Scrap Paper Philosophy

When I was growing up, my parents (being right-thinking types) kept me well supplied in scrap paper and crayons. My mother was a journalist and - since most press releases at the time arrived as hard copy, printed one side only - she brought home stacks of the things, and turned them over to me to draw on.

I cheerfully motored through the paper, dimly aware that other people’s drawing paper didn’t have announcements and product copy and recipes printed on the back. I also learned the word “pressrelease” with absolutely no idea what it was, beyond something that was a good start for a picture.

And at some point I was struck by a sudden realisation: my drawings didn’t have printing on the back. The printing was, in fact, intended to be the important part. The printing was the front. I was drawing on the back. To a small child, this was an absolutely world-shattering discovery.

I still regarded the pictures as the important part, of course. But every so often I’d turn the page over, look at the printing on the back, and remind myself that some people thought that was the front.

During lockdown, one of my highlights has been the weekly Saturday-afternoon Skype call with friends. We’ve been slowly working our way through the Puzzled Pint archive of puzzles, doing our best to adapt to solving them remotely but collaboratively. Despite some sterling on-the-fly PDF-editing from the people with graphics tablets, I still find it surprisingly hard to solve anything at all without a paper version to hand. There has, accordingly, been quite a lot of printing going on.

When I needed scrap paper for scribbling anagrams and ciphers, of course I turned one of the puzzles over and wrote on the back. Ditto for notes, to-do lists, shopping lists, recipes… so much so, that I was surprised to discover that a first draft of a piece of creative non-fiction had puzzles printed on the back.

You may have noticed that both sides are now the back. And, conversely, both are the front.

Stay flexible.

Word Surprise! Billabong

Earlier this week, I was asked if knew what a billabong was.

Well, yes. Of course I do. But at the point at which someone asks, you know they’re asking for a reason and thus the answer you feel to be obvious is probably going to turn out wrong.

We are, by the way, ignoring the surfwear brand here.

So what do I know about billabongs? They’re Australian, obviously. They are some form of watering hole. They are a place you might go to drink.

They are, let’s be honest, a place where a jolly swagman might sit down and wait for various things to happen. (What is a swagman, anyway? That is a separate question. Banjo Patterson has a lot to answer for. And Waltzing Matilda isn’t even one of his better poems.)

As a friend of mine put it when I sprung the “what is a billabong?” question on him: like an oasis, but Australian.

I tentatively gave this as my answer. And it’s not wrong, as such. But much more specifically: billabong is the Australian name for an oxbow lake.

Oxbow lakes are, famously, one of those things everyone remembers from school geography lessons.

Can I remember what the term means? Yup.

Can I draw a diagram of the process of formation of an oxbow lake, thirty years later? Yup.

Have I ever seen one? No *.

Has this knowledge ever been in the least useful in later life? No **.

Now, admittedly the Australian climate apparently means that oxbow lakes are a rather more seasonal affair than they are in my native Britain. Even so: these two incredibly disparate concepts - oxbow lakes and billabongs - turn out just to be different local words for the same thing.

I am quite unreasonably surprised by this.

_{* Actually, I am informed that many years ago on a holiday in New Zealand, I did see an oxbow lake. It was only identifiable as such to someone who assiduously read every last bit of text in a guidebook (guilty), and was not - from ground level - observably an oxbow.}

_{** Has anything I learned in geography been useful in later life? I definitely recall learning the capital cities of African and South American countries, which would come in handy for pub quizzes if only I’d learned them properly rather than cramming one night for a test the following day.}

A Writing Class!

I haven’t been to any form of writing class since… well, since I was at school, as far as I can remember. I’ve often seen appealing courses advertised, but they always seem to take place over a ten-day period in Spain, or something equally impractical.

However, an email turned up last week: Shaun Levin, of The A3 Review, was planning to hold a “writing workout” on Sunday afternoon. We'll be getting a lot of writing done in an hour and a half, promised the mail, and you'll have the foundation for three new pieces by the end of the workout. It intrigued me, was inexpensive, and seemed an exciting thing to schedule into a weekend that was looking a little bare.

