Dan Powell interviews me about 'Looking for the Castle'.

There's an interview with me over on the Unthology Blog, in which Dan Powell, fellow contributor to Unthology 7, quizzes me about my story 'Looking for the Castle' and other writing issues. In particular he asks me about my use of the second person, which I would never at one time have used, seeing it as a bit of fashionable tic, but then got interested in, and in which this story and my previous Unthology story, 'Clarrie and You' (Unthology 5) are cast.

A time-lapse year

Happy New Year to all!

It's been a funny time-lapse sort of year for me, writing-wise. All last winter I holed in and worked intensively on something long and then got stalled on it for various reasons not to do with writing, so there's nothing to show for it yet and may not be for a while. In the meantime, however, although as far as the actual writing went my focus was away from short stories, stories I'd written previously were published in several anthologies. In January I was in York at a signing for Red Room: New Short Stories Inspired by the Brontes, ed. A J Ashworth (Unthank Books), for which my story 'That Turbulent Stillness' was commissioned - an amusing day I wrote about here. Spring and summer brought three more anthologies. Best British Short Stories 2014, ed. Nicholas Royle (Salt) was launched in June at the first-ever London Short Story Festival and included my story 'Tides, Or How Stories Do or Don't Get Told', first published online by Fiction Editor Kate Brown at The View From Here. This was followed the very next week by Unthology 5, ed. Ashley Stokes & Robin Jones (Unthank), where my story 'Clarrie and You' appeared, which involved me in a truly enjoyable first-time trip to Norwich for the launch. In July I attended the 13th Conference on the Short Story in English in Vienna, and my story 'Where the Starlings Fly' was one in an anthology of stories by writers invited to read at the conference, Unbraiding the Short Story, ed. Maurice A Lee. Finally, in the autumn, my inverted ghost story 'A Matter of Light' saw publication in an anthology of creepy stories from Honno, The Wish Dog, ed. Penny Thomas and Stephanie Tillotson. In fact, I ended up with a clash: I was really sorry to have to miss the Cardiff launch of this book as I was already committed to read at an event at Edge Hill University for Best British Short Stories 2014, organised by fellow contributor and lecturer Ailsa Cox. Meanwhile, during the summer, my story 'Looking for the Castle' was runner-up in the Short Fiction competition, and in the week before Christmas I heard that it is to be published in Unthology 7 by Unthank Books in the coming summer.

After my winter of seclusion, I became suddenly a writer once more in touch with the wider literary world. A long time ago now I gave up teaching writing to concentrate more on my own work. I was lucky to be able financially to do that, I know, but the fact is that I was becoming decidedly itchy for the creative and intellectual stimulation I always found in teaching. So when in March I was invited to read at the Vienna conference, I jumped at the chance, and have to say that I revelled in the conference, in the to-and-fro with academics and other writers. An upshot was that I was invited to join a narrative research group, and I have to say that although peace and isolation are essential ingredients in the life of the writer, there's little more stimulating than sharing ideas about writing with your peers and to be able to feel a sense of your own place as a writer within the wider world of literary ideas. By the same token, I accepted a generous invitation to join the writers' group to which three of my writing colleagues already belonged, and I'm once again experiencing that mutual support between writers who trust and respect each other - there's really nothing like it.

I'm entering 2015 with a lot lined up writing-wise: two longer pieces to redraft and, before Easter, a commission to write a short story and linked essay, but I'm thrilled to be able to say I'm doing it all with a sense of backup, and with a greater sense of context in which to do it.

I wish you all similar happiness in your projects for the coming year.

New story publication

Great news yesterday that my story 'Looking for the Castle' is to be included in Unthology 7, due from Unthank Books in the summer. Editor Ashley Stokes had been deciding between two of my stories and this is the one he has finally plumped for, and I'm pleased, as it's by far the more complex of the two, another of the stories in which I've tried to do something more ambitious in the short story form than previously. ('Clarrie and You', which Unthank also published [Unthology 5] was another). One of the strange paradoxes of my writing life is that sometimes the things I've found easiest (and quickest) to write have been the easiest to publish or broadcast, and have received the most acclaim. Sometimes, I know, this is just because the thing happened to work right from the start, and the ease of conception comes out in the writing, but there's often the sneaking suspicion that the ease comes from, not exactly superficiality, but familiarity: a reliance on tried and tested codes. In these instances I feel that the reason the thing was so easily accepted was because I was writing into a borrowed reality - other people's, rather than my own. Then I feel I've cheated myself and my deeper aim in writing, which is precisely to question the ready-made realities.

The short story form is famously capable of exposing ambiguity and uncertainty, but there's also a danger of using its compactness to shut things down, to present a satisfying (but ultimately stifling) take on the world. In 'Clarrie and You' I wanted to show precisely how any 'take' on the world can be mistaken, and in order to do that I had to include a convoluted plot involving a secret, a real challenge for the short story form. 'Looking for the Castle' is similar, but this time it's not a secret creating a false view but the difficulties of memory and lack of understanding. It was one of the hardest
of my stories to write, and I'm hugely grateful to both Gerard Donovan, who judged the 2014 Short Fiction Prize and chose it as runner-up, and now to Ashley Stokes, for seeing what I was trying to do.

Crossposted to Fictionbitch.

