Illuminated IS Everything

A few weeks ago, I was invited to submit something for the final Beat The Dust of 2012. The story I sent was partly inspired by Quad's Illuminated exhibition, which I urge you to go and visit if you're anywhere near this little city in the Midlands. I'm slightly obsessed with this exhibition. I can't quite figure out what it is about it. It might be the dark inside the gallery. And how you can sit on the floor in a corner, or on a cushion in the middle of the floor, and just think about things, undisturbed. Yes. It's a good space for thinking. And it's also been responsible the last three stories I've written, and will probably spark a few more yet.

Intermission, the story I wrote for Beat The Dust, begins in front of the work Brilliant Noise, by Semiconductor, which is a film made from thousands of NASA satellite photos of the sun. The picture above is a still from it.

So, when Quad put a call out for local musicians, poets, dancers and actors to create new work as a response to the exhibition, I knew I had to send in a pitch. I'm no musician or poet, but as some of you may already know, I am a fantastic dancer. So...anyway...I will be reading a story/monologue this very evening, inside RINK, a floor-based projection by David Ward, which includes imagery from astronomy and particle physics. It's my favourite place in Derby right now, apart from my bed. There are bits where you can pretend you're on the moon!

I don't have a title for my story yet, and it's a little bit different to things I've done before, but I am very excited about it. Fellow TTO compadre Biff is also doing some of his music as Emphemetry. I only found out Biff was involved yesterday. Sneaky TTO takeover, YEAH!

It's only a short event, probably no longer than half an hour, and it starts dead on 7pm. And it's free, but spaces are very limited, so you'll need to book a ticket.

Stories To Read Aloud

I was away from home when my author copy of Overheard, Stories to Read Aloud, arrived. It was amazing to open the parcel and hold it in my hands. It's a thing of beauty. I can't stop picking it up and smelling it. It smells gooooood. Jonathan Taylor is an incredible editor, and there are so many talented writers (Judith Alnatt, David Belbin, Louis De Bernières, Vanessa Gebbie, Tania Hershman, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Adele Parks, Lee Rourke, Salman Rushdie, Robert Shearman and Aimee Wilkinson to name but a few) and awesome stories in it. AND...it's available to buy now from Salt.
Who doesn't love a book of stories for Christmas?

Between There and Here

I learned from this weekend’s planetarium visit that the bright star I’m seeing, just right and up from the moon is in fact Jupiter. Not a star at all. The brightest stars are tricks. Venus always swizzes me into thinking it’s the first star, and even though I always realise it’s not, I still wish on it anyway. 

Inside the planetarium I wanted to lie down. I wish I’d had it to myself. When I was a kid, I stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling in the shape of constellations. It was tricky to do, and I only got so far as Libra, Ursa Major (inc. the Plough) and Ursa Minor, and Cassiopeia (my favourite tortoise). Every night, I’d wait in the dark for them to start shining, and I’d make believe I was out in a field somewhere, or on a rooftop, just me and the night sky. I liked the vastness of it. The idea that it reached forever.

I’m in that weird place at the moment, where I’m half in a book’s world and half here. There’s the feeling of not being tethered. I’m seeing everything through the book’s lens, staring up at the moon full of questions, half-lost. 

There was something the planetarium guide said about the roots of the word astronaut. That it literally means ‘sailor of the stars’, and it brought back a memory of the kitchen bench we had when I was little, and how me and my sister would turn it upside down so it became a boat. We’d sail it up and down rivers and across oceans, its wood creaking in the dark waters. I don’t know if we had the North Star to guide us. But my fascination with survival manuals started early, so it’s entirely possible I knew how to navigate with the heart of a sailor, even then. 

It’s been a strange week. I stared at the floor of a gallery for what could easily have been an hour, watching star maps and projections of the night sky at my feet. And it seemed I was on the surface of the moon. This is the beginning of something. 

And after, in the planetarium, more projections, this time of the actual moon’s surface, and me at ground level, almost there. But not there. But not quite here, either. And under the stars and the planets, the realisation hit me that I’ll probably never get to walk on the moon. And it broke my heart.

