There were also special interviews with inspiring short story stars Claire Keegan, Jackie Kay and Colin Barrett. <br />
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I didn't manage to book tickets to all events but I did go to a good smattering (these were entirely affordable). Tania spoke to 'weird' authors Dan Powell, Adam Marek and Robert Shearman, who all read mesmerising pieces of their work. Vanessa spoke with a panel of 'gatekeepers' in the short story world, including Jacques Testard of <a href="http://www.thewhitereview.org/"><b>The White Review</b></a>, cool literary agent Carrie Kania and Jen Hamilton Emery of <a href="http://www.saltpublishing.com/"><b>Salt Publishing</b></a>. I was lucky enough to hear Claire Keegan read from her New Yorker story 'Foster' - I can still hear the lovely tones of Claire's voice and am reading her collection <b>Walk the Blue Fields</b> at the moment. I also participated in a workshop with M.J. Hyland who handed out a series of tricky (and daunting) writing exercises - to 'shorten the apprenticeship' that all of us are working through. And finally, I heard Frank O'Connor shortlister A.L. Kennedy, Helen Simpson and M.J. Hyland read from their work in a session aptly entitled 'In Praise of the Short Story', chaired by Alex Preston (wearing an excellent shirt).<br />
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Though I escaped a couple of times to cocktail down at Southbank or brunch with a friend, it was an intense weekend, spent within one of the most alluring bookshops I know, surrounded by the very books we are all trying to compose. It was indeed an inspiring, comforting, sometimes daunting Festival and I will be coming back next year. <br />
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Congratulations Paul!<br />
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<i>There's something very lively about short stories - you can be taken through a whole lifetime in just a few minutes. </i>Festival Director Paul McVeighchillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-38447838685278931772014-06-03T03:40:00.000-07:002014-06-03T03:40:56.509-07:00Connecting Writers: The Writing Process Blog Tour<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What am I
working on ?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
am working on my second short story collection and hopefully nearing the end. I’ve
been working on it for over a year and have nearly twenty stories. One has won
a competition, another was a short-listed finalist and is coming out in an
anthology in July, another was long-listed and another has been accepted by a
literary review. I still seem to have lots of ideas and am generating new work,
but I am also at the phase where I am beginning to think of story order and how
I would like the book to feel. My first collection came out in September 2013
with Indigo Dreams Publishing UK.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCQSfqQtqhWO-ApJGw4P2xIorrKzvSAnDnfBfDv0cB4Nbz1UDsys0c1uHBCgg8y7wOQUppVMdaSF937GbuzFIX_ckjm4YWrJ5Y_-zTKHpUynGVXGGIOQFG-2hxIiTZcGTvB6WTE5W6JBG/s1600/various+007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilCQSfqQtqhWO-ApJGw4P2xIorrKzvSAnDnfBfDv0cB4Nbz1UDsys0c1uHBCgg8y7wOQUppVMdaSF937GbuzFIX_ckjm4YWrJ5Y_-zTKHpUynGVXGGIOQFG-2hxIiTZcGTvB6WTE5W6JBG/s1600/various+007.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How does my work
differ from others of its genre ?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps
my stories have a broad range of locations as I come from Australia and have
lived in West Africa and in several different places in Europe. I also like
incorporating some colonial history when it seems relevant, as this is one of
my great passions, and social issues like integration and migration. Crossing
over into new cultures has been a big part of my life and that of many of those
around me, so I have a deep interest in exploring this theme. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Why do I write
what I do ?</span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve
always been attracted to both the short story form and the way language can be
an important ingredient in its lingering effect. I love the power and verve of
the short story. I love its precision and turning points, its resolution or
open-endedness; the way it twitches on the page. With regard to subject matter,
the compression of the short story works well for me – I can slide from one
location to another, without the wearying depth of field that would be required
for a novel. Each story is so exciting to write – it becomes your universe for
the time you are creating it – and I also find that the fast and feisty rhythm
of producing short stories is suited to my temperament and crazy lifestyle! </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">How does my
writing process work ? </span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
am always listening for ideas. I love to feel a story beginning in my head and just live with it for a while or write a few notes (I think I have forgotten
loads of ideas that way!). For me it’s really important to hop on the merry-go-round
at the right point. First words are critical and the entry moment where you
begin to unveil your idea to the reader must be subtle and resounding at the
same time. I try to write in freefall, not searching too hard but letting voice
come through and pitch establish itself. I think the story has to feel
effortless and a little training must be involved – also dud stories must be
abandoned! The most exciting part is having an uncertain idea about what will
happen, and perhaps turning off on an unexpected tangent, then try to align the
bones of the story and get to its beating heart. I also love a strong ending and like
to try to steer towards this, although when it happens it is usually a moment
of surprise for me too. I agree with what I think George Saunders said about
the short story: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Get in and get out</i>. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thanks <a href="http://www.alisonlock.com/">Alison Lock</a> for this and I'll pass the baton to <a href="http://snowlikethought.blogspot.com/">Rachel Fenton</a> who will post next week.. </span></div>
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-8719227598209352302014-05-22T10:00:00.000-07:002014-05-22T10:00:27.990-07:00The Bay of Noon: a Love Letter to Naples*<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY75JkZ1jHpqd5zOnSVfTKIEDqODKawkZp81ko15EpzjZAeAUTuY_AZQSnPGKVXxPLSs_x7C7Bn9Uk6giWS40m_5fBcWFjVwfb3yv_RcnsRAI1NFG1auNhk4ILU6MCopdlhirwRkWllPVx/s1600/thebayofnoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY75JkZ1jHpqd5zOnSVfTKIEDqODKawkZp81ko15EpzjZAeAUTuY_AZQSnPGKVXxPLSs_x7C7Bn9Uk6giWS40m_5fBcWFjVwfb3yv_RcnsRAI1NFG1auNhk4ILU6MCopdlhirwRkWllPVx/s1600/thebayofnoon.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I recently went deep down south, down Italy's long and stupendous peninsula
away from the windy, unpredictable spring of the north. A break from family,
the screen, the current short story collection. As the trip involved a long
train travel from the north I left equipped with what I thought was an
appropriate novel for the journey. I’ve had Shirley Hazzard's <b>*The Bay of Noon</b>
on my bookshelf for a good while now, having enjoyed <b>The Transit of Venus</b>
(which I must reread) and <b>People in Glass Houses</b> (dealing with the raw truths
of diplomatic life - right up my old alley).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">But <b>The Bay of Noon</b> was almost too beautiful to savour while I was
rocking on a night train and trying to dodge an unwanted hand (yes dammit!), or my blistery-eyed shunting out of Rome and further south. Then the scenery
itself was absorbing with its great social drama, the volcano (!) and the hustle of history.
Today's Naples is a world away from the post-war city Hazzard experienced, but
so </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">many </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> images remain resolutely the same.
