PUBLICATION NEWS

 My story 'What Can You Do?' has been Highly Commended in The Val Wood Yorkshire Prize 2022, winning £25.

A writer's opinion of what she has read

 BOOK REVIEWS

The Wayward Children series

by Seanan McGuire

Every year, somewhere in the world, children vanish, sometimes never to be seen again. Imagine these children weren't abducted, or trafficked, or murdered; that they didn't run away from home to a miserable existence living on the streets. Instead, they slipped through doorways into other worlds.

Such doorways, and such alternative worlds, are a staple ingredient of children's books - whether it's stepping through the back of a wardrobe into a snow-covered Narnia, falling through a mirror or down a rabbit hole into a world run by playing cards or chess pieces, slitting the skin of this world with a subtle knife that opens a gash into an adjoining world, climbing a magic faraway tree to visit the lands that visit its topmost branches, or having your entire house carried by a tornado to land on a wicked witch. Anyone who has heard, read or seen films of children's stories knows about 'other worlds'.

Imagine what such worlds might really be like, their wonders and their horrors. Imagine what such worlds would do to the children who wander into them. If those children returned to our world after years away, either temporarily or permanently, how would they be changed? Would they fit back in with their families? Would they be desperate to return to the world they had to leave behind? 

This is the idea behind Seanan McGuire's series. Eleanor West, a woman who herself outgrew the nonsense world in which she felt absolutely at home as a child, and is now waiting until she becomes senile enough to fit back in again so she can return, has set up a school for such 'wayward' children, and the novels tell the stories of some of the school's pupils and the worlds they have lost and found. 

There are echoes here of Miss Peregrine's School For Peculiar Children, even occasional hints of Harry Potter, but the books don't feel derivative or unoriginal. This is mainly because McGuire has such a  brilliant way with words. Her writing style is pacy, wry, moving and confident, her plots outrageous, darkly gothic, gripping, funny and tragic. They are aimed at a YA audience and deal with issues of gender-identity, body-image, difference and prejudice, love and hatred, bullying and jealousy and heroism and loyalty. These are things that are useful for young people to explore, but they are also fascinating for older readers, and her style and ideas are compelling for any reader who enjoys contemporary fantasy.

Highly recommended:  *****

Tales from the bunker - felines and felons

Purrfect Houseguests

I’ve learned that, when you steal a neighbour’s cat, you can’t give it back.

              P and I have form when it comes to cat-stealing. Three years after we moved to our current house, we were befriended by two stunningly beautiful kittens who were doing the rounds of all the neighbouring gardens. They would stare into living rooms through the patio doors, looking pretty and holding in their sides as if they were starving, and they soon discovered which houses contained pushovers. The young couple next to us on one side were easy-going mugs, but they had two expensive pedigree cats specially bred to be ‘indoor cats’ and so they didn’t want someone else’s cats letting them know about the wonders of the outside world. Our neighbours on the other side owned canaries and the woman of the house hates cats. So it was down to us to say the fateful words: ‘Oh, look at the lovely little things! I wonder who they belong to? Let’s give them some food and make friends with them’.

Asbo, doing his famous impression of a furry cushion

If I’m going to be accurate, it was in fact only the black and white kitten, a cat who resembled the cartoon cat on the Felix advertisements so perfectly that his owners had bafflingly called him Dusty (!), who stared in through the patio window, or came up to us when we parked our cars after work. His brother, a black cat who was at that time called the entirely inappropriate name of Fluffy, was much more cautious and tended to remain in the shadows, under cars or behind bushes, just mewing loudly. For several weeks, we actually thought that Dusty was throwing his voice, until eventually this drop-dead gorgeous black kitten emerged shyly from his hiding place and we realized there were two of them.

              We had no idea where they were from but they started popping round regularly. We didn’t often give them food, but we played with them and cuddled them, and then they would run off home till next time. It was a good arrangement.

              Then, one day, Fluffy turned up and collapsed on our rug. He was clearly in a bad way so P went off round the local houses trying to find his owners. He discovered a house on the next street which had a cat basket in the porch, but no one was home, so he left a note for them. An hour later, their owner, Adrian, turned up, very apologetic and concerned, and took Fluffy to the vet. Once he recovered, however, Fluffy had clearly decided that our house was the better bet in times of need, and he started coming round more frequently and even trying to stay overnight. We used to have to throw him out at closing time, like a lazy drunk In a bar.

Asbo, wriggling is bum in preparation for a pounce

This led to his owners asking us to look after the cats while they went on holiday, and this led to the cats deciding they were moving in with us. After a lengthy period of cat-sharing, Adrian finally gave them up to us and bought a Yorkshire terrier instead. Eight years later, Dusty was hit by a car and killed, and it was Adrian who found him lying by the roadside. He was very upset, though not as upset as us. And not as upset as his brother, who by that time we’d renamed Asbo (which suited him much better). He spent weeks staring out of the patio windows towards the gate where Dusty would usually come in. There are few things more poignant than an animal grieving for its best friend, and before the cats moved in with us I hadn’t realized that they could feel such loss. You can’t explain to an animal what has happened. Do cats have a sense of death? They certainly don’t seem to feel any mercy for the headless mice they leave on your patio. But they do seem to grieve for their brothers. Asbo did anyway, for many weeks.

              Asbo himself lived until he was about fourteen, and then had to be euthanized due to bowel cancer. Taking him to the vet for the last time was a learning experience for me, as I had expected to feel relieved that his suffering would be over, but in fact we both burst into tears and cried like babies all the way home. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I’d been very distressed when, in my early twenties, my childhood dog had been euthanized, but I wasn’t there when it happened (she was operated on and the cancer from which she was suffering was deemed by the vet to be so widespread that it seemed kinder to euthanise her without bringing her round from the anaesthetic) – but actually being with an animal you love in his final moments feels overwhelmingly sad.