The Short Review looks at Unthology 5 and 'Clarrie and You'

Horrible rainy day - first real day of autumn, but I'm cheered no end by a lovely new review of Unthology 5 on The Short Review, which says some lovely things about my story, 'Clarrie and You', and the anthology as a whole. Sarah Schofield calls the book 'a glittering collection' and offers 

A huge credit to editors Ashley Stokes and Robin Jones that selection seems to be based on whether a story sings, not on who wrote it. Following a highly acclaimed backlist of Unthank anthologies, I believe Unthology 5 is the strongest to date.

Of 'Clarrie and You' she says:

My favourite story is Elizabeth Baines’ Clarrie and You. Rich with multifaceted believable characters, it explores deep held secrets and misunderstandings. The protagonist, Olive, reflects back on the complex relationship she has with her sister, Clarrie. Baines’ deft touch and acutely observed detail of family relationships make it a story with layers waiting to be undone;

"There are things you don’t want to remember, because doing so makes you guilty, after all these years and at your time of life, of ridiculous sibling rivalry."

The second person narration works brilliantly in both intensifying the reader’s involvement in the story and yet simultaneously feeling somewhat accusatory. We empathise with the slights Olive perceives but there are moments when we’re not entirely certain whose side to fall on. The story offers new subtleties with every read.

New review of Unthology 5

There's a very nice new review of Unthology 5 from Thea Hawlin of The Siren.

She says, 'The editor’s introduction to this fifth edition of Unthology asks a simple question "Can I write?" The resounding answer is yes, you can write on anything and everything, the only rule is that you have to write it well, and the writers collected in this anthology exemplify this with verve. The range of voices and scenarios is impressive. If you’re looking for a simulating, unexpected and ultimately inspiring collection of short stories that will jolt you into seeing the world and the art of storytelling in a different way; read this collection and you won’t be disappointed.'

Of my story, 'Clarrie and You', she says that its use of the second person 'impresses with striking immediacy'.

Inspirations: 'Clarrie and You'

I've written a post for the Unthology blog about the inspirations behind my Unthology 5 story, 'Clarrie and You', which can be read here.

Unthank also asked me to look for an image that connected with my story, and I found this amazing painting (above), Sisters of Rural Quebec by Prudence Heward. I love it for itself, but also can't believe how well it sums up the relationship between the two sisters in my story. Not only is it the right era - the era in which the two sisters of my story are children (a past which the story revolves around in the attempt to uncover the reasons for the present-day tensions between them) - but also it beautifully sums up the ambivalence of their lifelong tensions and connection. The way the sisters in the picture are turned from each other yet jammed together by the composition echoes precisely the situation between my two sisters, the preoccupied yet somehow painfully involved expressions of their faces, the light of one and the dark of the other, the greater but perhaps more quotidian stress of the one who looks the elder, and the more closed-off and potentially secretive expression of the other. The ambiguity of their positions: the elder higher, but backgrounded. And all the sharp angles that surround them, the daggers of the leaves, the uncompromising squares of the doors, and the triangle of the composition that plunges them together in their separateness.

Short Fiction Prize, Edge Hill Prize, and another Unthology 5 review

My short-story-filled summer continues apace. I am staggered to hear that my story, 'Looking for the Castle' is the runner up in this year's International Short Fiction Journal Prize. I'm particularly thrilled that this story has done so well, as it was one of the most difficult and complex I've written, a story about the complexities and uncertainties of memory, and the resultant fragmentation of self - themes I've been concerned with recently in my longer work, but which proved more tricky in the short form. It took a long time to get right; I kept having to mull it and realise it wasn't quite working and go back and make tweaks that might not have seemed much but were, in the end, all-important. My huge congratulations to the winner, Graham Mort, and to the shortlistees Catherine McNamara and Geoffrey Miller, and the longlistees who included my writing colleagues Tania Hershman and Sara Mae Tuson, and my great thanks to the judge, Gerard Donovan. Thanks are also due to my good friend, writer and editor Charles Lambert, who gave me faith in the story when I was beginning to doubt it.

Graham Mort was the winner of the Edge Hill Prize two or three years back, and this year's awards night was held in London's Free word Centre on Thursday, John Burnside winning for his collection Something Like Happy and Rachel Tresize winning the Readers' Choice prize for her collection Cosmic Latte. It's a night I always look forward to, and it didn't disappoint, though one sorry note was the absence due to illness of Ailsa Cox who founded and administrates the prize. I always look forward to a catch-up with my co-editor on the former short-story mag, metropolitan, so that was disappointing. My photo isn't very good, I'm afraid, but on the right at the back are the Salt contingent, representing David Rose whose collection Posthumous Stories was shortlisted, publisher Jen Hamilton Emery far right and editor Nick Royle second from right. On the far left are, second from left, Jackie McCarrick, shortlisted for her collection The Scattering, and fourth from left her editor at Seren Books, Penny Thomas (whom I was thrilled to meet, as she is editing the forthcoming Honno ghost anthology The Wish Dog which includes my story 'A Matter of Light'). In the centre at the back (second from right of the small gap) is Rachel Tresize. Here's John accepting his prize:

As for Unthology 5, it keeps buzzing. There's yet another very positive review, this time by Cath Barton on Sabotage Reviews. 'Excellent writing, and not a little in the stories to surprise and sometimes unsettle the reader.' She praises the diversity, but notes too that several of the stories are about disturbing secrets, including my own, 'Clarrie and You', in which she says 'the secrets carry great sadness.'