Let me find a few: </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On to the flanks
of those palaces, smaller buildings had been grafted in every age except our
own – in any unlikely opening, on any precarious ledge, apparently with the
sole provision that they bear no resemblance to one another. Forgotten or
overlaid, antiquity had been buried in the walls, making its laconic signal –
sunken column, Greek, dark, smooth as silk, with acanthus capital; a Roman
inscription, traces of a fortification, or crenellations that, centuries since,
had been surmounted by a rooftop. In one vast courtyard was planted a colossal
sculpture, Roman or Renaissance, of a horse’s head; another ended in galleries
of disintegrating frescoes..</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hazzard’s
narrator Jenny lands in post-war Naples traumatised by her past, particularly
her too-close rapport with her brother. Her emotions are ‘cauterized’. As
Hazzard did, Jenny works with NATO, installed in the ‘volcanic’
city liberated by the Americans. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The city itself
was marked by a volcanic extravagance. Its characteristics had not insinuated
themselves but had arrived in inundations – in eruptions of taste and period,
of churches and palaces, in a positive explosion of the baroque; in an outbreak
of grotesque capitals, or double geometrical staircases; in a torrent of hanging
gardens poured down over terraces and rooftops, spilt along ledges and
doorsteps.</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Jenny
befriends local Gioconda and her Roman lover Gianni and we are invited to savour scenes of Italy's Fellini-esque film world. She also goes out with Justin, a Scotsman working in Naples, who reveals Jenny's stiff character from another angle. Through her friendship with Gioconda
she is absorbed into the rich and tragic arc of local history, which by
comparison makes her own life feel pale.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Whereas
excavations of Gioconda’s past brought to light temples, palaces and tombs,
with ornate interiors worthy of grand gestures and heroic renunciations, my own
archaeology seemed by comparison like a mere scouring of some minor site – a hilltop
encampment of the Hittites, say, or some beehive village of the Picts –
yielding nothing more than a heap of domestic utensils and handful of weapons,
few intact and none beautiful..</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hazzard’s
language is mesmerising as she probes our absorption by place and the instincts that foster love. There are moments where love is hidden, where love collapses, where love bursts to unexpected and thwarted life. Through Jenny’s eyes she dissects Gioconda and Gianni’s
rapport which she sees falter and twist and revive. Jenny's own growth and
recovery accompany this close connection, as does the lush presence of
Naples, a city that Hazzard, too, also began to call home. Through every page the voice of Naples is loud and melodious: </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>Let me dream that you love me again</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>And let me die in my dream</i>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KWYLXCoQnAoK753eC2oVRZo0BD3aRClHzJWDYDHO4o8HnNed5VAfFGmrapz7JM5-W9mWiJM0zPjuJMq0C11VwJ7JGNxslHuhMMWO3IxiEu0xPJmazY05ekz7GpVqXxkP-9Q4WZY2kYzQ/s1600/sorrento+012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KWYLXCoQnAoK753eC2oVRZo0BD3aRClHzJWDYDHO4o8HnNed5VAfFGmrapz7JM5-W9mWiJM0zPjuJMq0C11VwJ7JGNxslHuhMMWO3IxiEu0xPJmazY05ekz7GpVqXxkP-9Q4WZY2kYzQ/s1600/sorrento+012.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Capri! Capri! Not for me!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
wasn’t until I was home and back in the doldrums that I reread Hazzard’s Paris
Review interview after finishing <b>The Bay of Noon</b>. I am addicted to these
interviews and wanted to read more about Hazzard’s attachment to the grand city
of the south. To my dismay I read that Shirley Hazzard has a house in Capri and
is an honorary citizen there. <i>Capri lay just off the coast from where I was
staying!</i> To think that perhaps the great writer – who lives between New York
and Capri – might have been sipping a coffee at the local bar there! I might have wandered over and sat in her glow,
foolishly asked the now eighty-year-old lady for an autograph. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But alas, Capri
remained on her platter of endless sea and I did not leave the mainland. This lazy author feared being crammed on a ferry with tourists and preferred a day
on a secret pebbly beach.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hazzard
herself speaks of the delightful break that initiated her career as a writer</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In 1960, I wrote
a story--a simple story of a young poet, derived from an evening in that
Italian garden. I sent it to </span></i><em><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The New Yorker</span></em><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">, without keeping a copy. It was
accepted by William Maxwell, and I received his letter standing in the big old
kitchen of my friends' villa. Moments like that don't come twice..</span></i></div>
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-56963461606138695532014-04-16T11:20:00.000-07:002014-04-16T11:20:37.323-07:00Love and War and Rules for Writing<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLc_qAbVM51WWzDj75x1OHVv1U-8fRK2tbw-Jlu2C9CySlzMS6ED_vcKYlLXhLhnNUy8LYaOdL9xs5dOx4xnM534k3kGh9P-w8JMnrHwRAyr5EkQGC2LkISYcehq0KwuE-tNJTjIJhWG9/s1600/alpini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGLc_qAbVM51WWzDj75x1OHVv1U-8fRK2tbw-Jlu2C9CySlzMS6ED_vcKYlLXhLhnNUy8LYaOdL9xs5dOx4xnM534k3kGh9P-w8JMnrHwRAyr5EkQGC2LkISYcehq0KwuE-tNJTjIJhWG9/s1600/alpini.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Italian Alpini in 1915</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There is a road that I drive along many many times during the winter. A low flat bridge over water weaving around islands of rocks, stunted trees, the frayed shoreline and blue shoals glittering with the cold force of the mountains to the north. It is the Piave River, just down from Vittorio Veneto. At the end of 1918 (24th October-3rd November to be precise) this is where the Italians finally defeated what remained of the dishevelled, underfed and disunited Austro-Hungarian forces in the <b>Battle of Vittorio Veneto</b>. This was the last conflict of the eleven Isonzo battles, a three-year stretch of bitter advances and retreats fought high in the Eastern Alps of northern Italy and on the vast Piave river plain. A few years back I translated dozens of information signs for alpine hiking trails over the old battle sites of the Great War. It was almost too much for this ignorant writer. Example: the forgotten and heartbreaking <b>Battle of Ortigara</b>, where 23 000 Italians and 9 000 Austrians died or were wounded in a fifteen-day advance and subsequent retreat! These were fierce, merciless battles where for the first time fortresses were blown to bits by Howitzer blasts, where gas was introduced, where barbed wire laced mountain tracks and tunnels were dug in the mountain bed and encampments blown to the stars. There are roads I cannot drive down because I still hear the cannons with their 22km firing range whistling across the valleys towards young men tormented by hunger, cold and dysentery, who just wanted to go home. <br />
<br />
Reader, I have sons!<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiVnPqc0qLul2gdyf-J9rD50jY-6VVe3LG0nLg2k3TAotoWN1J_x6l1T0v0s13uzPaeOM17U8CowNq6cjqMTWFiiMLmcGYGwt7gfFZPBMXpxbq-XO0xpFxR9HM8alV2rWBomkcwJ9jIsTF/s1600/220px-Ernest_Hemingway_in_Milan_1918_retouched_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiVnPqc0qLul2gdyf-J9rD50jY-6VVe3LG0nLg2k3TAotoWN1J_x6l1T0v0s13uzPaeOM17U8CowNq6cjqMTWFiiMLmcGYGwt7gfFZPBMXpxbq-XO0xpFxR9HM8alV2rWBomkcwJ9jIsTF/s1600/220px-Ernest_Hemingway_in_Milan_1918_retouched_3.jpg" height="320" width="189" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hemingway in Milan 1918</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On July 8th 1918, an eighteen-year-old American Red Cross volunteer was handing out chocolate and cigarettes to Italian troops on the front line. An Austro-Hungarian mortar knocked him unconscious and killed one of the Italian soldiers, blowing off the legs of another. When the young American awoke he was buried in the dugout and had shrapnel embedded in his thighs, groin, hands, scalp and feet. Somehow, though he would not remember afterwards, he dragged a third wounded Italian soldier to safety. (For his bravery he was awarded the <i>Croce della Guerra</i>). Severely injured, he was operated on immediately then transferred to the Red Cross
Hospital in Milan where he spent three months recuperating before returning to the front. In hospital the young man fell in love with an American nurse
seven years his senior. It was the young man's first love and he loved hard and deep. The two planned to marry upon their return to the United States. But there were arguments, a time lag; the nurse remained in Italy and fell for an Italian captain. She wrote a letter of adieu to the young devastated man. It was said that this act of abandonment established a behaviour pattern that would be repeated over and over throughout the man's life: he would always leave his lovers before they had the chance to abandon him.<br />
<br />
This young man was Ernest Hemingway.<br />
<br />
<br />
Before Hemingway's novel <b>A Farewell to Arms</b> established his reputation as a groundbreaking modern American writer and showed his scathing opinion of war, he wrote this touching short story. It's a small, minor story with a sense of love and war, and an early display of the rules of writing that Hemingway would build into a lasting school of thought.<br />
<br />
<i><a href="http://poetry.rapgenius.com/Ernest-hemingway-a-very-short-story-annotated">A Very Short Story</a> </i><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><i>One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look
out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark and the searchlights came out. The others
went down and took the bottles with them. He and Luz could hear them below on
the balcony. Luz sat on the bed. She was cool and fresh in the hot night. <br />
<br />
Luz stayed on night duty for three nights. They were glad to let her. When they operated on him she
prepared him for the operating table; and they had a joke about friend or
enema. He went under the anaesthetic holding tight on to himself so he would
not blab about anything during the silly, talky time. After he got on crutches
he used to take the temperatures so Luz would not have to get up from the bed.