Dusty, shocked by what he's just seen on TV

Dusty was energetic, mischievous, friendly and brave-to-the-point-of-recklessness, which is probably why he died the way he did. He used to hare about the house like a maniac, climbing on everything he could (which was basically everything). I’m sure he visited other houses as he often came home smelling of other people’s perfume and after-shave. He loved to be cuddled and was very tolerant of belly-rubs and paw-pats. He was extremely friendly and gentle with humans, but a determined and highly successful hunter. He once turned up on our patio carrying a dead rat half his own size, and looking immensely pleased with himself.  Asbo, on the other hand, was much more cautious. He was physically bigger and was always getting into fights with other male cats, despite having been ‘done’ as a kitten, and he was as magnificently agile as most cats, but his extra weight sometimes made him less speedy than his brother. I remember once watching him from my bedroom window, when he was still a very young cat, trying to climb up a silver birch sapling after a bird - the tree was bend under his weight, swinging from side to side like a pendulum, and the stupid animal clearly had no idea what to do. He was clinging on tightly, looking slightly desperate, until at last he lost his grip and somersaulted to the ground, landing on his feet and strolling off nonchalantly, as if that's what he'd intended all along. Cats hate to lose face.

Dusty, disapproving of P's shoe display

 

            Asbo received so many wounds over the years – he’d drag himself home, bleeding and mutilated, reminding me of the cat who fights the devil every night to protect his human family in Neil Gaiman’s short story 'The Price'. He also had several life-threatening illnesses over the years. He cost a fortune in vet bills. Despite this, he significantly outlived his brother. Asbo had a reputation for being anti-social, though he was very affectionate with us, and he never showed any aggression towards our great-nephew who was born about eighteen months before Asbo died. But he was large, with huge claws and teeth (for a domestic cat), and he didn’t like strangers. He once scratched a friend of ours who happens to be gay. Our friend was just sitting at the other end of the settee, minding his own business, when Asbo suddenly spun round and scratched his arm. Our friend was remarkably sanguine about the experience, and P commented, ‘Well, I've heard there’s a lot of homophobia in the black community!’.

Asbo, feeling rather smug because he's higher than everyone else

After Asbo was euthanised, we decided not to get another cat, or at least not to do so for some years. We thought we’d get a rescue cat sometime in the future. However, we didn’t take Tilly into account. Tilly is another black cat who lived at another neighbour’s house. She’s about two years younger than Asbo, and, being a very small animal, she was terrified of both Asbo and Dusty, who bullied her frequently, Despite this, for reasons unknown to us, she has always been obsessed with getting into our house. She would watch until our cats had gone out, then come to the patio doors to try to inveigle her way in. We never fed her and didn’t encourage her at all for many years. In fact, we both used to consider her to be a weird little thing who was slightly bonkers, because she was very unpredictable and would bite at any sign of imaginary danger. She was well-looked-after in her own home, with kind owners who were used to cats, but her owners adopted a baby and also bought a little West Highland terrier – I think it was the terrier that finally convinced Tilly to move out, though even now she goes home every so often to play with the little dog, according to the neighbours.

Early morning call, courtesy of Tilly Alarm Clock LTD

It didn’t take her long to realise that Asbo was no longer around, and she started to come over every day for about twenty minutes, just to say hello. We didn’t feed her at all, but we weren’t unfriendly either.  Last year, her owners went away on holiday and left her at home on her own with an automated food dispenser and a cat flap. She immediately came over to ours and clearly wanted to stay here. At the end of the first day, she ‘hid’ behind an armchair, clearly hoping we wouldn’t realise she was there, so, knowing her owners were away, we let her stay. That was our big mistake. She stayed with us for the rest of the week and by the time her owners returned, she’d clearly decided that our house was a suitable retirement home for eighteen year old bones. Fortunately, her owners were happy for Tilly to stay with us and in fact they have been nothing but helpful about it.

Asbo, wishing he didn't have to have handmade play furniture

You can’t expect to get sane behaviour from a cat. At least, not sane behaviour by human definitions of ‘sane’. Tilly has always been a bit batty, and now she’s elderly she’s even more bonkers. She still bites people randomly for no reason whatsoever (must be a black cat thing, though Asbo never bit or scratched us, just people he didn't know, whereas Tilly bites the nearest person, if she’s spooked - and she can be spooked by anything). Her bite is feeble, however, as she’s very tiny and old. She is literally about half the size of Asbo. In my opinion, Asbo was the most beautiful cat who ever lived, so Tilly can never live up to him in beauty or strength, but she makes up for it in weirdness. She doesn’t mew, just opens her mouth as if she’s mewing. Despite her miniature size, she snores louder than a human. She is startled by things you’d think she was familiar with, like that Catherine Tate character who started screaming whenever she heard a sudden noise. She will be lying asleep on Philip’s knee and will suddenly scramble to her feet and rush to the door. She goes through patches of weird behaviour when we start to wonder if she has cat Alzheimers’ (or some equivalent), but then she returns to what counts as normal for a few days.

