Hi Everyone –
Last week, on Wednesday at 7 pm I had my first Covid vaccination. Hooray! and thank you to Astra Zeneca, and to Oxford and all who’ve worked and still do work towards its success. This includes my brother Mark, an Oxford mathematician, who is very much involved in data gathering and analysis and has been working his socks off, since last March!
Like everyone I’m looking forward to the time when we’ve all had our vaccinations and can begin to welcome the summer and at least sit in the garden with each other again. And write in the garden too…
…On this note – I realised today that I’ve been writing short stories for ten years now. And although I had an early collection, Millie and Bird, published I have since amassed a fair, few, stories along with a good number of long and short listings, as well as my original 2012 Costa win. But until now many of these stories have been invisible, only appearing in one off publications.
This morning in preparation for a long Skype call with my editor at Linen Press, Lynn Michel I had the very happy task of gathering these stories together in a file for her attention, so that we can begin working together on a new collection to be published later this year, in October.
I’m thrilled to think that these stories are now going out into the world together and I’m interested to see which if any themes recur and what the connections between stories may be. What is it I’ve been writing about for ten years?
There’s lots of water, I’m sure of that: the Atlantic, The Indian Ocean, marshes, fens, estuary, Venice, several rivers… the landscape of home never leaves me. The stories reach out from Cape Cod to Mahbalipuram, from Somerset to County Durham, place is so often my first inspiration. There’s place and displacement, snatches of time, loss and love. Come to think of it, maybe they are mostly stories about love…
The short story has turned my head this year. Collections by the Russian greats with names like wifi codes, clicked and collected from branch library. Slices of life which come in a loaf, a different filling to unpack in each one.
Indeed – When other genres feel too difficult, as I think they have this year, the short story is always the place I return to – so much to offer in so few words – the slice as a loaf – I like that!
Haven’t forgotten the pamphlet – need to get out to the Post Office – your short stories deserve to be read!