Conducted over Zoom, the workout involved nearly thirty people. Shaun had selected three short pieces of writing to share, which we read, and then took them as inspiration to write responses to the current pandemic. A few people shared their work, and after one exercise Shaun dropped us into “breakout rooms” (who knew Zoom could do that?) to share and discuss the pieces we’d written, one-to-one.

In a globally-distributed class, my companion for the one-to-one section was a lovely chap who was, in fact, about 15 minutes drive away. It was interesting to hear tiny snippets of lockdown life from other countries, too. A lady with an Australian accent described the 2m social distance as “about the length of a really tall dead person”, and implied that the phrase had been used in official awareness campaigns. Another described the appropriate distance as “the length of an alligator”… which may even be useful if, as she did, you live in Florida.

I have done surprisingly little writing of late, and it was great to be given the impetus to get on and do it. No ifs, not buts: you have 9 minutes. Go! It was lovely, too, to hear other people’s writing - if daunting to hear how much someone could produce in 9 minutes. All in all, I’d say it was 90 minutes well spent, and if he does such a thing again I’d heartily recommend it.

For the final exercise, we read Déjeuner du Matin, which I remember from school French lessons (the link also has an English translation); the challenge was to write something which builds similarly on a series of simple steps. Here is a tidied-up version of what I scribbled out.

Happy Birthday To Me

You should wet your hands with water.

In the sunlight, the water sparkles like it used to at the seaside.

Apply enough soap to cover your hands.

Thank goodness the corner shop finally had soap.

Rub your hands together.

Grandpa’s hands used to feel the way yours do now, rough over the knuckles.

Use one hand to rub the back of the other hand and clean between the fingers. Do the same with the other hand.

Ellie’s fingers were so tiny when she was newborn.

Rub your hands together and clean between the fingers.

When you still gardened, the mud used to turn the water black.

Rub the back of your fingers against your palms.

You must remember to put coffee on the shopping list.

Rub your thumb using your other hand. Do the same with the other thumb.

That scar has all but disappeared.

Rub the tips of your fingers on the palm of your other hand. Do the same with other hand.

He used to stroke the lines on your palm as you watched the sunset.

Rinse your hands with water.

My goodness, where has the time gone?

(OK, technically only every other line was written by me. Odd-numbered lines are courtesy of the NHS.)

The Joy of Pencils

For my birthday, last year, a friend gave me a box of pencils. They were all adorned with beautifully de-motivational statements like “Mistakes are stepping stones to failure.”

I loved them.

A few weeks ago, I had a bunch of friends round for an afternoon of puzzle-solving. Since pencils were required, I broken open the de-motivational pencils and shared them around. They were much admired, but I also noticed while scribbling pseudo-nonsense and bits of answers…

They’re really nice pencils. They’re fun to use.

I took to tucking one into my pocket just in case I needed to… you know, join in with a crossword or something.

I haven’t significantly written with a pencil since I was at junior school. Pencils are kind of scratchy, and a bit smudgy, and just generally not as good as pens. I have a lovely fountain pen, and many, many ballpoints (including the particularly exciting one that has pandas on it and writes in six colours) and a nice fineliner and some highlighters. To be honest, pencils don’t feature very often.

But these yellow failure-pencils? They actually seemed … nice.

And then, in the general ruck and run of my podcast-listening, the latest of the Boring Talks came up. That is to say, a whole episode of Brian Macklewells telling me why "we should all appreciate the pencil a little bit more".

There are few things in life more exciting than listening to an enthusiast talking entertainingly on their subject. By the end of the podcast, I was already regretting my long-term dismissal of the pencil.

I often write first drafts of stories long-hand in a notebook. To save space, I write small and fit two lines of writing to every ruled line - which boils down to around 500 words per page. However, I am famous for my love of stationery, and I accrue presents in the form of notebooks considerably faster than I actually use them. I don’t need to write so small.