Tilly, trying to work out why she's ended up on the wrong side of the door

There has been a gorgeous long-haired ginger cat in our street for several years. He resembles Bagpuss. I don’t know who he belongs to but he’s well-looked-after. Like most cats, he won’t come near us outside – if he sees people, even neighbours he's been seeing all his life,  he immediately darts off into the undergrowth and cowers behind the shrubbery as if they're armed with bows and arrows and are out looking for a new ginger hunting hat to keep their ears warm in the coming winter. However, a few years back, he did a weird thing. He came into our house via the open patio doors, strolled casually upstairs (I followed him, astonished and impressed by his chutzpah), walked into our great-nephew’s bedroom, as if he had a blueprint of the house in his brain, leapt gracefully onto the windowsill and took a long, long look at the street outside, then turned back to me, allowed me to scratch his head once, then jumped off the windowsill and strolled back out the way he’d come in. He then returned to his usual stand-offishness for several years, leaping into the bushes every time he spotted me, as if we'd never shared that brief and strange encounter..

However, last week he came in again, still casual and relaxed, rubbed up against my legs and mewed with a surprisingly deep mew, then gobbled up the bit of stale food Tilly had left in her saucer that morning before she went out to her day-job (sunbathing on top of her original owner’s wheelie bins). While he ate, he looked over his shoulder nervously several times as if expecting an ambush, though what teeny tiny Tilly could have done about it I'm not sure. She would probably just have jumped onto the relative safety of the garden table and given me a disapproving hard stare. Satisfied, he then strolled out into the garden  and vanished. 

Well, you can forget it, mate. You’re not our cat, however gorgeous and clever you are. You’re not moving in here. There’s no room at the inn. We already have one crazy cat, and we don’t need another. Our days of cat-rustling are over.

I mean it…

Ginger, looking like he knows which side his bread's buttered

May's Showcase

 So far, I have showcased the talented authors and business partners, Ruth Loten and Jane Langan. This month I’m going to showcase another student from the OU Masters in Creative Writing cohort who graduated in 2020, Beck Collett. Like Ruth and Jane, Beck is also a valued member of the Twenty-Twenty Club, a group we set up for MA alumni to give writing feedback to each other. Since completing her Masters Degree, she has continued to write and have work published.  I love Beck’s style of writing which is highly imaginative, spare, slightly weird, often deeply poignant. Scroll down to find out more about Beck and her writing, including one of her stories and an in-depth interview containing many insights into the life of a writer.

Biography

Beck Collett lives in South Wales with her husband, 10-year-old daughter, two monochrome cats, and Multiple Sclerosis. She writes short-form fiction, and graduated from the Open University with an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction in 2020.

 

Publication and links:

 

Her work has been published by: 

 

Makarelle https://amzn.eu/d/8yvlGkR

 

Sixth Element Publishing Crossing the Tees Short Story Anthology – “The most magical little bookshop . . . a little piece of heaven in what can be a crazy world.” (drakethebookshop.co.uk)

 

Castle Priory Press https://amzn.eu/d/gZOo9xp

 

New Welsh Review among others.

 

In April 2023, she was featured by The Open University in Wales:  'The OU gave me my confidence back': Beck's experience of studying with MS | Open University in Wales, WalesOnline How The Open University enabled mum with MS to regain her confidence - Wales Online , and The Western Mail newspaper.

 

Her novella-in-flash, Blinks and Shards, was highly commended in the New Welsh Review Rheidol Prize for Prose 2022.

 

You can also find her on her blog and on Instagram:

 

Blog: blinksandshards.blogspot.com

 

Instagram: @tiddleboo

 

 

 

Here is an example of Beck’s work:

 

Midnight Chickens, Stone Spewers,

and Men from the Past

 

The therapist settled herself into her egg-like chair, rested her hand on the desk, and smiled at him. She had a name, Gerry, but it was easier for him just to think of her by job title. Names were personal, they built bridges and links; he didn’t want anything like that happening.

            ‘What would you like to chat about today, Michael?’

            He concertinaed his forehead, and counted to nine. He’d found nine to be soothing, came to count on it, as it were. Time’s up, time to tell.

            ‘Three things happened that I want to tell you about,’ he began, ‘one from before, and two others from this week. I’ll start with yesterday, alright?’

            She nodded, pen in hand, ready to doodle as Michael spoke. He never told the truth, she knew that, but he didn’t lie either. He believed what he said. Her job was to untangle the rational from the ball of chaos. Over recent weeks, she’d pulled words and sometimes whole sentences clear, in the hope of forming a script or cypher to make sense of this lost boy.

            ‘Yesterday,’ Michael began, looking anywhere except at her, ‘I was walking through town, and I saw him when he was only the size of a pushpin.’

He liked pushpins, liked to make patterns with them on the pockmarked stud-wall in his den, liked to wind wool around them, liked to pretend he was a detective from the movies, cracking a case, making it all make sense with a few pushpins and thread.

‘Who was it you saw?’ she prompted, refusing to lose him this early in the session. Experience had taught her that she needed to keep Michael on a tight leash, less their hour be wasted.

‘I don’t know his name. I knew, though, soon as I saw him, that he’d have a message for me. He was tacking his way—’

‘”Tacking?”’ she asked, interrupting him. He hated when she did that. He’d also known she wouldn’t know about tacking, stupid cow. In that moment, he felt a kind of fondness for her wash over him as she sat, trying her very best to help him understand himself.

‘Zig-zagging, like boats do when they’re trying to get somewhere and the wind’s blowing against them. That’s how he was coming at me. I tried to calculate where he’d be when we passed, but I got it wrong. I changed my step to get out of his way, but he stepped right in front of me, and we almost touched.’

He fell silent, staring off at the dying lily in the pot on her desk, the coffee ring that was always there next to the laptop, the red-rimmed clock on the wall that ran two minutes earlier than it should, and the ruler-straight parting of her dull brown hair, wire-wool grey roots peeking out as she waited for him to continue.

‘He had a beard, touching his coat. Dirty white and curling. Reminded me of the sheep on the cliffs over Ogmore.’ She smiled at that, and it made him happy. Immediately, he chastised himself for softening twice already; take charge, screamed the voice in his head, keep charge.

