Upcoming etc Why is upcoming such an ugly word? It almost seems Chaucerian, but not. I used to believe it was one of the nastiest words in the English language, but now its place of loathing in my heart has been replaced by the hideous phrase ‘going forward’. What does it even mean? I think […]

October – a writing Indian summer? Right, final reminder for Fear of the Dark – should be a night to remember! Tickets are £5 or £4 for concessions available on the night or in advance from the Marlborough Theatre, Brighton or fearofthedark.eventbrite.com Apart from that, I’m suddenly full speed ahead on Year of the Ladybird […]

The Book and The Rose Well, I think we were an outrageous success! My thanks go to the brave readers from The Hatchery and Comedy of Errors, who took on one of Brighton’s most popular city squares, on the hottest day of the year, and made the audience love them.We started with a few people […]

Reading worries Yes, I’ve gone very quiet. No, I haven’t died, nor won the lottery. Actually I’ve had migraine. For some reason as yet unclear, I get sequential migraine – three in a row, a day or a day and a half apart, which wipes me out for a week or so. Weird. Anyway, apart […]

An Evening of New Writing Well, it went marvellously, though I say so myself. Actually I knew it would, because Alayna Munce’s book, When I Was Young And In My Prime, is beautiful, strong, poetic and resonant and Maria Jastztrebska is one of my favourite poets, not just because I like her poetry, but because […]

Synchronicity A few days ago I reviewed Brian Aldiss’s excellent ‘Bury My Heart at W. H. Smith’s’ on this blog. This morning my subscriber copy of The Frogmore Papers arrived and I see that Mr Aldiss has a short stoy in it! Not only that, but a story which – on skimming – relates to […]

An Evening of New WritingCanadian author Alayna Munce will be reading from her new book, When I was Young and in my Prime.‘Moving, funny, full of hard truths’ – The Globe and Mail, CanadaWith local authors; Kay Sexton, co-author of Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel,‘Inventive in language and exuberant in narrative’ – Russell […]

The Brighton Reading That’s me, waving my arms around and pulling faces, as usual. The reading and launch went really well, I thought, and I’m extremely thankful that we did it on Thursday, because by Friday we had small rivers heading down every road to Brighton sea-front, and nobody would have wanted to plough through […]

Brighton Reading tonight! This is where we’ll be tonight, well, downstairs actually, in The Cella at The Sanctuary, in Brighton. It’s a venue I’ve read at several times, and really love; it’s intimate and very sophisticated, and of course, the food upstairs is superlative. So apart from the perennial fear that nobody will turn up […]