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.


*

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?

Flashing in the Library

This is the cover of Jawbreakers, an anthology I'm thrilled to have a short short story in. I've had a sneaky read of it already, and I can honestly say there are some flipping spectacular stories inside. It's been put together by Calum Kerr, the brains behind National Flash-fiction Day and all-round superhero, as a way of celebrating National Flash-fiction Day, and of showcasing the wonder that is flash-fiction. The book will be released on May 16th, but you can pre-order it here right now. Yeah!

There are events and happenings up and down the country, and as far and wide as Australia and Abergavenny. In Derby, I'm running free flash-fiction workshops in collaboration with Derby City Libraries.

The first of these will take place on actual National Flash-fiction Day, Wednesday 16th May, from 10am - 12pm at Central Library in the city centre. There are still a few places left, so if you fancy having a go, you can book here.

The next one is on Saturday 19th May, from 10:30am - 12:30pm at Mickleover Library. There are only a few spaces left on that one, so get in quick if you want a bit of Saturday-morning-creative-writing-action. Click here to book.

Writers on these workshops will have the opportunity to have their stories published on a special National Flash-fiction Day website, too. Hooray!

Hope to see you there.

This Must Be The Place

This house has sparked a thousand ideas. Here, we started a small press, here, we hand-bound books, made badges, dissected clocks, pieced together record sleeves, sang loud, sang hard, stopped time, restarted it, made up stories, and songs, made plans, made casseroles, changed our lives for the better.

And now the house is empty. It’s just me here. And it’s a different empty to the times before, when the boys were off on tour or were away for a while, or even just for the day.

Some people call this a spooky house. I get why. It used to be part of the funeral home next door, it’s old - it first shows up on maps around 1832, when this street was the edge of a field - and yes, the cellar has got hooks on the ceiling. But I’ve only ever felt welcome here.

This house is rickety and the floorboards creak and the central heating can often sound like a monster waking up, or a monster being woken up by a really rubbish steel band. But whenever I come home and close that green door behind me, it's always accompanied by an audible sigh of relief. I stand in the hallway and take a breath, and in this old empty house, I feel safe.


Right now, I feel like for the first time, me and the house are getting to know one another. There are the noises I recognise, the clanking of radiators and of pipes cooling down, the muffled drip-drip of rain inside the chimneys, the moan of guttering against the brickwork, all noises the house makes on its own. And then add to that the pad of my feet on the stairs, the ticking of clocks, the pop of the loose floorboard outside my room, the slide and squeak of my shoes on the tiles, and there’s a communication of sorts. A call and response.

“I am here.”
“I am.”

This house makes me think differently about the whole idea of a house being yours, belonging to you. Because I belong to this house. (For now, at least.) The way everyone who’s lived here has belonged, in their own way. A while back I read a brilliant piece by Sarah Pinborough, about how maybe it’s we, the living, that haunt our houses, and it's stayed with me. I knew exactly what she meant.

“People don’t own houses. Houses own people and their memories. They hold lives for a while. They know secrets.”

In the front room there’s still a map on the wall of the people who’ve lived here and the people they’ve known. It was drawn long before I moved in, but I am a part of it, my name written in black ink and connected to others with arcing lines. This city is not so big. I know most of the others on the map, even if only by name. The people whose names are on the wall come to visit still. Occasionally I’ll meet someone new and recognise their name before I realise they are a part of it, too, they are on the wall.

Soon, the house will be full again, and then there will be other things that are equally as good, just different. And I’m excited about that, too. Lazy Sundays watching Eighties films, and silly, made-up games. Nights spent screaming favourite songs and sitting in the back yard all moon-lit and stargaze-dizzy. The house takes on a different feel when it’s not just me. It wants to be fun, and to open itself up and let us into its spaces. It also quiets down, leaves it to other people to make the noises.

So I’m going to cherish this time right now. I’m going to use it to listen. To walk through rooms and lean against walls and run and slide down the hallway. And to whisper, to tell my stories, and see what this old, lovely, amazing house has to add.

Holy Smokes!

March, so far, has been crazy-busy.

The very first National Flash Fiction Day is taking place on Wednesday 16th May, and there's so much cool stuff happening. There are events and workshops and even a book! The book will feature stories by Jenn Ashworth, David Gaffney, Vanessa Gebbie, Tania Hershman, me, Kirsty Logan, Nigel McLoughlin, Jonathan Pinnock, Sarah Hilary, Simon Thirsk and...Ali Smith. (!!) If you happen to be a writer-of-stories, then you might want to enter the competition and possibly be in t'book as well.

In celebration of NFF Day, I'm running two Flash-Fiction workshops in cahoots with Derby City Libraries. The first is on Wednesday 16th May, (actual NFF Day) at Central Library, and the second is on Saturday 19th May at Mickleover Library. Click on the links for more details. They're free, but booking is essential. Come along!

Also coming up at the end of this month is Holy Smokes! 4. It's a night of music, art and spoken word that takes place at Derby Silk Mill, which is one of my favourite places in Derby, and is only the first factory in the world! It ticks all of my Industrial-Revolution-fangirl boxes.

There will be music from Ben Butler & Mousepad and Grey Hairs, and they've also got the Hijacked III photography exhibition on. I'm going to be reading a story on the night, as is fellow Time Travel Opportunist Nathan. The incredibly talented Éireann Lorsung will also be reading, and will hopefully bring some MIEL goodies. (I NEED these pencils!)

I'm dead excited about all of this.