‘His jacket was dirty black. It looked greasy, like it’d dirty up your clothes if you washed them with it. His jeans were dirty grey, or faded dirty blue. I didn’t look at his shoes, in case he thought I was bowing to him or something, in case he thought he was in charge, I suppose.’

She doodled, idly, waiting for the words to reach out at her. Nothing yet, but there would be.

‘His face was weather-beaten, and his eyes were like two fierce black coals.’ He waited to see if she wrote that down. He’d been proud of his description of the eyes, thought hard about his words, sure they’d impress her, but her pen’s arc didn’t change. Bitch.

Aware of the silence, Gerry looked up at Michael, and caught the anger in his eyes. They flickered and flashed gold and black, and she felt her throat tighten. ‘Go on,’ she urged, ‘what happened next?’

Michael felt a compulsion to walk out, leave her hanging on his unfinished words, but he needed to get the story out to make himself feel better. It twisted around inside of him, hurting him, and he had to share that hurt in order to heal. That was what she was for; sucking the poison out of him, spitting it safely out where it couldn’t harm anyone else.

‘He stumbled, right in front of me, and our eyes met for less than a millisecond, but he had me. He started shouting, sounded like the words rumbled their way up from his gullet, rumbled out of his mouth, between sharp teeth. I kept on walking, pretended not to have heard him, but he knew I had.’

‘What was he saying, Michael? What was it that upset you so much?’

‘Wasn’t the words that bothered me,’ he snapped, angry that she hadn’t let him finish up. He still hadn’t told her the important bit. ‘He swore at me, called me a “fucking” something, I didn’t hear what else. I kept on walking, had to get away from him. In case…’

‘In case what? What was it, Michael?’

Above Gerry’s desk was a shelf. It hadn’t been dusted in nearly a year, and the psychology books stood proud on it; tightly squeezed together by the pair of amethyst geodes she used as bookends. Michael gazed at the cobweb spun between bookend and textbook; the spider was lucky to have found such a slatternly housekeeper to entrust its home to.

He took a deep breath in, slow as he could, knowing she wouldn’t believe what he had to say next. ‘He’d come from the past,’ he said, ‘but I also felt like he’d been in the future already, too. I felt, when he looked at me, when our eyes met for that moment… felt like he was me.’

Silence.

Gerry stared hard at Michael, and knew he believed what he said. It obviously wasn’t true, but it was important not to correct him that way, of course; telling him he was wrong would only cause him to clam up again.

‘You said he was from the past, and the future? How can both statements be true, Michael? And how could he have been you? Here you are, sitting here with me right now.’

She hadn’t understood – how could she ever understand him?

‘I’m not lying.’

‘I never accused you of lying, Michael, I just said that—’

‘He’d come from the past when I saw him, I can prove it. He was carrying two plastic bags full of heavy things, they were swinging as he walked – not in a funny way, like he was thinking of a song, but because of the weight of whatever was in them. Tins, or potatoes, something heavy.’ He sat back in his chair, aware that he’d been leaning forwards, entering her space.

‘Lots of people carry shopping bags, Michael. How can that prove to me that he’d time-travelled?’

‘The bags were new. Clean, pure white, with red stripes. The plastic on the handles hadn’t stretched. I notice these things, you know I do.’

Gerry nodded in agreement, he absolutely noticed that sort of thing, had since the first time she’d laid her eyes on him.

‘They were Kwik Save carriers, and Kwik Save shut in 2008, didn’t it? There’s no way he’d have pristine Kwik Save bags just knocking about in his house, waiting for a special occasion to use. Who keeps smart carrier bags for fifteen years? Nobody. He was carrying them because he’d come from 2008 with them, and got himself into 2023 somehow.’ Satisfied he’d given her enough proof, Michael allowed himself to smile.

Gerry didn’t return it, though; she was busy checking dates on her phone. Michael didn’t care, he’d already checked before he sat down with her. The local store closed down in 2006, he’d only been ten years old but he still remembered sitting in the yellow rocket ride outside, pretending he was soaring off to outer space, away from all the madness.

‘Well,’ Gerry began, after a few minutes, ‘the company has long gone, but still, there are other explanations for the bags, aren’t there? Logical explanations. You know he could’ve just found them somewhere, Michael, perhaps—’

‘Perhaps nothing!’ Michael snapped, ‘perhaps you believe me for a change. I haven’t told you what was on his jacket, haven’t told you the last bit. His jacket was a Kwik Save one. How would he have that on? You tell me that. Make it make sense.’

‘Okay,’ Gerry said, and lay both her hands on the desk and closed her eyes. She’d read somewhere it helped calm raging tempers, though maybe you had to be the angry one for it to work? It seemed to have done the trick, though, as Michael sat back in his chair, breathing loudly, but showing no sign of wanting to leave.

‘Okay,’ she repeated, ‘you said earlier that you knew the man had a message for you? But, did he? You said that all you could make out was “fucking,” so, was there a message in that?’

Silence, for a while. Michael stared at the clock on the wall, allowing the minute hand to journey twice around the clock-face before he answered her.

‘He gave me a message, in my head. I passed him and it was like being dragged under the waves – you think you’ve lost all control, that you might drown, then next second you’re up and fine again. It was like that, more than a message made of words. He left me with something in my head.’

Gerry scribbled franticly on her pad, sensing something significant was going to happen.

‘What do you think is in your head, that the man put there?’

Michael shrugged, ‘Don’t know yet. There’s layers of stuff in there. His message is buried in the middle of it. I’ve got to pull carefully, so it all doesn’t go all Jenga! And the message be lost or crushed to dust. Can’t rush. I feel an itch inside my head from it, like it’s wriggling about like a worm, you know?’

