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A while ago, Vinyl Poetry asked me to take part in their Grocery List project. At that point I was beginning to make notes for my second novel, Rust and Stardust, and so here is my list: What’s the grocery list for your current project?

For the past few months I’ve been working on Novel #2, Rust and Stardust, a modern fairy tale about mythical creatures coming of age on a Scottish island. As research I have been reading masses of Scottish mythology (there are some fascinatingly odd stories about the Hebrides), and now I’m on the hunt for novels about: Islands The sea Females coming of age. I’ve been hugely inspired by Kirsty Gunn’s Rain and Sarah Moss’s Night Waking, and next on my…

Two Spaces Left for Issue 3! Submissions for Fractured West’s third issue have been sprinting, pirouetting and bellyflopping into our inbox and it looks like we’re nearly there. But we have two spaces left to be filled with stories – and this is where you come in. What We’re Looking For We’re in the mood for some humour, some horror, some science fiction, and some smut. Feel free to combine them! The shorter the better, and nothing over 500 words….

Thievery is a series of blog posts about my story inspirations. The Story: ‘Underskirts’ won third place in the 2010 Bridport Prize and is published online at PANK. An extract: She found me with my hands around chickens, fingers stretched wide, thumbs over beaks. My skirt, mud-weighed, tugged at my ankles as I dipped low. Silly to curtsey while armed with birds, I knew, but it had to be done. If I’d let go they’d’ve flown at her, chuttering through…

“She found me with my hands around chickens, fingers stretched wide, thumbs over beaks. My skirt, mud-weighed, tugged at my ankles as I dipped low. Silly to curtsey while armed with birds, I knew, but it had to be done. If I’d let go they’d’ve flown at her, chuttering through her red hair. And what a sight that would’ve been! The lady, still horsed, with her legs one on either side and her skirt hitching up to show a handspan…

Thievery is a series of blog posts about my story inspirations. The Story: ‘How I Learned To Love A Real Man’, first published online at BURST. Reprinted in Eve’s Harvest (Odyssey Books). An extract: Thirteen heralded my Goth phase. I had brief affairs with Heathcliff (too obsessive), Mr. Darcy (too pouty), and Jonathan Harker (too wussy). I went through a brief but decidedly creepy phase of swithering between Edgar Allen Poe and Humbert Humbert. I soon realised that a lust…