Blog

This month I’m doing a mentoring special to celebrate all the talented and diverse writers I’ve been lucky enough to work with through WoMentoring. Today we have Emma Zetterstrom. The Story: Annie watched her glove rollercoaster over the dunes and cursed as it disappeared into the bruised sea. From thirty feet up the wind had snatched it, and she had no chance of catching it. She’d taken it off to make the final, fiddly repairs and already her fingers were white…

This month I’m doing a mentoring special to celebrate all the talented and diverse writers I’ve been lucky enough to work with through WoMentoring. First up is Heather Parry – and trust me, you’ll be seeing her name much more in the future. The Story: It was a blessing when my blood came. At school they said it would be spots and strings but to my surprise it was a steady stream, dark red, pouring out from the corners of…

This year I read 250 books. 250! No idea how that happened. I did travel a lot for book events and festivals, which meant many hours on trains and evenings in hotel rooms. I get sent a lot of books for review and blurbs. I volunteer in an Oxfam Books and usually buy at least one book per shift. I love the library – I’m a member of four, and my local library now refers to me as a “heavy user”….

Want to read something water-themed on your summer holiday but still stick to your creepy, fabulist, witchy-dark bones? You’ve come to the right place. Orkney, Amy Sackville – An ageing literature professor honeymoons on Orkney with his much younger wife. He’s studying enchantment narratives about strange girls and women, and soon his research bleeds into his obsession with his mysterious new wife. Becoming Bone, Annie Boutelle – A biography-in-poems about Celia Thaxter, from her childhood on the stark islands off the New Hampshire coast…

I’ve somehow managed to read 133 books so far this year (how did that happen? I don’t even know). Luckily for me, some of them have been seriously amazing. Here are the best ones of April and May: Cobwebwalking, Sara Banerjee – A strange, lovely little book that I devoured in a day. Geek Love meets Cold Comfort Farm. A Wild Swan, Michael Cunningham – Gorgeous retellings of classic fairytales. The prose is so lush I could bathe in it. The…

  January and February are always big reading months for me. Blame the terrible weather and general post-festive blah, but all I want to do is escape into new worlds. For 2016, I decided to branch out and try new genres. So far I’ve read literary fiction, children’s novels, romance, horror, magical realism, nature non-fiction, memoir and essays. Here are my favourites of the year so far: The Deep, Nick Cutter – The perfect horror novel for claustrophobics, Event Horizon meets Stephen King’s…