She didn’t, but nodded all the same. This was the longest he’d spoken to her in months.

‘I’ve got nothing else to say about him, now, but there’s time for me to start on one of the other things that happened this week, isn’t there?’

According to her phone, there were fourteen minutes left, but, at that moment, she’d drop anything to hear Michael out.

 Could she help him? That was the point in all the books, the diplomas; to help him make sense of his poor, short-circuiting, ever-changing brain. She’d watched while he’d become different to the other children, confused, angry, violent towards her and himself, and finally shut himself off from the world. Now, a man – a big, strong, beautiful man – little had changed, though thankfully, the violence had been curbed. Still at home, the dinosaur wallpaper still visible on the parts of his walls not covered with scrawls, threads, and those bloody push-pins, he was still her little boy.

Her own heart ached to reach out to him, to hold him close, but they had rules to follow in their sessions; it was important to follow Michael’s rules so as to avoid making things even worse for him. So, she smiled, nodded, and gestured to him to continue.

‘Do you want to hear about the midnight chickens or the stone spewers next?’

Gerry didn’t show any signs of surprise; she’d heard of worse wonderful, terrible things that Michael believed he’d seen.

‘Which is the one that came this week?’

Michael pursed his lips, frowning, ‘The midnight chickens, they were from Tuesday night.’

‘Let’s go with them then,’ Gerry said, ‘tell me about the midnight chickens.’

 

 

The End

And finally we come to The Big Interview, where Beck kindly answers writing-related questions and lets us into some of her writing secrets...

 

1.      How old were you when you first knew you wanted to be a writer, and what set you off down that journey?

The first time I ever wrote something that I thought of as the start of a novel was when I was eighteen. I don’t know that I held any notion of it being ‘writerly’ at the time, but I guess that was the first time I wrote something (just a prologue and chapter one: both terrible) that wasn’t just a diary entry. Fast-forward to 2008, when I was thirty. I wrote a handful of brief chapters/ topics/ call them what you will, about my being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It was done in a way I thought was really smart, being informative and funny. I submitted it to ten publishing houses, and – guess what? – it got rejected by them all. In the main, those rejections were word-for-word the same, but one publishing house (and to my absolute shame I didn’t keep the letter, and cannot remember who it was) took the time to read my submission, write a hand-written response, and offered suggestions and encouragement. That rejection was a win, so far as I was concerned, and to this day I look at it as my first foray into being a proper writer.

 

2.      Tell us about the books and writers that have shaped your life and your writing career.

Interesting question! I spent most of the MA wishing to God I could write like Kate Atkinson writes.  Her work is so beautiful, so funny, so touching, so damn real, yet with a sprinkling of magic on top. I remember lamenting to one of my tutors how much I wanted to write that way, and she replying that she wished she did too (and she was fairly successful in her own right.) However, come the end of the MA, I no longer wanted to be Atkinson Mk II, but Collett Mk I.

          Though I cannot read the fiction of Stephen King, I cannot overpraise his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Simply put, it taught me to be a better writer than most of the degree ever did.

          The one work of fiction that resonated the most with me was during year one, working on that damn end-of-year piece. I read so widely, so many different styles of novel, medical reports, government statistics, you name it I read it, but one book stood out: Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly. It wasn’t so much the story, the working, the characters, but the author’s willingness to put himself into his work, and absorb that work in return. Sometimes you try so hard to detach yourself in order to objectively look at your work, but there are occasions where you need to be brave enough to tell your story directly, to actually be the main character, and not try to hide it. Equally, to let your heroes be badly-flawed humans, some of them the lowest and most desperate people you are likely to encounter, and not only not apologize for that, but draw the reader’s attention to it and dedicate that work in a thinly-veiled prologue that speaks of your true love for them as people, how you want them to be remembered, because they weren’t all that bad… I’m sure this may be hard for some to get their head around, but for me, writing about a particular subject at the time, it was as encouraging as if someone had put their arm around me and told me I was on the right track. Be brave, be honest, and write the story you need to write, regardless of what others may think.

           I want to give a quick mention to the writer Aaron Teel. Writing my final piece for the MA, I contacted ten flash-fiction writers for advice, and Aaron was kind enough to get back in touch. He not only encouraged me, but read my Novella-in-Flash, Blinks and Shards, and was so incredibly encouraging and insightful with his feedback. I’ll never not be grateful to him for making the time to do that for me.

 

3.      Have your children, other family members, friends or teachers inspired any of your writing?

I am appalling at ravaging my own life for material, and most of the things I’ve written are inspired by things that have happened to me, or been observed  or overheard by me. There are several characters inspired by one throwaway comment my gran made when I was thirteen, that was both so horrific and matter-of-factly said that it is the gift that keeps on giving. One piece was inspired by many people I knew personally, or had a connection to through my town – family, friends, colleagues, etc. The wider-responses that came from all over the world to a particular event connecting them was the catalyst for a story that (unsurprisingly) nobody I’ve submitted it to has been willing to touch.

 

4.      Does the place you live have any impact on your writing?

See previous answer. Where I live now is where my characters live – but not in the way that reads. As a writer, you are encouraged to put yourself into the shoes of anyone else, regardless of whether they are even human – simply put, your characters can be whoever the heck they want to be. Of course they can. But – and I don’t know if this comes from being categorized as an underrepresented group – I want the voices of the people around me heard. I want the poor, the desperate, the barely-surviving and they don’t even know it, the mad, bad, and sad – they are the voices whose stories I need to tell. I often ride the local buses, and just sit and listen to the conversations of those around me. Phone conversations in particular are fabulous value, as you have only half the information, so you get to fill in the rest to fit. It’s probably quite awful to be eavesdropping like this, but I don’t care. I want those people with me, there, on the screen, want to hear them tell me what happens next, what they said next, no matter how little their lives may matter to others.

