Charles May on BBSS and 'Tides'

Short story expert Charles E May has been writing on his blog, Reading the Short Story, about Salt's Best British Short Story series of anthologies edited by Nicholas Royle. Today he turns to BBSS 2014, and in an interesting post on the metafictive story and 'writing what you know', considers three from the volume answering the description, including my own 'Tides, or How Stories Do or Don't Get Told'. Of 'Tides' he says it's

'a thoughtful story about a writer dealing with the so-called "reality" of her life the way writers do when they write fiction—making choices, determining generic approaches, using narrative technique to make meaning how of their experience.'

It's interesting - and rather funny - that he calls the protagonist of the story a writer, as I was very careful not to identify her as such, and she talks about 'telling' rather than writing the story. Given myself away after all, maybe? Or maybe, as he indicates, it's a stupid distinction, since, as he points out,  those of us who write metafiction tend to think of simply living as a fiction-making experience (each experience different from a different point of view).

I must say, though, that although 'Tides' is not the only metafiction in my new book, 'Used to Be', there are stories in there that aren't: sometimes you just want to write a conventional story, after all.