My entry for the TCWG May short story competition on the theme of ‘Surprise’:
Murch
31 Tuesday May 2022
Posted Creative Writing, Writing prompt
in31 Tuesday May 2022
Posted Creative Writing, Writing prompt
inMy entry for the TCWG May short story competition on the theme of ‘Surprise’:
24 Tuesday May 2022
Posted Uncategorized
in15 Sunday May 2022
Posted Creative Writing, Poems, Wexford writers, Women writers
inTags
I’m delighted to be one of the contributors to The Wexford Bohemian, Wexford’s very own literary and creative periodical, edited by the very talented writer Álanna Hammel, and featuring poetry, memoir and short fiction.
Published by Red Books Press. Out soon from www.theirishbookshop.com
06 Sunday Mar 2022
Posted Uncategorized
inIn The HistWriter March 2022 I feature writing about Ukraine and mark International Women’s Day.
28 Monday Feb 2022
Posted Poems
in
Winter is becoming spring,
but there’ll be no joy in summer.
Evil has consumed the world.
Our days of love are numbered.
A corrupt and brutal boor,
blinded by his hate and greed,
by his own lies, in the ruins of his mind,
has condemned us all to bleed.
We can only hug in memories.
I had so much more to say,
but my tears fell on the border road,
as I watched you walk away.
The vigil flame’s for all who flee,
who stay, who fight, who soldier on,
who grieve amidst the dark unknown.
For every mother without her son.
14 Monday Feb 2022
Posted Historical fiction, Women writers
inFor February I look forward to the publication next month of Annette Libeskind Berkovits’ debut novel ‘The Corset Maker’ in which a young Jewish woman encounters danger, suffering and the anguish of an impossible love amongst the cataclysms of mid-20th century Europe and Palestine. I review ‘Black Drop’ by Leonora Nattrass, a fine example of the emerging genre of Eighteenth Century Noir. And it’s Valentine’s Day today, so I offer you my Regency pastiche short story ‘A Month at Bath’.
10 Friday Dec 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inThis month I’m agonising over the blurb for my forthcoming novel City of Famine. I share a few observations on the Bellotto exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. Today, 10th December, it’s the 206th anniversary of the birth of Ada Lovelace (the ‘mother of computer programming’) so I revisit my short story The Analytical Assurance Company (link). And I review Black Dragonfly, Jean Pasley’s fictionalised biography of Lafcadio Hearn.
11 Thursday Nov 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inFor Remembrance Day, a story about the Eastern Front: set in Mesopotamia, now Iraq, where the Garden of Eden became a theatre of war. https://wp.me/P2aHMc-g4
26 Tuesday Oct 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inHaving set up a writers’ forum for my local writing group here on this website, I am now besieged with spam registration requests, which I nuke every day on a wholesale basis. It’s irritating but the spam names do make me laugh sometimes!
I might write a Halloween short story about ‘Napoleon Schippers’, ‘Magdalena Gaskin’, and ‘Chau Krome’: just a few of the hapless employees of ‘Butikbagus.com’, who go on to become the victims of extremely detailed, throat-slitting and eyeball-popping murders.
HAHAHAHAHAAAARGH…
01 Friday Oct 2021
Posted Uncategorized
inThis month I reflect on a small writing workshop I’m holding with my local writing group and introduce two writers you may not have heard of:
Cheryl Underhill, a childhood friend, who has compiled her parents’ WW2 correspondence into a fascinating book ‘The Box of Beautiful Letters’ and Rose Cullen, a fellow member of the Irish chapter of the Historical Novel Society, whose debut novel ‘The Lucky Country’ is an epic tale of an Irish family’s emigration to Australia in the 1950s.
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