 

 

5.      How would you describe your own writing?

Dialogue-heavy, for a start. I am guilty, repeatedly, of eschewing setting and details for dialogue. I try, on occasion, to redress the balance, and it’s fine and all, but I just love to hear those voices garbling at me, interrupting one another, and being generally infuriating. I love swearwords, and make no apology for that. I remain true to my characters, and to have the vast majority of them get by without cursing would be unthinkable.

            My writing tends to veer into realism, with a smattering of folklore or magic present. This goes back to my gran. Superstition, myths and legends have a healthy breeding ground in Wales, so I happily layer them over kitchen-sink domestic drama.

I write short-form fiction. I’d like to say this is entirely by choice, but it isn’t. My brain provides me with absolute magic and spectacular blasts of inspiration, but is also a sulky, exhausted, frustrating shitbag of a mind. I struggle to such a degree to find time to write when my brain will play ball with me, and let me do anything at all creative, that more time is spent seething at my lack of progress or success than is ever devoted to writing.

I have to type all my work on my laptop, which is now so old that it won’t work unless plugged in (and then only if it isn’t attempting to download updates too advanced for it to run) as I find writing hard, and cannot read my own handwriting. I’ve never found a good fit with voice-to-type software, though I’ve used a few before. The biggest issue seems that most of my ideas come to me just as I’m about to nod off at night, when it’s dark, my husband fast asleep next to me, and my brain sufficiently freed-up that it can turn its attention to useful stuff. Just as I’m trying to sleep. See? Frustrating shitbag.

 

6.      Are there certain themes that draw you to them when you are writing?

I do love a good tragedy, but small-scale, not grand and Shakespearian. That said, the themes that are repeated over and over by me are universal ones: loss, death, disappointment, etc.

          I’ve had a quick look through my stories from the last few years, and babies are in many of them. We struggled with fertility issues for years (eleven and a half, to be precise) when trying to start a family, and it drove me near crazy. Every month was a death, a failure to launch, a disappointment of the worst kind, and worst of all was the fact that all the tests we had done flagged up NO ISSUES WHATSOEVER with either of us. No issues, meant no solutions, no way of fixing whatever was wrong. Awful. I’ve always wanted children, always, more than anything else, I wanted to be a mum, so that gaping hole that filled me for so many years filled up with stories about babies, about birth, and about death (because the two go hand in hand). My daughter was born on New Year’s Day, 2013, incidentally. Not that her birth stopped the babies from crawling into the short stories and flashes I’ve written since.

 

7.      Tell us about how you approach your writing. Are you a planner or a pantser?

I’ve learnt that the saying ‘Man plans, and God laughs’ is the truest thing ever said in the history of history. I can plan my ass off if I want, but the time and effort needed to do so pretty much guarantee that I will exhaust myself long before any ideas or actual writing could take place. I admire the shit out of those who can methodically plan out a story, with a proper arc, a beginning, middle, and end, just as we were taught to do, but it doesn’t work for everyone. I’m super-glad that more attention is being focused on neurodiverse writers now, and that the realization is there that not everyone can write the same way, no matter how hard they try to. I don’t think I fit under the neurodiverse umbrella in the usual sense, though surely there should be another sort of banner for those of us writers whose brains have actual physical damage? My brain doesn’t/ will not/ cannot work the way a perfect brain might, but I refuse to apologize for or be ashamed of that. When I get an idea, or a line of dialogue, or sometimes just a title, I have to write it then and there. If that turns out to be possible is a different matter entirely.

 

8.      Do you have any advice for someone who might be thinking about starting to write creatively?

Don’t wait until you have the necessary tools or qualifications. Don’t fight against what you are naturally drawn to, or have a particular affinity for. Don’t ever try to write like someone else, or shoehorn a word in because you heard it and liked it. Don’t beat yourself up if things don’t pan out the way you hoped they would. Don’t expect everyone to love your work, because you don’t love everything else you read by everyone else, do you? Just because x is the best at writing novels, and y has long been held up as the pinnacle of something else, doesn’t mean you need to copy them. Do you? Oh, and don’t chastise yourself for how much you (me) hate social media and blogging, that’s just how you (me) are.

 

9.      Are you, or have you been in the past, a member of any writing groups, online or face-to-face? Do you run any? What do you think is the value of such groups?

There is no question in my mind that I would never have stuck with either Open University degree to the end had I not had such a supportive writing group online there to riff off. Giving people the tools to learn is one thing, but giving them access to others who are like them is incredible; better still when they are totally different. Having trusted readers to cast a discerning eye over work along the years has been invaluable, and becoming better at spotting mistakes in your own work as a result of critiquing the work of others was a lovely by-product.

         It saddens me somewhat that the group I was in in year one of the MA are no longer actively writing in my circle. Life changes in so many ways, and sometimes it turns out that the structure of the OU was all that was holding us together in the first place. Year two, however, has given birth to the glorious Twenty-Twenty club, without which so many of us would have fallen back into our antisocial writing habits, tapping away all alone in a room while the world passes by unnoticed. You deserve all the good things in the world for herding us, shepherd-like, Lou!  [Thanks for the vote of confidence!]

 

10.  You have an MA in Creative Writing from the Open University. What do you think you have learned from such courses?

Though there was definite value to the material the OU provided for the MA in Creative Writing, the true value came from the relationships formed during study. For me, there are holes in the degree, particularly in the brief coverage of what to do in order to get published. Now, it’s been a good run so far, with lots of my stories, flashes, NiFs, etc being noticed and published online, and blogs and features being written about me as a disabled student. All of these things are great, they really are, but what I really want to know is just who the heck do I contact about what to do next? What door do I bang on, with my no name and handful of flashes of brilliance? I feel there is a course in itself there, ripe to be taught after the MA for those of us standing looking around, a giant question mark flashing above our heads, with little idea of our next move.