So right now there are bright stars, and fake firework-stars, bangs and crashes and all the gunpowder and copper chloride I could ever want. And I’m jealous of the man who jumped from space, not for the jump, but for what he saw. And I’m jealous of the twelve people who’ve walked on the moon. And I wonder if there are some things you never let go of. Some wishes you keep on making, even if you know you’re not really wishing on stars. 

I don’t want to finish the book. I like the wondering how it’s all going to turn out, I like not quite understanding what’s going on. I have one foot there and one foot here. And tomorrow, well, later today now, I’m going to the gallery again. To watch the stars beneath my feet, and be fully in that place, yet make believe I’m on the moon, for as long as I am.

Jackanory: Life, Bodies, Humans and Disasters

This is from Bad Language at Manchester Museum. Insa Langhorst filmed the whole night, and the rest of the videos can be found here.

Thanks again to Dan, Nici and Joe at Bad Language for inviting me. And to Jenn Ashworth, Helen Mort, Anneliese Mackintosh, John Leyland, Alex Keelan, Nija Dalal, the staff at Manchester Museum, and everyone who came, for making it such an amazing night!

Bad Language at Manchester Museum

Hey! Look at this! It's happening a week from today. It's in a museum and there will be stories and poems and a WHALE SKELETON. I was excited about it anyway, since c'mon, anything involving Jenn is going to be ace. And then there's the brilliant Helen Mort, and did I mention it's IN A MUSEUM?

On top of that, Bad Language did a call-out for proposals to read at the event, and on Monday I got an email telling me mine had been accepted. Woop! Also chosen were John Leyland, Nija Dalal, Anneliese Mackintosh and Alex Keelan. I feel really lucky to be in such fantastic company.

There's more info about the event here.

I can't wait!

Cave Dwelling

It's a Friday in July, and it hasn't rained yet. My window is open. It has been open for weeks now, the temperature inside my room remaining a kind of cool constant. Sometimes at night, I'll pull on a cardigan as I read in bed, but most of the time it is neither too hot nor too cool, and I think of my room as a cave of sorts. In more ways than one.

Winter was long, and summer has yet to unfurl itself across this city. I spent the winter curled under blankets with a boy, sleepy with the shared warmth and drunk on the company. Together we watched flickering screens and talked into long dark nights. We hunter-gathered supplies from the fridge at three a.m. and painted stories across each other's bodies that would settle just beneath the skin, Lascaux-bright and indelible. And when we came out after the thaw, we knew each other a little better, and understood ourselves a little less.

The weathermen say summer will happen, is going to happen. But I'm half in love with these thunderstorms, and I'm still unsure what summer will bring.


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Some things that did happen, or are happening...

I wrote a story called Fingerpainting.

a story, Robot Love, was published in the ebook 100RPM.

a story, One, Two, will be in Overheard, to be published by Salt in November.

I met, briefly, the coolest dog in the world.

I listened to this song a gazillion times...



and I received possibly the greatest wedding invite ever.

Happy First National Flash-Fiction Day!

I don't know if I've ever read so many stories in such a short space of time before. Today has been brilliant. From 11am until 3pm there's been a steady stream of short short stories appearing at The Write-In. And I'm VERY PLEASED to see that the writers from my workshop this morning have been scribbling away and representing the Midlands in all its wordy goodness. And it's not even over yet. Well, the Write-In may be, but there's still tons of stuff going on around the country. Get involved! Write flash!

I just got my author copies of Jawbreakers in the post. If anyone has a Kindle, they can download Jawbreakers for free! today. If you'd like the actual book (smells lovely!), then that's available to buy here, or if you're in the Derby area, we can arrange a meet-up and I'll swap you one for six of your shiny pounds.

I still feel a little dazed. It might be time for an afternoon nap. I'm not sure what Calum is powered by, but well, just thinking about everything he's done makes me sleepy. He's amazing. He made this fantastic day/event/idea/book/website/write-in/behemoth happen. And I'm so happy to have been part of it.

Hopefully the day will have inspired lots of new writers and lots of new stories.

Well done Calum, and everyone else involved! Same time next year?