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I’ve tried desks. They don’t work for me. I resist sitting down at the desk. I resist going to the desk. Sometimes I resist even going into the room where the desk is kept. But I have a little white MacBook and the battery lasts for hours and so I carry it around the house with me. Portability means no excuses. Say I spend the morning working at the kitchen table. By coffee-time (which, as you know, is around 11am)…

As of Thursday the 21st of July, I will be on a writing retreat for a week. I’ll be trying out an email/phone/Facebook/Twitter silence (which, for me, will be a big change), so if I don’t respond to any messages you send, that is why. See you next week!

Thievery is a series of blog posts about my story inspirations. The Story: ‘Peach Cigarettes in Tokyo’, published in Pear Noir! #4. An extract: “The first time I ever smoked a peach cigarette, I was wearing a dinosaur suit and sitting on my friend’s balcony in a Tokyo suburb. My friend had a dinosaur suit because he’d gone to a fancy dress party the week before, and I was wearing it because I was cold and it was made of…

Thievery is a series of blog posts about my story inspirations. The Story: ‘All-Night Cartoon Party’, published at Wigleaf. The Inspiration: I spent two years on an MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. About 90% of what I learned appeared to be a complete waste of time. One class was about OuLiPo, a French movement that seeks to constrain writing in order to be more creative. OuLiPo practitioners use exercises like prose sestinas (using the word repetition of the sestina…

I want to read these stories, but I can’t write them. If you can write them (or already have written them!) please let me know so that I can exclaim joyfully and then read them. Wishlist Stories The husbands of women involved in the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s. What did they think – did they support their wives, fight against them, or just ignore them? How were they treated by their friends and peers? Mystery about lesbian flappers…

Please acquaint yourself with Part 1 of the Busted slash. Now lie back on your chaise longue, light your cigarillo, and lift your monocle to your eye for Part 2 (AKA Release The Willies)… “It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…” (Part 2) Matt’s brain was flicking through the usual images: Britney Spears in a PVC catsuit; his high school English teacher holding a cane and threatening to spank him; walking onstage wearing only huge pink underpants; three pale girls…