For anyone even mildly considering studying Creative Writing, I’d say do it – but don’t expect it to be all fun, fun, fun, because a lot of it isn’t.

      

   

11.  What do you think about getting feedback on your work from other writers and/or non-writers? Is it worthwhile?

As I mentioned earlier, Aaron Teel was a godsend to me. I can’t help but put him in the same category as the lady from the unnamed publishing house who read my MS piece all those years ago; it isn’t always about feedback, but rather the knowledge that someone in the writing industry has actually read every word you wrote, and not just cast a brief glance over it. Four of my tutors are successful writers, but their feedback has on occasion felt critical rather than encouraging. I know I’m guilty of that myself, when critiquing the work of others in our group.

From within The Twenty-Twenty club – and from other student readers I had in the past – the feedback has been incredibly helpful, each piece bringing a different approach to critical reading. I’ve found ridiculous things that don’t sit right with me in the work of others – e.g. a word used thirty years before it would have been – and likewise, others have pointed out similar mistakes in my work that I never would have caught otherwise. I love how we don’t all write the same way, don’t all read the same way, and are comfortable enough from the last few years that we can tell each other our true responses to work. Without feedback, I think it’s a rare talent indeed that could produce something brilliant. Those errors that we make and others pick up, so we get to correct them before submitting to agents and publishers, would still be sitting there on the page, invisible to us, but glaring neon-bright to the very people we want to impress, if it wasn’t for honest feedback from others at an earlier stage.

That isn’t to say I change everything that gets flagged. These are our babies, and we ultimately know whether some flaws and apparent mistakes are there for a reason. Sometimes – and I think a great many of us experienced this with our OU tutors – you have to ignore the advice you are given, be brave and stand up for your work. Maybe this sometimes resulted in a lower mark than we would have liked, but we remained true to ourselves. That’s something that comes with experience, I think, that stubbornness needed to keep on going regardless at times.

             

[NOTE FROM LOU: This reminds me of the film Tin Cup starring Kevin Costner, which is about a brilliant golfer who sacrifices winning an important match because he wants to be true to himself and play a risky but spectacular shot]

 

12.  Do you have any advice for anyone who is thinking of starting their own literary journal, or self-publishing their own work?

No, but I really need to get around to submitting work to agents again. I feel like there’s a barrier up in front of me, because a novel isn’t ever going to happen, and short-story collections tend to only attract attention if you’ve already had publishing success. However, I know that, unless I send work out, none can be picked up by anyone, so I need to do that this year. I do wonder with self-publishing, if the reason I’m reluctant to do so is because the MA wan’t exactly supportive of self-publishing?

 

13.  Where do you get your ideas from?

In the main, I swear I spirit write 😊 The characters come to me fairly fully-formed, as though they’ve been hanging around by the bus stop, waiting for me to come say hello. They don’t bombard me with their histories or opinions, but I feel like they all exist in me, ready to talk if only I’ll listen. Imagine a dodgy wizard, yanking a string of tattered flags out of his sleeve, each with a phrase, or voice, or title: that’s my normal routine.

The basis of my stories is rarely anything other than a mundane starting point; anyone can write a fantastical story based on a fantasy premise with magical beings and untold riches, but doing that with a handful of dirt-poor scumbags is far more rewarding – to me, at least.

 

14.  They say that successful writers need to be selfish. How far do you agree with this? 

When I am strong and healthy (for me) then 5am is the golden hour. I get ninety minutes before the world wakes up, before my head starts focusing on all that I need to do that day, ninety minutes before my daughter wakes, when my husband is downstairs working, and the phone isn’t ringing. That’s when I write the absolute best.

I have a desk and fancy chair my husband bought me a few Christmases ago, and they are in the bedroom under the window. I open the window, regardless of weather, so I can hear the birds when they wake, and get roused by a faint breeze. Unless it’s December (when there will be Christmas carols playing quietly) I write in silence, as I cannot concentrate with words in earshot. However, If I’m not at home, then the second-best place for me to be productive is in the local Asda café, which is loud, and too bright, and the tables wobble and are sticky. Yet I find I can concentrate here, too, and am better at switching off from outside stimulus that if I am at home.

I am not disciplined, but years ago I gave up berating myself about it. My brain is different, so I have to adapt to what it can do, when it can do it. I think all of us (me) would benefit from being more selfish, and not giving priority to all the other things we know we have to do quite as often as we (I) do.

 

15.  Beyond your family and your writing, what other things do you do?

Before I got ill, I worked as a shop manager in a garden center. I love gardening, love being outside doing physical things, and the frustration of not being able to do everything I yearn to do is awful. I still do what I can, when I can, but know that if I am gardening, or sewing, or baking, then I won’t be writing that day – or the day after.

I’ve always been artistic, and good with my hands, so DIY goes hand in hand with felting or cooking for me. I’m not musical in any way, sadly, and don’t do anywhere near enough physical stuff to keep healthy. I have a lovely treadmill at home, that is mainly a home to a large spider that I evict several times a year, yet it always comes back to me. Perhaps I should be flattered?