There were only a few patients, and they all knew about it. They all liked Luz.
As he walked back along the halls he thought of Luz in his bed.<br />
<br />
Before he went back to the front they went into the Duomo and prayed. It was dim and quiet, and there were
other people praying. They wanted to get married, but there was not enough time
for the banns<a data-editorial-state="accepted" data-id="2824101" href="http://poetry.rapgenius.com/2824101/Ernest-hemingway-a-very-short-story/Banns"></a>, and neither of them
had birth certificates. They felt as though they were married, but they wanted
everyone to know about it, and to make it so they could not lose it.<br />
<br />
Luz wrote him many letters that he never got until after the Armistice. Fifteen came in a bunch to the
front and he sorted them by the dates and read them all straight through. They
were all about the hospital, and how much she loved him and how it was
impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at
night.<br />
<br />
After the armistice they agreed he should go home to get a job so they might be
married. Luz would not come home until he had a good job and could come to New
York to meet her. It was understood he would not drink, and he did not want to
see his friends or anyone in the States. Only to get a job and be married. On
the train from Padua to Milan they quarreled about her not being willing to
come home at once. When they had to say good-bye, in the station at Milan, they
kissed good-bye, but were not finished with the quarrel. He felt sick about
saying good-bye like that.<br />
<br />
He went to America on a boat from Genoa. Luz went back to Pordonone to open a
hospital. It was lonely and rainy there, and there was a battalion of arditi
quartered in the town. Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter, the major
of the battalion made love to Luz, and she had never known Italians before, and
finally wrote to the States that theirs had only been a boy and girl affair.
She was sorry, and she knew he would probably not be able to understand, but
might some day forgive her, and be grateful to her, and she expected,
absolutely unexpectedly, to be married in the spring. She loved him as always,
but she realized now it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a
great career, and believed in him absolutely. She knew it was for the best.<br />
<br />
The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an
answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted
gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a
taxicab through Lincoln Park.</i><a data-editorial-state="accepted" data-id="1682600" href="http://poetry.rapgenius.com/1682600/Ernest-hemingway-a-very-short-story/Lincoln-park"></a></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Though this young rejected man went on to become a great and tormented writer, obedient to his craft but also to his passions, his women, his hunting, his alcoholic suffering, it could be said that - to the end - he stuck to the writing rules he learned as a cub reporter: <br /><br />
<i>Use short sentences. </i><br />
<i>Use short first paragraphs. </i><br />
<i>Use vigorous English. </i><br />
<i>Be positive, not negative.</i><br />
<br />
There seem to be several lessons in all of this. <br />
<br />
<br />
**worth reading: from The New York Times Archives (1940) <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/07/04/specials/hemingway-work.html">'Ernest Hemingway Talks of Work and War'</a><i><br /></i><br />
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-59639026604631890412014-03-20T04:20:00.002-07:002014-07-05T02:13:38.646-07:00The Importance of Violets<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-CBTWyOypIIYxHU_F5r3MtXDIZlhX2zU9F-NmBN9TDf1npq3DvJtVewuVZQ_8fcuR8brw_55ie9Dhr58VWKAM00X4rujaccyhQ4CrcpBjYfKb9DQREW_UzSkc7IajMoNq4NaaDQu6DnT/s1600/violets+002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-CBTWyOypIIYxHU_F5r3MtXDIZlhX2zU9F-NmBN9TDf1npq3DvJtVewuVZQ_8fcuR8brw_55ie9Dhr58VWKAM00X4rujaccyhQ4CrcpBjYfKb9DQREW_UzSkc7IajMoNq4NaaDQu6DnT/s1600/violets+002.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>Now that we are moving into a new season there is a chance that you may be feeling like a violet. I do.<br />
<br />
It's time to inhale the air after the damp snowy chill of winter. It's time to watch green grass shooting up in the air, the cherry blossoms still in nobs on the tree, the wisteria with her first clutched fronds come from nothing. Springtime is astounding, even the vigour of the depleted earth around here is bracing to this jaded demi-writer with a mop..<br />
<br />
So what has this gardening talk to do with short story writing? Is Catherine once more gazing out the window with her lucky stone between her fingers looking for an excuse? Or is her contemplation of gardening helping her dig up a new story idea?<br />
<br />
Once again I'm citing <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/08/01/networked-knowledge-combinatorial-creativity/">Brain Pickings</a>, where the other week I read a startling back-article about 'Networked Knowledge and Combinational Creativity'. Blogger Maria Popova gives the example of <b>florilegium</b>, <i>'compilations of excerpts from other writings, essentially mashing up selected passages and connecting dots from existing texts to illuminate a specific topic or doctrine or idea. The word comes from the Latin for "flower" and "gather". The florilegium is commonly considered one of the earliest recorded examples of remix culture.'</i><br />
<br />
In this way, she speaks of <i>'recognising not only the absolute value of content but also its relational value, the value not just of information itself but also of information architecture, not just of content but also of content curation.'</i><br />
<br />
How wonderful and exciting is that? Relational value. Content curation. Information architecture. <br />
<br />
She then goes on to recount a story about Picasso, who was recognised by a woman in a park. She enthusiastically asks him for a portrait, asks him how much it costs, and is shocked when he tells her $5000. <i> </i><br />
<i>But what? It took you five minutes! </i><br />
<i>No Madam, it took me my whole life.</i><br />
<br />
Popova maintains that any creative product is a <b>remix</b> - or a cross-pollination of ideas or experiences from all fields. Perhaps not as adeptly as Picasso, we are all constantly drawing from every corner of our lives - to <i>'combine and recombine these pieces and build new castles'</i>.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, she makes the point that most artists believe themselves <b>original</b>, and that there is something holy about the creation process and its fruits. But for Popova <i>'it is something we all understand on a deep intuitive level, but our creative egos sort of don't really want to accept: And that is the idea that creativity is combinatorial, that nothing is entirely original, that everything builds on what came before, and that we create by taking existing lives of inspiration, knowledge, skill and insight that we gather over the course of our lives and recombinging them into incredible new creations...'</i><br />
<br />
Combinatorial. Nothing is ever original. As though we are all grinning babes in the great big sandpit of life making our own turrets and tunnels with dirty hands.. looking for approval, believing our castles to be the <i>bestest</i>. Popova even believes that copying is an inherent form of admiration!<br />
<br />
Of course this is all very encouraging for the writer who has had a hardworking break doing translations and now must do a brainshift to get back to story writing. Einstein said that his greatest breakthroughs came after playing the violin. Nabakov famously spent time with his butterflies before turning back to his work-in-progress.<br />
