Word city

Many thanks to Darcie Friesen Hossack and the international team of editors, especially Nancy Ndeke and Sylvia Petter , for including three of my poems and one of my stories in the inaugural issue of WordCity Monthly.

Man who talks

I can't locate a post thanking The Lonely Crowd for including my story "Man Who Talks to Books" in their first issue, back in 2015. There's a preview of it here. Belated and sincere thanks to Editor John Lavin.

Wild wood review

“To walk In the Wild Wood is to enter worlds where the mundane is made magical” states the blurb on the back cover of Frances Gapper’s newest short story collection, published by Cultured Llama. I suspect for Gapper, what is meant by as mundane, daily life for most folk in England where many of her stories are set, is anything but. Not all writers have an ability to see magic in the every-day occurrence, however this is Gapper’s stand-out peculiarity; what would be dry description from the fingers of a less skilled writer is, in Gapper’s hands, the equivalent of a Grecian urn with a laugh-out-loud comic strip glazed around its vitreous fired girth. And just as the ancient Greeks understood the winning combination of high art with low art, so too does the author of In the Wild Wood, juxtaposing classical references with contemporary ones such as Come Dine with Me. Old with the new. 

I first encountered the title story in issue seven of Short Fiction. As I read the issue eagerly, excited to see what talent I was on a par with – my story While “Women Rage in Winter” had just won Short Fiction’s competition and was published in the University of Plymouth’s journal alongside stories by Catherine McNamara, Scott Pack, Annemarie Neary, Jenn Ashworth, Jill Widner, and others – I came across Gapper’s. Actually: I opened issue seven, read my story first and “In the Wild Wood” - illustrated by Claire Harper with an intriguing deceptively simple head from inside which grew a tree-brain - followed it, so. The story details the metamorphosis of a mother into a child due to the symptoms of dementia, but really what’s being described is the fear of a child forced to become a parent to their parent, the grief of losing their own life to the shepherding of the person whose care consumes them. Old age, filtered through a child’s lexicon, is made new, a contrast symbolised beautifully by the cover illustration for In the Wild Wood, an original artwork by Jane Eccles that evokes Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant" for me. 

A simple thing representing a complex one, a youthful approach to an adult issue, is what Gapper does best. She has the ability, in the words attributed to Ezra Pound, to “make it new”. This is perhaps best showcased with the stories “In Bed with Miss Lucas” and “Observing Lucy”, lifting off as they do from literary classics of two of England’s most lauded women writers, Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, with insights that are at times as hilarious as they are diverse.

 

“In bed with Miss Lucas” re-casts Pride and Prejudice from a LGBTQ perspective, in which “The younger girls might now form hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done”. Brontë scholars will be familiar with the setting of “Observing Lucy” as Monsieur Heger’s Pensionnat in Brussels, attended by Charlotte Brontë who went there first as a pupil, encouraged by her friend Mary Taylor, and later as a pupil-teacher, until her obsession with her master forced her to return to England and harass him via a one-sided correspondence. Gapper’s re-imagining of Villette is told from the perspective of Madame Beck, whose husband is the love interest of Lucy. In these two short stories, Gapper encompasses greater political and emotional terrain than the two original novels they are derived from.

From these longer historical pieces to the deft brevity of “The Leaf that Wouldn’t Fall” and “MyLion”, In the Wild Wood shows Gapper flexing all her story muscles, and leaves the reader in no doubt there is a lot more to come from one of the most exciting imaginations producing fiction today. I cannot guess where her next work will take me, her previous being The Tiny Key, I can only dream it will open up a world as yet un-imagined from the starry heights of a girl staring at the moon from a cartoon tree-top as In the Wild Wood.

The lonely crowd

I'm grateful to Valerie Sirr for including my story "Katherine Mansfield's Sheets" in her guest editor issue #7 of The Lonely Crowd. And thanks to John Lavin.

Here's a taster: 'Out on the lake a black swan swims into view between the two buoys measuring Pupuke’s diameter.' - 'Katherine Mansfield's Sheets'

Refugees welcome

I'm extremely happy one of my stories is going to help refugees as part of the Refugees Welcome Anthology. My thanks and gratitude to Greg McQueen and team. More details to come!

