I read for the times a book transports me in the way Ready Player One did. For me, this book was seamless and filmic -- and synchronous, because my real and made-up worlds have a habit of colliding. Mere weeks before reading, a midnight google of "What did Roberta Williams do after Sierra?" led me …
It is a truth universally acknowledged that when your children have school holidays, adventures must be had, and a goodly proportion of these adventures must be had in the real world. During the last summer holidays, we made fridge magnets of wooden circlets cut from fallen branches. We erupted a volcano and linked it to …
It was ink dark outside when the contractions started but I waited until 5am before waking him. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I’m sure!’ I said. ‘Could it still be prelabour?’ ‘These are no Braxton Hicks. And they’re getting closer together. I’ve been timing.’ He had good reason to ask: my prelabour had gone …
In 1984, a six-year-old girl who fancied herself a writer attended a school she didn’t like with a crotchety teacher she liked even less. The adults in her life convinced her that she should learn to fit into this school-shaped hole and find something other than writing stories to earn real money, because money was …
I don't get writer's block: I get sharer's block. I missed last week's blog post because of it, the first one I have missed all year. Sometimes I write a piece and I think, 'That's pretty good!' But, by the time I have given it a day or a week to ferment, it morphs into …
I wrote a daily diary during my FAWWA residency, which is sadly at an end. To follow, are snippets of my days. Thanks so much to FAWWA for allowing me into this special space, and to the critters who put up with my too-hard typing. All photos are from Mattie Furphy House and surrounds. Day …
I recently had cause to think on where it all began. While I have been writing poems and stories for as long as I can remember, I started to get serious about my writing in 2012, when 'The Man with the Purple Halo' placed third in that year's Trudy Graham-Julie Lewis Literary Award. That was …
Gripes. I have many. I find my list of "things with which I take issue" expanding with my age, but with age I have discovered that venting about those acts/attitudes/events that disgust and confound me can help to crystallise my views and, hopefully, move me forward with purpose. On this occasion, dear reader, I invite …
When can I give you cake? I give you cake and you misbehave. It was one of your birthdays yesterday, but today is another day. Yesterday, a birthright; today, a treat. We had birthday cake leftover. I promised. You ate. You partook with expectation. Yes, I did mention board games, but you couldn’t agree. You …
What happened in Manchester was unthinkable. I can only imagine the horror this community, the families, are going through. My thoughts are with them. My heart does not yet know how to process this and other strange happenings around the world, except to know it never makes sense. And, in every case, it is my …