<br />
And here are some more lucid, shimmering ideas:<br />
<br />
<i>I have found that all positions men take in their beliefs are profoundly influenced by thousands of small, often imperceptible experiences that slowly accumulate to form a sum total of choices and decisions. (designer Alvin Lustig)</i><br />
<br />
<i>Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content. (French molecular biologist Jacques Monod)</i><br />
<br />
<br />
And this is where I think Popova elegantly reaches her bottom line, through this quote from her beloved Susan Sontag:<br />
<br />
<i>Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.</i><br />
<br />
Wonderful, no? I'm going to interpret that this way: I'm going out into the sun to do some gardening, then a long, brain-stimulating swim before I start some new work. Maybe later on, I'll join some dots.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
Thrilled to hear that my story 'Magaly Park' from my new collection was a shortlisted finalist in the <a href="http://www.labellopress.com/labello-news.html">Labello Press International Short Story Competition</a>.<br />
<br />
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-52481212259145057242014-02-28T04:52:00.001-08:002014-02-28T09:29:55.091-08:00Nail polish, tube delays and the trouble with writersAny excuse to head to London is a good one but the best have to do with meeting other authors and hearing them speak about their work. While the usual zany things occurred - such as spending a half day hunting down contact lenses with a daft son and having my fingers and toenails painted by my favourite thirteen-year-old 'niece' - on Saturday night I rocked up to another stunning Word Factory session and on Monday evening I heard wonderful Alison Macleod speak about her Booker longlisted novel <i>Unexploded</i>.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMV91nHIZANo1tZcjtYoToxiIN2GKU83nlDYrgKxyCUgUCBbiY-tjeatU-QsTF2DKtT5KvruqMoLE_4q4FcMqhyXMfxG5mhamqWwoWZ9Q-0Whvjk3HLfHwxFDMRmiAKXWAIz-4nh9AehcS/s1600/Taniahershmanmymotherpiano.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMV91nHIZANo1tZcjtYoToxiIN2GKU83nlDYrgKxyCUgUCBbiY-tjeatU-QsTF2DKtT5KvruqMoLE_4q4FcMqhyXMfxG5mhamqWwoWZ9Q-0Whvjk3HLfHwxFDMRmiAKXWAIz-4nh9AehcS/s1600/Taniahershmanmymotherpiano.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRAvs0gENBaG41kpV4_XaFowofBHjnwzb36f6Q-Ny0CDMqE-35Vw2wvgyPAgnS_3Iy8lsGsZG7HyXBZxYs0mYqPlM2DrukOHQv3G-qV9r7woQCdhMaoWvYcbz2IAPekS0Fx8JqBgu0I-0/s1600/smoked+meat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRAvs0gENBaG41kpV4_XaFowofBHjnwzb36f6Q-Ny0CDMqE-35Vw2wvgyPAgnS_3Iy8lsGsZG7HyXBZxYs0mYqPlM2DrukOHQv3G-qV9r7woQCdhMaoWvYcbz2IAPekS0Fx8JqBgu0I-0/s1600/smoked+meat.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a>Along the way I met up with Rowena Macdonald (<a href="http://www.flambardpress.co.uk/"><i>Smoked Meat</i></a>), with whom I read at the December Word Factory event in Soho, Isobel Costello, who
writes the successful <a href="http://isabelcostelloliterary sofa.com">On the Literary Sofa</a> blog and has a novel in
the works, the fabulous (& similarly henna-headed) <a href="http://www.taniahershman.com/">Tania Hershman</a>, who is a champion of the short story form (<i>My Mother is an Upright Piano</i>), and lovely writers <a href="http://mindandlanguage.blogspot.com/">Zoe Gilbert</a> and K.J.Orr.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.thewordfactory.tv/">Word Factory</a> is a brilliant, brilliant short story salon set up by Cathy Galvin, where emerging and established authors alike present their work once a month to an entranced audience. It takes place downstairs at Waterstones Piccadilly - a glass of wine and cheery hello from WF Deputy <a href="http://paulmcveigh.blogspot.com/">Paul McVeigh</a>. On Saturday Holly Dawson read a short story she honed with author Alex Preston. Holly and Rebecca Swirsky won the inaugural Word Factory mentorship scheme and have been working with Alex Preston and Stella Duffy over the past few months. I missed Rebecca's reading in January but thoroughly enjoyed Holly's eerie, unsettling story and her polished reading. Holly spoke about her experience with mentor Alex Preston (a tonne of must-read books!) and wrote this article - <a href="http://blogs.chi.ac.uk/shortstoryforum/are-you-sitting-comfortably/">Are You Sitting Comfortably</a> - about how nervy public speaking can be, after canvassing Thresholds members for tips. Alex Preston then read a resounding story weaving history and geology and a cross carved into the palm of a brutal mining disaster survivor (the two threads of the story interspersed by a cool karate chop). And Toby Litt showed his authorial agility by reading a transporting short story, an excerpt from an article speaking of Literature versus Literary Fiction, and a poem! And to boot, Toby says he is currently working on a comic project.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZ3dqCICYbJZBNzgEBwfMHZ2Z_0IKwo-d0uz4d9YoHGThmakXX_MVY_SDOKNtSjXEahuVzTY4Dl9lIs790oGeg0qoKxPrOUiMleQZkJE7qs5jORGsIxUHnuEFnpe7JLj0m_BuuLLzN-XV/s1600/unexploded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbZ3dqCICYbJZBNzgEBwfMHZ2Z_0IKwo-d0uz4d9YoHGThmakXX_MVY_SDOKNtSjXEahuVzTY4Dl9lIs790oGeg0qoKxPrOUiMleQZkJE7qs5jORGsIxUHnuEFnpe7JLj0m_BuuLLzN-XV/s1600/unexploded.jpg" /></a></div>
On Monday I was lucky enough to hear Alison MacLeod interviewed about her novel <i>Unexploded</i>, which takes place in Alison's adopted home town of Brighton, during the Second World War. Alison spoke of the charge of fear that ran through the community as the Germans threatened to invade, a hidden internment camp and the influences behind her poignant characters who deal with love and fear and uncertainty. She read scenes that were both touching and rich with language. I haven't yet read Unexploded - it sits on my bookshelf! - and look forward to delving into it. <br />
<br />
On my last day I sat on the train thinking over and over about the different types of authors I had met. Many are super-qualified in an academic sense, some are winging it, some have kids and families, others don't; all are working dreadfully hard to feed their art. Of course there was a tube delay so I had plenty of time to revolve my thoughts. Is it better to be an academic, or commercial, to have a crowd, to be public, or to live in a coccoon and count the tractors going by? <br />
<br />
It shouldn't really matter. That's what I think. And you know what's the trouble with writers? That - from what I've seen so far - they are a cohesive, especially generous bunch who, like this country mouse, are happiest when they can run off, when they are at their desks, when they are <i>doing</i> it. chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-46354006154036606312014-02-04T12:05:00.000-08:002014-02-04T12:22:41.950-08:00Love and writing and pain and goodness<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
Love hurts. Writing hurts. Rejection hurts. Revisions hurt. Publication
hurts.<br />
It is all so painful.<br />
But what is even more painful than the above?<br />
It is silence.<br />
What happens when you have been encouraged and given your best and then...
nothing?<br />
The brick wall.<br />
No reply.<br />
No reply.<br />
<i>Argh!</i> You're not going to write to these bastards again.<br />
<br />
Oh I know people are busy and busier and you are a humble writer in new uggs
in a smelly house in a muddy field... But I know busy people too. People
who are scarily busy on many levels who still manage to connect, or leave a
note, or say, <i>Too busy so no thanks but thanks anyways.</i><br />
<br />
Grrr. I hate rudeness. I'm so anti-rude that I always feel I have to be last
to close off communication. The last <i>thank you</i>, the last <i>good bye</i>.
