Gerry Fenge

To be fair, she didn’t say it was about representation. I just thought/hoped it would be. She said it was to discuss suggested revisions and how we might work together. As well as the thing about commercial/literary, there were so many aspects of the book that she thought didn’t work, I even asked her why she had wanted to meet me and she said…[Read more]

I sort of worry a bit when I see agents pushing writers this way. In fact, my hackles start to hack or rise or whatever they’d do if I had them. Book Club fiction is Literary Fiction that agents reckon they should be able to sell better than average. As for this splitting of work into ever more categories as though this is some kind of scientific…[Read more]

Rachel agreed, in the end, to a bath.

The water was hot. There were bubbles. The scent made her think of purple.

She closed her eyes. Lowered herself, let her hands float, slid down until her head was under water. She let the breath go out of her and waited. Slowly, she pushed herself back up. Water dripped from her face, her hair. Steam…[Read more]

Of course, I hadn’t fully considered how many cases there are until I started this. For instance, I read We Need to Talk About Kevin long before I knew anything about Lionel Shriver – possibly before she had begun the process of disseminating her curious bag of libertarian views* across the media and the web. I still consider it a beautifully…[Read more]

New Day

The smoke from cooking fires lay like a grey blanket over Alexandra township and a tangerine sun rose behind it, then burst clear and threw its warming mantle over the land. The windows of the high-rise buildings on the distant Johannesburg skyline glinted like slabs of molten gold. A typical autumn dawn on the highveld but this was not a…[Read more]

One of the more bizarre aspects of Social Media is that Michael Rosen has indeed been labeled as an antisemite, and the ‘wrong kind’ of Jew. In fact, just a couple of months after the publication of his book The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II, which investigates the loss of family members in the holocaust, Rachel Riley lumped…[Read more]

You are not A BAD HUMAN BEING in spite of your assertion, and I have to point out that I am never wrong about these things. I note what you say, that I have no evidence other than a few sensational articles to confirm the smears, and most of all that he has been forgiven by Michael Rosen* He stays in my blog but with an amended text. I would love…[Read more]

There are also examples in art – Paul Gauguin, Picasso and Freud, for example, were not particularly nice folk, it seems.
If a writer’s work doesn’t reflect his obnoxious views, does that make it OK? Or if his views are expressed in a work of fiction and not an educational piece?
Some very good people write fiction that contains extreme views, but…[Read more]

No problem @Libby, it was a flippant remark on my part, not intended to be taken seriously.

I have two pieces nearly done but I don’t now which of them to enter. Maybe I’ll enter both, one under a pseudonym. Would that be cheating?

Well done Libby, excellent. Good job, Jane.

Great entry, Libby and a very well deserved win.
Jane – another great competition. Thanks.

‘You don’t have a future, not really,’ said Gregor. He shifted his bones on the stone floor making his chains rattle.

‘Ah,’ said the philosopher, at length, ‘you’re one of those Zenonians. A Stoic I suppose. You imagine that because we can never sufficiently divide the instant we call the present, then it must be an illusion, as is the future. A…[Read more]

Hi @skylark, good to see you’re back.

@squidge hello! Great to hear the Tilda series is progressing. I’ve got the first one in the queue for bedtime reading to the boys and can’t wait to see how it’s evolved from when I first read it years ago on the Cloud. I think I missed that there as going to be a remake of David Copperfield as well. I see most films at our community cinema club…[Read more]

@kazg yes, how I will laugh! I came across my very, very first shitty draft a year or so ago and it was quite something. Good to see how far I’ve come, at least!