About

Usually, I write short stories – sometimes they get published – and I love to talk about writing. There are also days when I’m not teaching other writers, or doing up my house, and I need a break. I might cycle to a ruin because nothing inspires me more than landscape and the past – I’ll be blogging a lot about that. Or, perhaps I decide to visit the local animal sanctuary and take a dog for a walk and suddenly find the two of us cornered by a herd of curious cows – having to back out of the situation through a bramble bush. Now, we’re both sitting in a wheat field, staring at each other. Thanks for remaining calm, I say. And when I get home, I feel like writing a story about it. That’s what you’ll find here: some history, a bit of fiction, and lots of writing advice; with me in there somewhere – travelling through.

Yeah, but how do you know that anyone’s going to read it? a friend asked when I mentioned I was starting a blog. I told her it didn’t matter. Posting these pieces is like, standing on a mountain – or probably a hill because I have more connections with hills. So, I’m standing on a large hill. A stream rushes by at my feet. Fields and forest stretch throughout the valley below. This quiet landscape travels right to the horizon, as uncluttered with houses as possible. I’m happy to stand here and drop whatever it is I have into this running water, watch it dance in the current. I have the sense my words will reach the sea one day. But even that isn’t a final destination – it’s simply a place where things become harder to observe because they are diffused into an enormous space. That’s what I love: that moment where things launch and spread and become.

Links to my fiction online

‘The Buck‘

‘The Courting‘

‘Pistachios for a lost mermaid‘

‘The screwball‘

Links to the MA Creative Writing Courses I teach on

Oxford University

City University