Is this alarming insecurity or the way I've been brought up?<br />
<br />
So what to do when it takes a year to get a reply for a short story ? Give
up, move on. Pull out your secretarial hat. Pull out your finger !<br />
<br />
I think that's the answer. Man up, Catherine. Back to your desk. If these
jerks don't want you, try try try somewhere else. Where people might be more
polite. <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKx7nZwDvm5qYWLd_AjUXr2STjBPxtpGp0G5PAF_kfSsOQrUiCBgLktv-zECZS4Eoyh0y5ENdjtllmlXvulGsGVlT_uCEHB-9Z3G90aWX3y5p_OQDDrgVoHV5Pjt5QUdT6ktNjWpuasvUM/s1600/FlanneryOConnorWithSelfPortrait_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKx7nZwDvm5qYWLd_AjUXr2STjBPxtpGp0G5PAF_kfSsOQrUiCBgLktv-zECZS4Eoyh0y5ENdjtllmlXvulGsGVlT_uCEHB-9Z3G90aWX3y5p_OQDDrgVoHV5Pjt5QUdT6ktNjWpuasvUM/s1600/FlanneryOConnorWithSelfPortrait_b.jpg" height="320" width="244" /></a></div>
So what am I doing this week? A crash course in Flannery O'Connor, whose
500pp Collected Works (my pre-loved copy bought from The Society Club, Soho) is
sitting gleaming on my desk. From her first wobbly but bold stories, to the
well known ones that tear into your psyche. <br />
<br />
<br />
From the twisted and luminous 'A Good Man is Hard to Find':<br />
<br />
<i>Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and
faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad
and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that
had two points on the top like a rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa,
feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar.</i><br />
<i>...The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old
boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, 'If you don't want to go
to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?' He and the little girl, June Star, were
reading the funny papers on the floor.</i><br />
<i>'She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day,' June Star said with
raising her yellow head... 'Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go
everywhere we go.'</i><br />
<i>'All right, Miss,' the grandmother said. 'Just remember that the next
time you want me to curl your hair.'</i><br />
<i>June Star said her hair was naturally curly.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
You haven't read Flannery? In her short suffering life she wrote more brilliance than most of us will ever touch with a barge pole. Go hunt her down and learn her! <i><br /></i><br />
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<br /></div>
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-19136015332914051522014-01-09T11:23:00.003-08:002014-01-10T02:34:08.730-08:00Soho Nights and Lusty ReviewsThis happened a good while ago so technically it's old news. But in my head it's fresh as a morning daisy, as though it happened last night.<br />
<br />
I was invited to read at the <a href="http://www.thewordfactory.tv/">Word Factory </a>Xmas event in December, so I
packed my velvet Alberta Ferretti dress and netted tights and my good
luck copy of <b>Pelt</b>. I met Rowena Macdonald, also reading that
night, at the pub beforehand for a natter and a pint. Then we headed off
to the warm atmosphere of Carrie Kania's <a href="http://www.thesocietyclub.com/">Society Club</a>, a cool bookshop
on a Soho corner in the night.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkhRILnWCt0xY1PdkXeZC0vfkLBhFodZMvN4_q_JdsSf2J_nlYQ99EHUDnxaa5TJJYJEbnOxqy-GD3HFJ0oeFQR6RAG8M3tIRKdXYtdtbOYa3E_Fplx3oVHpxrovN2njb2aalcLthA5Yh/s1600/soho+reading1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkhRILnWCt0xY1PdkXeZC0vfkLBhFodZMvN4_q_JdsSf2J_nlYQ99EHUDnxaa5TJJYJEbnOxqy-GD3HFJ0oeFQR6RAG8M3tIRKdXYtdtbOYa3E_Fplx3oVHpxrovN2njb2aalcLthA5Yh/s1600/soho+reading1.jpg" height="320" width="315" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Paul McVeigh</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
A splendid, intimate crowd. I read from my title story 'Pelt', Rowena read an extract from her collection <a href="http://www.flambardpress.co.uk/books/show.php?book=1331&author=rowena.macdonald"><i>Smoked Meat</i></a> (I've yet to devour my copy). Then, the names of those present were thrown into a hat and members of the audience were invited to read from their work. Bookshop owner and literary agent Carrie Kania read a Charlie Brown Christmas story. Word Factory organiser Cathy Galvin spoke about a year in the life of the Word Factory, while short story whiz Paul McVeigh read a wonderful story and took this glowing photo.<br />
<br />
Halfway through the session a face that looked strangely familiar stepped in off the street. Author Simon Van Booy, whose philosophy book <a href="http://www.simonvanbooy.com/books.htm"><i>Why We Need Love</i></a> kept me awake on the plane, made an unexpected appearance and this devoted fan was over the moon. It's rare to meet an author whose work you've enjoyed and swooned over face to face, and even more of a miracle to have a positive and inspiring conversation. What a gentleman! Simon's contribution to<i> </i><a href="http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/view/33253"><i>RED: The</i><i> Waterstones </i><i></i><i>Anthology</i></a> is a beautiful read and still available at the bookshop.<br />
<br />
The Society Club also has great cocktails and an eclectic collection of books. I will be going back to lounge about! And thank you to Cathy Galvin and Paul McVeigh of the Word Factory!<br />
<br />
* * * *<br />
Two new reviews of <b>Pelt</b> came out recently so I have started the New Year with a bang.<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://whisperinggums.com/2014/01/03/catherine-mcnamara-pelt-and-other-stories-review/">Whispering Gums</a>: <br />
<i>What I particularly like about the stories is their honesty. McNamara
doesn’t flinch from letting her characters express their (our) meanest,
least generous thoughts. Love, McNamara shows, can make us selfish,
desperate, and sometimes cruel. In the first story, “Pelt”, the
animality of lust is palpable as a pregnant black mistress stands her
ground, fighting for her rather weak, German lover against his barren
wife. Many of her stories are about compromised relationships and the
accommodations made, by one or both parties, to keep them going. “The
Coptic Bride” is one of these, as is “Opaque” in which a woman’s love
for her man is tested against her sense of morality, of what is right:</i><br />
<i></i><br />
But if she called, it would perforate all that she held close to her. It would cost her her life.<br />
<br />
<br />
From <a href="http://tearsinthefence.com/2014/01/07/catherine-mcnamaras-pelt-and-other-stories/">Tears in the Fence</a>:<br />
<i>The title story, ‘Pelt’, follows a Ghanaian woman flaunting her
pregnant body before her lover’s estranged wife. The reader sees her
German lover, Rolfe, stumble with the return of his wife, Karina, from
Namibia. He has not told her of his new love. The story is rich in
attitudes, connections and commercial detail, allowing a wider vision of
the characters to emerge. The Ghanaian is a confident woman, aware of
her physical attributes, in relation to her lover’s wife, and is clearly
determined to use her womanly guile to secure a higher status in a
highly stratified society. Despite some insecurity, she triumphantly
swims in the hotel’s pool towards the Europeans in an act of
self-assertion and transcendence. Rolfe begs her to go home.</i><br />
<i>
</i><i>The story is highly successful at implying the African’s assault on
European decorum and her struggle towards a wider social acceptance.</i><br />
<i>
</i>
<i>
</i><i>Here’s an example of the fluency and fullness of McNamara’s writing from the story, ‘Young British Man Drowns In Alpine Lake’:</i><br />
<br />
<i>
</i>
<i>
</i>He nears Corinne’s face one more time. He is gleaning it for ashen traces. Of which there are, for one who knows her. He cannot see how the colour of her lips has dropped a shade towards the blue end of red, a drop in blood pressure as much as a realignment of pluck, and that her huge white forehead, template for her sticky righteousness, lies galvanized beneath its compelling shirr. They say the hydraulics of the face are spellbinding. Corinne’s face is giving him so much information I am appalled.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
Now it's back to work for this winter squirrel! chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-63737389032947605992013-12-10T11:38:00.001-08:002013-12-10T11:38:30.686-08:00Above the Parapet : a Talk with Short Story Writer Alison Lock<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlps3LuLsvyXhl0qtcbfqRDyPBwI94VpcRUxuYylIeHntD9nDwvyVvJBntvOw_uSmBtXaJz3VpS-_jqqf55otYn7Oa5T-juedTV9CprMyoKPVxvro3HDANm3owVRawamFEiVpa-rN07hUo/s1600/above-the-parapet-alison-lock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlps3LuLsvyXhl0qtcbfqRDyPBwI94VpcRUxuYylIeHntD9nDwvyVvJBntvOw_uSmBtXaJz3VpS-_jqqf55otYn7Oa5T-juedTV9CprMyoKPVxvro3HDANm3owVRawamFEiVpa-rN07hUo/s1600/above-the-parapet-alison-lock.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Welcome
Alison! Your short story collection opens with a brother-sister rivalry taking
place as the earth threatens to overturn their trivial concerns. Many of your
stories also suggest the aftermath of a cataclysm, or are peopled with a world
of survivors. Do you think we don’t listen to the planet enough?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Thank
you Catherine—it is lovely to have the opportunity to tell about my writing. To
answer your first queston - yes, I suppose I do think that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are all reliant on this planet and therefore
it is important that we look after it, although I suspect that it will survive
whatever we throw at it but it just might last a little longer if give it some
TLC.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">You
also use magic, history and pluck to take the reader far beyond a comfortable
contemporary framework. Tell us about your writing process – what comes to you
first and where do you aim to take the reader?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Many
of the stories are triggered by tiny moments, episodes, observances, but some
are from larger events; catastrophes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcano eruptions
– things that make us ask: what would I do in that situation? Of course, if we
were there, there would be very little we could do, and often people or nations
do not have the resources to deal effectively with unexpected events, or even
events that they know are likely to happen. Some of the fictional outcomes are
down to the individual characters, like in 'Bugs' where Aunty Vi is the only
adult who understands why Katy loves to play with worms and bugs. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the other adults who are not in tune
with the natural world or the world of the child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end it is Katy who has the last laugh.