 

16.  Would you describe yourself as a ‘cultured’ person?

I’m not cultured at all, though I enjoy art, classical music, opera, Shakespeare, etc. I find the term faintly patronizing, as though common-folk aren’t smart enough to appreciate the arts in general. All truly great art is there for everyone to enjoy, and should never be created with any kind of barrier inserted to keep out ‘the wrong sort.’ I consider myself a smartarse of the highest order, have forgotten far more than I can ever hope to relearn, and would watch a wrestling match over a debate on architecture any day of the week. Doesn’t mean I don’t go weak over ancient carvings and columns, just that I am comfortable enough in my own skin to say I detest the fiction of Stephen King and Will Self in equal proportion.

I don’t read as much as I’d like to, simply because if I’m reading, then I won’t be writing. Again, this is something I’ve learnt over time, and that I don’t love but have to accept.

The whole ‘literary fiction’ thing is a funny one, seeming one and the same time for brighter writers than myself, and also perfect, because generally bugger-all happens of note in my stories, focusing more on character than plot. Still, I cannot bring myself to declare any of my tales to be literary in the least, or anything else, come to that. They exist outside of my hands as soon as I let them loose to be read. What they then become is up to the reader. I’ve found that time and time again, my work defies categorization; indeed, the hardest part of writing the final piece for year one of the MA was to decide what kind of work it was. Nobody who read it could agree, and I think I really enjoy ignoring the rules of writing, and just bloody well writing the story. I don’t like a story to have a neatly wrapped-up ending, or a happy ending come to that. The same goes for films. Take Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I read it when I was fifteen, and loved it. For a debut novel, it is extraordinary, and Tartt doesn’t attempt to make everything perfect at the end. Contrast this with The Little Friend, or The Goldfinch; both fantastic stories by the same writer, but with joltingly neat endings. They made me hate what had come before, because the endings – to me – felt out of place, and inauthentic. Awful as that buzzword is, being ‘authentic’ to your work and your characters must be paramount if the story is to be any good.

 

17.  Are you interested in history and if so does it impact on your writing?

I know that it works for some people, but historical focus isn’t for me. The closest I’ve got was a deep-dive into farming practices, midwifery and swearwords from the sixteenth century for a story inspired by my gran. I love that particular story, but it’s never done particularly well and I guess much of that is because I’m just not all that interested in historical fiction.

Early on in my BA in Literature, I wrote a story based in part in Yemen, and did learn a lot about the country and it’s history and geographical layout. It helped, certainly, but the story at heart was a domestic drama between twin brothers. My year one MA piece had loads of prep work done, about suicide and mental health, probably the most I’ve ever attempted, and it is all the better for it. Unfortunately, the subject is so controversial that nobody has ever dared run it. I understand, but find it frustrating, to say the least.

 

18.  How did the Covid pandemic affect you as a writer?

Surprisingly little. I don’t work anyway, but obviously became a part-time home-school tutor to my daughter during covid, which had zero impact on my writing. If anything, it improved, that alone-time becoming all the more precious.

 

19.  There is a lot of talk at the moment about political correctness, about the Woke movement, about cultural appropriation, about diversity. What are your thoughts on this, with regard to writing?

Spectacularly dodgy ground, isn’t it? It’s disappointing how quick people are to look for offense in anything at all, and revel in any they decide they’ve found – regardless pf whether any was meant in the first place. The current thing of changing older works makes me sick, it truly does. Hiding away things that are no longer acceptable is beyond the pale; who benefits from this? What can be learnt, if we try and pretend everyone always spoke and behaved the same as we do now, that nobody was ever repulsive or flawed? Do we then eradicate any character or speech that upsets others? Even if the character in question is meant to be horrible, and offensive? Why? Ludicrous. I truly, truly hate it. 

In terms of whether or not a writer should be allowed to put themselves into the shoes of someone so different to them, of course they should. Nobody is everything and everyone, and if we get stuck into only telling our own stories from our own experiences, then what is the point in any of it? Burn all the books, then the films, paintings, sculptures, etc. Don’t let anyone act, dress or style their hair differently, etc. We go down a dangerous path indeed if – in order to allow others to be authentic – we take the ability to imagine away from everyone. The two have to coexist.

 

20.  Where would you place your own stories, on a continuum with PURE FANTASY at one end and COMPLETE REALISM at the other?

I hate to be categorized, hate it! As previously mentioned, my work never feels like it quite belongs anywhere. If you held a gun to my head, I wouldn’t be able to write you a chick-lit, western, medieval sorcery epic, etc – you’d just get one of my stories. What you’d class it as isn’t my concern 😊.

I think that magical realism is a fantastic term, covering so many things, but I don’t really feel as though my writing has the dreamy quality that such work so often possesses. I loved horror in my teens, graduating from the children’s library straight to adult horror, because I didn’t really know what I was meant to read aged eleven. My best friend gave me a pile of Terry Pratchett books one summer holiday, and I wept my way through them in just short of nine days, having nothing else to do. I love fantasy films and TV shows, but the intricacies involved in creating another world is a mystery to me. And I don’t really know why. I remember reading Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed by Ray Bradbury several years ago, and marveling at his brilliance in creating this otherly world on Mars, which, in reality, was little different to our own. Yet his wording was such that the idea of there being the Martian equivalent of Roman villas felt recognizable and impossible. It’s pure magic, but I don’t think I write that way.

That said, taking something mundane and recognizable, and adding a fantastical element is what I‘ve done in stories the last year, so am I doing myself a disservice? If pure fantasy is one end of the scale, and complete realism the other, I think that maybe I do that thing they do in superhero films, and space films, and probably classrooms everywhere, where they curve the paper over so the two ends briefly touch, so fantasy and realism mingle for the briefest of moments, without overpowering the other. That’s where I am; in the space outside the two extremes.

 

 

Thank you so much, Beck, for your

fascinating interview.

 

Next month I will be showcasing a writer who keeps all his readers laughing: Ron Hardwick.