Publication day for Unthology 7

The day has arrived! Unthology 7, which includes my Short-Fiction-Prize-winning story 'Looking for the Castle', is unveiled to coincide with an event at the London Short Story Festival this afternoon, when editors Ashley Stokes and Robin Jones will be talking all things Unthology. If you're in London, get down there - I would! - before it's sold out (the Gatekeepers event this morning was sold out, apparently). Waterstones, Piccadilly, Lower Ground floor, 3.pm. Today it's possible to buy copies of Unthology 7, and they can be bought from the Unthank website.

Next Thursday (25th) will be the official launch of the book in Norwich, and I'll be reading along with fellow contributors Gary Budden, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, Elaine Chiew, Dan Powell and Adrian Cross. 7.30pm, upstairs at The Library restaurant, 4A Guildhall Hill, Norwich, NR2 1JH, FREE. Can't wait for that - off on a train down the east of the country to lovely Norwich and to meet all those talented writers and our editors!

Writing and Life

Sometimes life just gets in the way of writing. This summer, mainly due to family matters, I've done no writing whatsoever, and, having already neglected both of my blogs last winter through writing furiously, I have failed too to get back to them properly. Now summer is over, and I discover my head has been rearranged by all that has happened. Although at Easter I thought the manuscript I was working on was almost completed - I had sent it out to my first readers - it now seems all wrong. This so often happens, I find: if you don't properly complete a project before you have to leave it, it can seem to crumble away: either you come back to it wondering what the heck it was all about, or you find, as I'm doing at the moment, that though you're still obsessed with it, you want to rework it radically. Things have happened in the meantime to adjust your insights entirely. Life, eh? But then how could we have it any other way: what would we write about if we didn't write about life?

Anyway, I'm jumping back in the saddle now, and just as well, since things are kicking off again. Next Saturday I'll be reading at The Word, a one-day festival for writers which will take place at The Continental, Preston (above). I'll be taking part in one of the day's events, an Unthank session  at which publisher Robin Jones will talk, and Sarah Dobbs, author of the Unthank novel Killing Daniel, will also read. Unthank are an amazingly generous publisher - publishing new and established authors with little regard to anything but literary excellence (for their Unthology short-story series there are no fake and limiting restrictions on theme, word-count or style) - and I think any writer should jump at the chance of listening to Robin. (I'm very grateful that Unthank have published two of my stories, in Red Room and Unthology 5, and delighted to say that another will be in Unthology 7, to be published next summer.) The whole day looks very stimulating. Tickets (for the day, including lunch and refreshments), are £20 and you can buy them here. There'll be a book stall and authors attending the festival are invited to bring copies of their latest publication to sell.

Thursday (18th) is the day that The Wish Dog becomes available, a new anthology of ghost stories from Honno press, which includes my story, 'A Matter of Light' - the first proper ghost story I've ever written, I think! I do like a good ghost story (who doesn't?) and I'm very much looking forward to reading the other stories in the book.

And now to get back to that manuscript (and the critical work I've got lined up)...

First review for Unthology 5

I've been away in North Wales (and in internet blackout for some of the time, off and on), and when I got back a couple of days ago my copy of Unthology 5 was waiting for me. There's really nothing like that moment when you first see your story between the covers of a book alongside others you're dying to read - maybe it's not quite as piercing as the first time that happened to me, but the feeling is still strongly there. The copy's by my bed now and I'm eking it out, one story a night - that's the best way to savour stories, I find - and last night I began with the first, Andrea Readman's striking tale of an abduction and imprisonment form the child's point of view - very vivid.

And today we have our first review, on Goodreads, from my writer-contact, Alan Beard. He finds the book 'a fine mix of voices and styles' and 'another excellent contribution to a great series of anthologies'.  He calls my contribution, 'Clarrie and You', a 'sharp story of family fallout coming to a head at a funeral' - but then he does also say that 'of course' he likes his friends' stories best!

Unthology 5 pre-order

It's now possible to pre-order Unthology 5 (which includes my story 'Clarrie and You') from Central Books. The book will be published on 27th June and will soon be available from the Unthank Books website and from Amazon.

Catch-up

I've recently been concentrating on short stories again, and I'm delighted to say that two are to be published in anthologies from the brilliant Unthank Books. In the autumn, Red Room: New Short Stories Inspired by the Brontes, published in aid of the Bronte Birthplace Trust and edited by the talented A J (Andrea) Ashworth, will come from this innovative and energetic publisher, and I was thrilled when Andrea asked me to contribute. (You may remember that Jane Eyre is shut up by her horrid aunt in the scary red room.) Unthank's yearly Unthologies have been receiving much acclaim - last published was Unthology 3, and Unthology 4 is due in the autumn. My story, 'Clarrie and You', will be in Unthology 5, due for publication next June.

It's made me very quiet, this short-story writing - clearly, I haven't been much on this blog for a while. I've always said that it's novel-writing that takes you out of life, and that short-story writing gives you breathers that allow you to stay in touch, but somehow this time it's been a real immersion. I have realised suddenly that I've hardly been out for the last few months without even noticing - whereas usually I'm going up the wall if I don't get out pretty often. It's true that I've had some family issues providing plenty of interest and entertainment  (and some great material for writing in the future!) but they haven't really been that time- or attention-consuming; I just seem somehow to have sunk right in there with the short stories. The only other thing I've been doing is growing plants from seed, which has felt like a very similar quiet, inward and nurturing process: oh, the excitement of sowing, the exhilaration when those first shoots come up, the unbelievable hard work of bringing the damn things in for the night to protect them and then putting them out again next day, day after ruddy day, the potting on (the tedious potting on!) - and then the utter satisfaction at the finished product.

One outing I did make was to the Bakerie in Manchester's Northern Quarter for the launch of Rodge Glass's new collection of stories LoveSexTravelMusik (Freight Books). He was supported by my fellow Salt author David Gaffney, who read from his new flash fiction collection More Sawn-Off Tales (forthcoming then but actually published today), accompanying himself on the guitar. They both read brilliantly and it was a great evening. Though I did feel a little strange and agoraphobic walking down the streets beforehand - just as I did the evening I ventured out to a 'Ballyhoo' evening to launch this year's 24:7 Theatre Festival, also in the Northern Quarter which seems, while my back has been turned, to have become rapidly the hub of Manchester's literary scene.

I took some photos at the Bakerie, too, of Rodge Glass:

and David Gaffney:

John and I did spend a fortnight in Wales at the end of May (which meant setting up a ridiculously complicated wick system to keep moist all those seedlings not yet big enough to plant out - really, at least with writing you can just take your laptop; I'm not sure I'll be doing this radical gardening lark again!), where the spring flowers were very late after our dreadful spring, but the bluebells were magnificent:

I had been invited to the award evening for the Women's Fiction Prize, so I left off writing and took the whole shortlist with me to read in Wales. It was thoroughly luxurious (the books are wonderful), and just what I needed to break through my introverted state. And then I was off to London and revelling in travelling once more. And the party was just fabulous...
I wrote about the shortlist here.