As for taking the reader somewhere - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
believe that the reader brings as much to a story as the writer, and that it is
the connection that matters. It's all about resonance.</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Tell
us about the ideas behind the underground setting for your dystopian story
‘Erthenta’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Erthenta
was one of the first stories I wrote to be set in an underground world. The
planet has been knocked by a series of meteor showers and has been knocked off its
axis. The survivors have resorted to living under the surface in the caves and
tunnels but they have to constantly maintain their environment as well as find
food. The most useful creatures for nutritional and practical purposes are the
Carcomites – a bug that is also poisonous. Also, the population has been unable
to reproduce for a generation and Elsina is the first to become pregnant. She
believes that the best way of helping her baby to survive is to take it to the
centre of the Earth where it will receive a special blessing. It is one of the
stories that is set in an extreme world and uses the medium of fantasy to
explore and create the story. </span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Several
of the stories are prize-winners – how did you select which pieces to include
in the collection?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">This
is my first collection of short stories and I decided that rather than give it
a thematic overview I would use it as a showcase for my writing, which is why,
although it has some very distinct themes,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>it is also eclectic. I write poetry as well as prose and it is the use
and combination of words that attract me most to the process of writing. Also,
I like to look at ideas from different points of view, I don't just mean first
person or third person but I like to try out second person too, and also to
create a story within a different genre. There are so many exciting tools to
use! I now find that I am often writing fantasy and futuristic stories because
I can explore themes without the 'restrictions' of realism. I want my readers
to let go too and enjoy the ride.</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Your
first book was a poetry collection and your language is clearly lyrical. Why
the shift from poetry to short stories, and where do you feel most comfortable?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Strange
as it sounds, I feel that poetry and short stories come from different places: whether
it is from the body or from the mind – I'm not sure which—but often I know
fairly soon into a new piece if it is going to be a poem or a short story by
the way it feels. I now also write very short fiction – often called flash
fiction. This is a great way to create an illusion or a sudden tension. </span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">How
does social media affect your life as a writer? What role do you think social
media should play in the life of a published author?</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Social media is great on one level –
when you work on your own it is wonderful to be able to discuss things with
others who are also writing away in their attics, or, to swap ideas, or to pass
on information via facebook, twitter or blogs. With an independent publisher
the onus is mainly on the writer to promote their work, and hence, social media
has become a necessity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We write about
ourselves and our writing and hope that people will be interested enough to buy
our books! </span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">What
plans do you have for the future? And what advice would you give to a short
story writer trying to have a collection published?</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The
future for me is full of words. I am presently rehearsing a long piece of
poetry and music which is a collaboration with musician Robin Bowles. We worked
together on my '</span></b><span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/bobbiodazzle/eye-of-the-heron"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">eye of the heron' piece for the
Holmfirth Arts Festival</span></a></span><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">. It's here recorded on soundcloud. Do give it a
click. </span></b></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I
love the coincidence of sound—the spoken word to music. I am still writing
short stories too – I love the feeling you get when one is finished—like holding
a sculpted ornament in the palm of your hand. I am also writing a novel for
young people which is in the editing stages, and I also hope to publish another
poetry collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I've had many single
poems published that I would like to gather together – its a bit like signing
off at the end of a letter – pressing your poems like flowers between the
covers, preserving them and sealing them with a kiss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Who
would you say has been your main influences and what are you reading now?</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I
have just finished reading David Vann's <i>Life of a Suicide</i> – an extraordinary
book that deals with the deeper darker emotions in a very illuminating and
descriptive way. I admire his work and came across him recently at a
masterclass where his enthusiasm was utterly contagious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also constantly read poetry by a whole
range of contemporary poets. </span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Excerpt from Alison's story '</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: MinionPro; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family: MinionPro;">Erthenta' </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: MinionPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family: MinionPro;">Only those who dwell in caves can
really understand. When the surface is a barren dry desert and the sun burns on
and on, there is nowhere else to go. The caves becomes your world, your home,
your street, your back yard; your life. No darkness enters from above; there is
none, not since the final spin of the Earth on its axis nearly a century
before. This is the place they call Erthenta. Once you experience the lure of
the silence, the calling of the calm, the cool air caressing the flesh of your
face, you will never again want to resurface. </span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<i>
</i><div class="MsoBodyText">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: MinionPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family: MinionPro;">Elsina has lived here for twenty
year-longs. The dark soil and shadowed rock beneath the burnt crust of Earth is
her homeland. She ventures to the surface only long enough to seek out the
scorched creatures that provide the community with a little cooked protein. At
least there is a steady supply of water in the under layer where the streams
ooze from the mountains of ice on the other side of the planet. Channelled,
there is enough to quench the thirst of all Erthentans before it is evaporated
by the surface heat, turning liquid to steam. Special midway caves have been
set aside for the steam rooms where people can go after their day’s labours to
sink their weary flesh into the vivifying banks of mud, to cleanse in the rich
mineral pools and sup from the pure springs. </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<br /></div>
<i>
</i><div class="MsoBodyText">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: MinionPro; mso-fareast-font-family: SimSun; mso-hansi-font-family: MinionPro;">They all believe their true home, the
place of their origin, is at the centre of the Earth. It is a place they all
aspire to visit at least once in their lives, to meditate at the holy shrine of
Shala, to relieve their troubles, to submit their prayers, to feel the embrace
of the inner void. But the path to the centre is known to be hazardous,
crumbling with every rumble, splitting with each quake of the endlessly
shifting tectonic plates.</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><i>Above the Parapet</i> has had great reviews from <a href="http://sabotagereviews.com/2013/09/23/above-the-parapet-by-alison-lock/">Sabotage Reviews</a> and <a href="http://www.puffinreview.com/content/content/above-parapet-alison-lock">Puffin Reviews</a> and can be bought directly from the publisher or from the usual suspects! </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/alison-lock-atp/4574376583"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Indigo Dreams Bookshop</span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.indigodreamsbookshop.com/#/alison-lock-atp/4574376583"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></a></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://amazon.co.uk/"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Amazon.co.uk</span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The Book Depository</span></a></div>
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chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-43806008753079808352013-12-02T10:30:00.000-08:002013-12-02T10:36:51.034-08:00On Sleeping with Your Manuscript<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one,
between a writer’s estimation of a work in progress and its actual
quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that
it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or
killed, but not indulged.</i><br />
Annie Dillard <br />
<br />
This writer, who is busy muscling her way through a new series of short stories, is feeling the rub. How mischievous is the mind! One ecstatic moment the story seems a shimmering equilibrium, the next it seems like a dumping ground for word waste. How to manage the rollercoaster, I do not know. There must be inbuilt filters in the artist's mind: this is <i>trash</i>; this is <i>glorious</i>! <br />
<br />
<br />
I don't usually read writing manuals, mainly because I'm afraid that the few ideas I have will, er, be upended and I will go scuttling back to base. But these words of advice featured on the astute <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/09/annie-dillard-on-writing/">Brain Pickings</a> blog are ringing a clear bell.<br />
<br />
<i>When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a
miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and
it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new
territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You
will know tomorrow, or this time next year. You make the path boldly and
follow it fearfully. You go where the path leads. At the end of the
path, you find a box canyon. You hammer out reports, dispatch bulletins.
The writing has changed, in your hands, and in a twinkling, from an
expression of your notions to an epistemological tool. The new place
interests you because it is not clear. You attend. In your humility, you
lay down the words carefully, watching all the angles. Now the earlier
writing looks soft and careless. Process is nothing; erase your tracks.
