In honour of Star Wars Day – May the Fourth – I thought I’d share a nostalgic short story that was published back in 2016 in the Sunday People newspaper. It’s one of the few stories I’ve written where the title came first – and it amused me. Sadly, the title was shortened to something… Read More Waiting in line for The Empire Strikes Back
[UPDATED 9/11] I generally update my competition listings as I see new opportunities pop up, but I thought I’d do a new post because the last one was a while back. Quite a few competions have extended their deadlines or amended their prizes due to the Covid-19 crisis, so there may be a few things… Read More Short story competitions April-December
It’s been a while since I’ve had something published, but today a flash fiction of mine has appeared in UK literary journal Ellipsis zine. ‘Saviour’ is a theatrical tale about the joys of auditioning, told with something of a Greek chorus slant. It originated as a writing class exercise on voice, and I was interested… Read More ‘Saviour’ in Ellipsis zine
Three blog posts. That was the extent of my writing week, three blog posts. Two were author interviews with excellent writers – Laura Besley about her debut flash fiction collection The Almost Mothers, and Nicola Cassidy about her third historical novel Adele, based on the life of Fred Astaire’s fascinating sister. I also entertained myself… Read More Book report, week 11: Porgy and Bess and Strout
Today’s Irish Times has a feature about humorous, uplifting books to see us through these troubling times. I couldn’t resist the urge to put together my own list of suggestion, if only to dodge the WIP I’m sitting in front of. It isn’t a definitive list, just some things off the top of my head… Read More Laughter in a time of corona
Most of the author interviews I do are with writers celebrating the release of their first books. Today I’m delighted to welcome back Nicola Cassidy, who I interviewed back in 2017 about her historical debut December Girl. This month sees the publication of her third novel, Adele. It recounts the real-life story of Adele Astaire,… Read More Adele Q&A
Where would today’s emerging writers be without Twitter? It’s a wonderful forum for promoting your work, not to mention connecting with like-minded people on an international level. One of the writers I’ve come to know virtually is UK-based Laura Besley, whose debut collection has been published in the past week amid very challenging times for… Read More The Almost Mothers Q&A
My stats have bottomed out. That’s ok, you’re all busy queuing for toilet rolls at a safe distance or disinfecting the letterbox for the postman. I’m just trying to stick to my accountability experiment, which is, unsurprisingly, not going well. Writing is impossible at the moment when the world is so insane. How do we… Read More Book report, week 10: heart and hobbies
It’s been a poor writing week – there’s probably no need to explain why. I started with great intentions, using an idea by Cork writer Catherine Ryan Howard. To write her first drafts, she sets herself a daily goal of 1,250 words. She prints out a table with the goals and rewards herself by crossing… Read More Book report, week 9: charts and uncharted territory
I’m back to a slow canter through my MS, though finding it hard to concentrate with all that’s going on in the world at the moment. I keep rereading the same section, trying to pick up the thread again, and it feels so terribly plodding. But I don’t know if this part of the book… Read More Book report, week 8: hope and Hope