Genre us

Alison Lock generously invited me to her blog to talk about genre-hopping. Thanks, Alison! You can read my thoughts here.

Swift praise

Mel Ulm has reviewed another of my stories over at his blog The Reading Life, praising "The Bull Calf": "It would make Swift smile".Thank you, Mel - I love what you've written about my story!

Ni hao

 It was only two months ago...

 ...that I flew back to England....

 ...to read my Short Fiction competition winning story...

 ...at the Plymouth International Literary Festival...

 ...where I met Catherine McNamara, Tom Vowler, Anthony Caleshu, Jamie Edgecombe...

 ...and so many other writers and interesting people...

...and it was the first time I had been back...

...since moving to New Zealand...

 ...over six years ago...

...but the strange thing is...

...I feel like I only moved here yesterday...

...whereas Shanghai...

...seems so very long ago...

...and now all my memories are packaged up, and some are already in stories, waiting to travel somewhere. Maybe these pictures will inspire you...your story could end up in Plymouth and carry you to Shanghai, too. Give it a try, the Short Fiction Competition is open for entries now.

Push her

I'm completely floored to have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for my story "Dinghy". My sincerest thanks and gratitude to Sian Williams and Michelle Elvy at Flash Frontier.

An underground of applause

I'm very pleased to have a story, "Blue Blood", in the December "Underground" issue of Flash Frontier. Many thanks to Editors Sian Williams and Michelle Elvy for including it.

This issue is Sian's last, unfortunately, so I'd like to take this opportunity to thank her for accepting so many of my stories at Flash Frontier over the last couple of years - I've greatly enjoyed every piece of Sian's fiction I've read there, too - and I wish her all the very best for her future endeavours.

On awards

Lane Ashfeldt, author of SaltWater, has interviewed me about what it means to me to have won the "7th Annual Short FICTION Competition", among some other very interesting questions. Read my answers here.

Splash fiction

Surreally pleased to have my fiction "Ladder to the Moon" included in Through the Looking Glass. Sparkling thanks to Andrea Quinlan for having me.

Fre[e] aks

Super pleased to be hosting a story for the launch of Freaks!, an illustrated collection of superhero inspired tales which is available to buy here.

‘To all who, if only for a moment, felt that they didn’t belong.’

The stories in Freaks! are written by Caroline Smailes and Nik Perring, and the illustrations are by Darren Craske.

Invisible 

[Super Power: The ability to make oneself unseen to the naked eye]

If I stay totally still,

if I stand right tall,

with me back against the school wall,

close to the science room’s window,

with me feet together,

pointing straight,

aiming forward,

if I make me hands into tight fists,

make me arms dead straight,

 if I push me arms into me sides,

if I squeeze me thighs,

stop me wee,

if me belly doesn’t shake,

if me boobs don’t wobble,

if I close me eyes tight,

so tight that it makes me whole face scrunch,

if I push me lips into me mouth,

if I make me teeth bite me lips together,

if I hardly breathe,

if I don’t say a word.

Then,

I’ll magic meself invisible,

and them lasses will leave me alone.

Oh Christmas three

Three little baubles of happy news to hang on your tree this December:

Firstly - huge congratulations to Isobel J Hillman for getting her first poem published at Ink, Sweat & Tears - I'm particularly thrilled for her as she's my daughter, and she wrote Avalanches when she was nine (she's the grand old age of ten now!).

Secondly - I have a story up at The Bactrian Room. I'd love your thoughts on this one. My thanks go to Russell Streur who has virtually adopted me this year!

Thirdly - the names have gone into the hat - the person receiving a copy of The Juno Charm is:

Congratulations, Dan - drop me an email at teaforthetiller [at] hotmail [dot] com and The Juno Charm will work its magical way to you.

Thanks to all who've read and or followed the blog this year - your support means so much to me. However you choose to celebrate this holiday, I hope you have a relaxing and meaningful time - and a heap of fun ;) You really are the trimmings on the tree for me.