The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope
birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back.</i><br />
<br />
How true is this? How jumbled and hopeful you are at the outset with your bundle of words and a hot drink, then becoming more sure-footed as events, tone and language take hold. But how fearfully one sets out, placing every word painfully, terrified of going off upon an irrelevant tangent, a track that is meaningless. And then your muddy footprints are so evident at the head of the page. Do you cover your tracks? Have you reached the box canyon? Are you able to jettison your <i>soft and careless </i>beginnings and slide into the body of the work?<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Dear Catherine, </i><br />
<i>Writing is subtraction. </i><br />
<br />
Interestingly, Brain Pickings highlights Dillard's two editing scenarios. Edit-as-you-go, or let your words unbundle, identify what their shape might be, and prune sharply. I'm an edit-as-you-go freak, especially with the short story where each word must earn its keep and, in being discovered and employed, propel the story to its resolution. I cannot write in a blindman's
flurry at all - it just becomes catastrophic, a writing orgy, like my daughter's room on a Friday night. <i>I'll get everything in my wardrobe out and wear it every which way.</i><br />
<br />
I'll leave you with some parting words from <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/11/20/daily-routines-writers/">Joan Didion</a>,<br />
<br />
<i>I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve
done that day. I can’t do it late in the afternoon because I’m too close
to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. So I spend
this hour taking things out and putting other things in. Then I start
the next day by redoing all of what I did the day before, following
these evening notes. When I’m really working I don’t like to go out or
have anybody to dinner, because then I lose the hour. If I don’t have
the hour, and start the next day with just some bad pages and nowhere to
go, I’m in low spirits. Another thing I need to do, when I’m near the
end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it. </i><br />
<br />
I love this one. Call me silly but I've always slept with my manuscript next to my head. <i><br /></i>chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-84289402176871990862013-11-18T12:07:00.000-08:002013-11-18T12:07:01.197-08:00My Writer Crush on Simon Van BooyAlready the title is beguiling, a book you have to have. <b><i>Love Begins in Winter</i></b>. Who can resist a title like that, a lead story about a cellist, now that the skies are closing in, the grass is always wet, swept with leaves falling before you.<br />
<br />
Then to read the words of this reviewer.. <i>If F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marguerite Duras had had a son, he would be Simon Van Booy...</i>.(Andre Dubus III) How can you resist?<br />
<br />
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<i>Walter's Journey Through the Rain</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Walter wheeled his hot, ticking motorbike up and down the muddy lane, breathing with the rhythm of a small, determined engine. Fists of breath hovered and then opened over each taken-step. He would soon be within sight of his beloved's house. In the far distance, Sunday parked over the village like an old mute who hid his face in the hanging thick of clouds. The afternoon had seen heavy rain and the fields were soft.</i><br />
<br />
Now. Don't think if you're unfamiliar with Van Booy's work that these lovey-dovey titles are written by a man who eats quiche. Van Booy's interests are isolation, the return from grief, hallowed moments involving birds and ticking bicycles and the beauty of stones. His stories are sometimes cinematic, which I don't normally like, but he includes an emptiness and silence that must be furnished by the reader. Coastlines, the smashing sea, the cold and wet.<br />
<br />
And of course love. Which twists and shoots and expands.<br />
<br />
<i>From my pocket I took a large stone and set it squarely in his open hand. If there is such a thing as marriage, it takes place long before the ceremony: in a car on the way to the airport; or as a gray bedroom fills with dawn, one love watching the other; or as two strangers stand together in the rain with no bus in sight, arms weighed down with shopping bags. You don't know then. But later you realise - </i>that<i> was the moment.</i><br />
<i>And always without words.</i><br />
<i>Language is like looking at a map of somewhere. Love is living and surviving on the land.</i><br />
<br />
(from<i> Love Begins in Winter</i>)<i> </i><br />
<br />
I am not sure that I can bear the wash of deep pain and love woven through Van Booy's stories and their particularly slow strain of grace. Artfully, he teaches us how to immerse ourselves in the long short story and those who say that the short story lacks substance, leaves you suspended, would do well to walk awhile with Mr. Van Booy.<br />
<br />
A child who bites like a tiger, who grows up to become a paediatrician. A birdman in a park is not the long lost brother a woman imagines. A man marooned in a wet windy city finds he has a Nordic daughter and leaves everything. A young man sobs in St. Peter's Square in Rome, in a story that moves back to a crass gondola trip in Las Vegas. Memories are stirred; lives are tugged out of shape. Deservedly, Simon Van Booy won the Frank O'Connor prize in 2009. I've just ordered two more books.<br />
<br />
<i>When I awoke, Brian was gazing down off the side of the rock into a deep pool. His bare back was a field of bronze muscle. I had forgotten his male strength. It was late afternoon. The sky had bruised. There was a wind and the trees shook. Wind is the strangest thing. The word describes a phenomenon.</i> (from<i> Tiger, Tiger</i>) chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-88041302262748143232013-11-07T07:59:00.003-08:002013-11-07T08:49:08.554-08:00The other day I found myself sandwiched between Stieg Larsson and Alice Munro<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The other day I found myself sandwiched between Stieg Larsson and Alice Munro. I was very uncomfortable! </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don't imagine these things happen very often, or in real life. Journalist and writer <a href="http://sandradanby.com/2013/10/28/short-story-heaven-281013/">Sandra Danby</a> kindly reviewed one of the stories in 'Pelt and Other Stories', called 'At the Malga'. Before me came Stieg Larsson. After, none other than Alice Munro. Who said anything about squirming?</span></div>
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Past/present, snow/sun, winter/summer, husband/stranger. An encounter between
two strangers, left behind at an Alpine hotel by their fitter companions; one
is tired, the other injured. They walk towards a malga, a walk that may lead to
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: IT; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Veronique
had never paused here this long, except to loosen her neck scarf or apply
sunblock. But now she felt an urge to wade into the rippled surface, feeling
her bare feet fitting over the round stones and the chill delineation rising
along her thighs. She wondered what would happen if she were to shed her
clothes before poor Heinrik here, and proceed into the water.</span></i></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Some time later I found myself in Plymouth by the English sea, in a university lecture theatre, reading from this story, published in the visual and literary fiesta, <a href="http://www.shortfictionjournal.co.uk/">Short Fiction</a> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">M O N T G O M E
R Y <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A K U O F O, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>F A T H E R <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O F <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>T W
I N S</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He was sitting
at an empty chop bar on the roadside, waiting for the French woman’s green car.
He took out the mobile phone she had bought him. Just this morning, Faustina
had called from the village and told him she was expecting twins, his twins. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They are two boys</i>, she had said with
much enthusiasm. Twins had not visited their village for an age. He put the
phone back in his pocket. The French woman drove past and he saw her son was
not in the car. That was as good a sign as any.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">By the time he
reached her flat the woman had opened the door on the rooftop and unbottled the
hot air in the rooms. He could feel the air shifting about, its hotness dusting
his skin before it made its </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">escape. He heard
her in the shower. He stripped off his shirt and ate a banana in the kitchen.
Then he opened a cold beer from her fridge, sitting on her kitchen chair, his
spirits mixed. He had stolen from her, just once. It was a photograph of her
family which was sitting on the bookshelf. The daughter in Europe when she was
a small girl, the hard-faced son a baby on her hip. She had asked him for it
and he had lied. He had kept the photo for a while then thrown it in the
gutter. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Montgomery,
you’re here</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She glanced
at him sitting there, her eyes moving off his body. I should have called you.
Miguel is on his way home with a friend. They stayed for a football match. I
can’t see you now. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">His hands hung
either side of the chair. He felt his cock beginning to thicken in his jeans.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Look,
you’d better get dressed. Don’t be angry with me. You know there’ll be other
times.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Outside, yards
below them, she frowned as the gate was cranked open. He lazily pulled on his
shirt. On his way downstairs he passed a pair of giggling white ten-year-olds.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He walked back
to Kojo’s house. He was glad he had drunken the beer. He thought of how the
French woman spoke to Miguel in her language, sending him downstairs to play
with the neighbourhood kids, something the whites rarely did. He couldn’t
understand why she didn’t have a man of her own and he had asked her and she
had tried to explain it to him. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I loved a
man very much, but he didn’t want to live with me. I loved another and he used
to hit me hard.</i> When she whimpered, he held her, stroked her, trying to
imagine these men’s faces. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kojo’s brother
was sick in the hospital and Kojo had to bring him food. Montgomery sat down,
pulled out his phone. There were no calls. The French woman put credit on his
phone but she did not give him cash. Just once, she had paid his bus fare back
to the village. He called her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6v50y8DCnsldttW3rYzCVjq_t6eEaffe0s-OIwJ9I6AZupSbao7AR3Wfu5EBjvMJpOfYptfhxny9SYjMA6rXC-qP9hsczqevwgyIHPFzE_MGMqnDvaybAL0HFCYWpHH_M-1LsSMg_QJre/s1600/short+fiction+issue+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6v50y8DCnsldttW3rYzCVjq_t6eEaffe0s-OIwJ9I6AZupSbao7AR3Wfu5EBjvMJpOfYptfhxny9SYjMA6rXC-qP9hsczqevwgyIHPFzE_MGMqnDvaybAL0HFCYWpHH_M-1LsSMg_QJre/s320/short+fiction+issue+7.jpg" width="224" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Allô?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is Montgomery.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Er,
hello. Is there anything wrong?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Come
and meet me for a drink.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You
know I can’t. Not tonight.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
girlfriend is pregnant. The girl from the village. She is having twins.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Oh,
Montgomery! That’s quite a piece of news. Are you upset? I hope she is well. I
don’t know what to say to you. I have to go now. I’m really sorry, try to understand.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
love you, Mona.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes,
Montgomery. Yes. </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He was hungry.
He had shown her where they grilled tilapia and served it with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">banku</i>. He had shown her where they
served <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">atcheke</i> from Ivory Coast. He
had taken her to Circle at night and made her bump next to him on the dance
floor. They had eaten at Honest Chef afterwards and she moved his hand between
her legs in the taxi all the way home. If she were younger, he would give her a
baby.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He left Kojo’s
and began to walk towards Rawlings Park. He would get there after nightfall.
There his old aunt would feed him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Faustina called
him again in the morning.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Monty
Monty Monty, oh my Montgomery. How is your work?</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> she asked him.
He knew she was sitting in a booth in the tiny communications centre in the
sun, sweat down her back, her wide eyes far apart. Faustina was an easy woman
to have, she opened wide and her passage clasped him, pulling him hard. Then
she pushed him off, her hair sticking up, her waistbeads slack, she always went
to piss and he heard her. After that he liked to put his fingers deep in her
wet bush and she </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">crooned and
grunted. He used to work for the Indians, moving boxes of stereo players from
one shop to another, being told to step aside for Sanjay when he came in with
his driver from his big house on the new estate. But they had sent him on weeks
ago.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
work is fine,</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> he said to her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
what?</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Your
sons!</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
don’t know anything about these sons. How do I know they are mine</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">? he said
sorely. His aunt had given him pito to drink last night. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t
be so foolish,</span></i><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> she said and cut the line.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He took some
money from his aunt and walked through Rawlings Park. He set out to the trotro
stop for Labadi Beach and soon enough pushed onto a revving bus. As the vehicle
tore along Ring Road and some older ladies from Nungua began calling out to the
driver to slow down, he knew inside of him the twins were his own. Faustina
said she had a tummy now, that you could see it was growing fast. She even felt
them turning, squabbling, somersaulting like two small barracuda fish at sea.
He jumped off at the beach and walked through the parking lot. He bought a beer
at one of the bars, sitting down on a flaky white chair. He looked at his phone
again. There were no calls.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He watched the
waves slapping on the sand, each one slightly different from the last. One
fatter, one thin and dribbling at the top, then a rush of three at once. The
water was grey and thin like soup with no wele in it. He saw his sons’ faces
swimming inside of Faustina’s fat stomach with its belly button thick and
yellow and turned out. He would have go back to the village and buy things for
her. A basket for the little ones. Cloth for the naming ceremony. Minerals and
money for the priest. Sanjay never gave him his last pay. But now he was
ashamed to go back to the Indians. The Indians with their stereo sets in boxes,
their fans with plastic bags over their tin basket heads, who had sent him on because
there had never been any need for him in the first place, just to move aside
when Sanjay came in with the driver, to check for thieves from the market, to
move the boxes and fans from shop to shop or back inside at night. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The French woman
had told him many times over that her daughter Nathalie was a photographer in
Paris. She had shown him black and white photos. They were of people staring
back at her, people with long lives,
old women in stuffed chairs, a man on a ladder. There was a woman in a park
with a needle in her arm, her eyes black and lost and a dog waiting by her
dirty feet. Her nipples pushed up through her T-shirt. A tree swept over her
and a man glanced back but was already walking onwards to the apartment blocks
after the fence. Mona was so proud of this shot. She said it had won a prize.
But it left Montgomery in despair. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Why
hadn’t Nathalie called the hospital? Why was the woman outside in the cold with
the waiting dog? Why was the man walking past to the buildings on the other side?
</i>Mona had showed him other shots of men who were not men. His heart
quickened when she showed him these. They were men with shaven heads with kohl
around their eyes. Men in a bar grouped around a tiny Brazilian or half-blood
man in a sparkling dress, who was hooting into the air. Afterwards they came
into his head, these people. The drug addict and her dog, the Brazilian man in
the dress, the old embattled white men with their makeup. They touched him and
he wondered what Europe would be like: the wet parks with tall trees, the
never-ending buildings and shops with their scrolls and windows, the faces
cowering over him, giving him food and fucking him in the mouth, and he would
look down and see he was wearing women’s clothes.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He told Mona he
wanted to marry her. She smiled at him, her long deep smile with the lip
curving downward on one side into her furry <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">obroni</i>
skin. He rubbed her nipple which grew taut like the woman in the photograph. He
squeezed the small bud hard in his two fingers and watched her gasp, plunged
his fingers into her. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
love you Mona.</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">**Do buy a copy of Short Fiction journal if you are a lover of fine writing and dazzling illustrations. </span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You'll also read the prize-winning piece by Rachel Fenton</span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> (super-fine company and co-reader) and support the efforts of editors Anthony Caleshu and Tom Vowler, writers who are actively keeping literature alive. </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9072807304182070193.post-90708230406699593492013-10-29T12:15:00.005-07:002013-10-29T12:15:39.051-07:00When Age Comes Into It<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A
seasoned writer first mentioned the ugly word ‘ageism’ to me when my first book
came out, asking me if I’d experienced this thing called ‘ageism’ while
hustling my work. I almost said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I refuse
to experience ageism</i>. I am simply MYSELF. I’m not a writer-with-a-use-by-date.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Hmmm.
Scoot ahead to the other day when I was filling in the details for a big short
story competition and I saw a space for my age please, on the dotted line. My <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">age</i>? Why? What the -- ?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">It’s not
that I have a problem with my age (though I’m not telling you here to prove my
point) but why should it be included in my info for a leading competition? Can’t
you just read the thing? Does that mean all of us ‘well-over-25’ entrants are going
to be turfed out after the first round to make way for a strapping young
prize-winner? </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Some people
are slow to bloom. Just read my star sign for example. <b>Capricorn</b>: ages well,
determined, late success, bad knees. It could happen to anyone. You have your
writing dream. You have kids or you work damned hard, you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">live</i> hard, you read hard. And then it comes. Time, place, voice,
determination. Encouragement. Everything to need to set off the fire in your
belly.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">You produce.
You refine your short story. You fill out your entry form and are willing to
pay hard-earned cash and throw yourself out there with the masses. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And then
some cretin asks your age. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">It feels
a like a good kick in the knees, eh?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Age
comes into everything, doesn't it? When you're young and inexperienced there’s
a chance you’ll write a certain type of tale, a coming-of-age story perhaps close
to the family woes you’ve lived through. The oldest tale of time, and told
beautifully by some. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">And yet,
sometimes, when an older writer comes into their own, he or she may produce the
inverse of this. A work that is just and sage, full of equilibrium. Must we
reject it because it is not dizzy with more immediate delights? </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">One of
the things I realised when reading a review of ‘Pelt and Other Stories’ is that
many of my characters are 30-ish. Gosh, I hadn’t thought. Is it because that is
where I seem to think people get themselves into interesting pickles? Given
young adulthood can be so plainly raw and is so frequently recorded, and the older
years sometimes more static and tilted towards decline? It’s given me a lot of thought, and I’ve wondered
whether I should push in either direction in future, or whether my subject
material has been subconsciously swayed by what I think a reader might enjoy...</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">So what does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> mean? That I am ageist myself?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Well?! I
don’t know yet. Jury’s still out. But what I do know is that the more I read,
and the broader my own reading experience becomes*, the better equipped I am to
recognise devices, tendencies and outcomes.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Another
tricky day in the life of an ageless author.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">*currently
reading ‘Love Begins in Winter’ by Simon Booy</span></div>
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<![endif]--><br />chillcathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10360989103518880339noreply@blogger.com4