So this week, I’ve been experimenting with writing in pencil. My writing is much larger, and I get around 120 words to the page. If nothing else, that equates to a huge sense of achievement as I gallop through the notebook. I’m remembering the way you have to twist the pencil as you write, to make sure that it remains reasonably pointy instead of wearing flat. It has surprised me to find out how quickly a pencil wears down and requires sharpening. I have been enjoying the noise the pencil makes as it scrapes across the page, although I do stick to my claim that it’s all a bit smudgy.

I’m not sure if this is a long-term choice, but for now I’m quite enjoying scribbling away with a pencil that tells the world “False hope is better than no hope.” I’m enjoying the feeling of progress the pencil engenders. I’ve been eyeing up my old box of currently-unsharpened, proudly-named “Venus” pencils, which are very keen to announce they’re manufactured by the Colloidal Process British Patent No. 216420 (I have no idea).

Maybe I can learn to love the pencil after all.

A surprise review!

Last week, I wanted to link someone to my story on Luna Station Quarterly. There were various ways I could have retrieved the link but - being rather lazy - I simply Googled for my name and the story’s title.

Rather surprisingly, the actual story doesn’t show up in the first page of Google’s results. My interview with LSQ does, as does my own overly-excited blog post about its publication.

What I did find (third result on the page, no less) was a review. A review! Someone whom I don’t know read and reviewed my story!

I clicked on through without considering whether I really wanted to know what an unknown internet denizen had to say about me or my words. After all, sometimes the internet is not a very kind place. As it turned out, the review was perfectly civilised and seems to be by someone who spends a huge amount of time tirelessly reviewing short fiction.

Publishing my first story felt like such a big deal to me that it’s hard to accept that it was an invisibly, unnoticeably tiny drop in the fiction-swamp to the rest of the world. Finding a little bubble like this to mark its presence is as lovely as it was unexpected.

You can read the review on SFF Reviews.

Submissions and Rejections

In 2018, I sent eleven stories out into the world to seek their fortunes. Two of the stories I dispatched twice, and the net result was that I received thirteen rejections.

At the beginning of 2019 I was wondering whether I should send any of them out again for another try. Was dogged determination the right approach? Or should I accept that editors had decided these pieces of fiction weren’t publishable, and move on? I’d seen writers advocating sending the same story out ten, twenty, a hundred times - and writers arguing that rejection is a clear sign that you need to rewrite. So I went looking for advice.

I found Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year, Kim Lao’s essay on embracing - with enthusiasm - rejections. Shortly after that I came across another piece (which I now can’t locate) which likened submitting stories to buying lottery tickets: the more you do it, the more chance you have.

Right, then, I thought. That’s what I’ll do.

And I started throwing stories at the world. When one got rejected, I turned it round and send it straight back out the door. I wrote new things. I polished up older things, and sent them off, too. I tried to match stories to publications, which means I’ve also read a lot of stories in a lot of magazines and journals this year, and I tried not to get dispirited when yet another editor emailed to tell me that my work was “not a good fit”.

But hey, none of them said “your fiction is awful, please desist”!

Some of them were lovely. Some editors took the time to send me feedback with their rejection (and I am so grateful to everyone who was able to do that). One story that I was particularly proud of came back time and again until I was beginning to lose faith… then an editor rejected it with a friendly and apologetic note telling me all the things they liked about it.

I kept a count of the submissions and rejections (which is, by the way, really very easy to do if you use The Submissions Grinder). Chatting to a friend, who is a proper, published and extremely successful author, I mentioned that I was trying to get up to a hundred.

“But that’s a submission every three and a bit days!” she wailed, “that’s madness!”

Well, yes. When you put it like that, it does sound a bit excessive. And unachievable. Fortunately, I didn’t put it like that.

I also didn’t quite manage it. During 2019, I made 80 submissions. I received 64 rejections… and four acceptances. The acceptances, needless to say, caused me to run round in little circles like an over-excited Labrador pup.

Of the rejections, six were personal and some included helpful and thoughtful feedback. At least two stories have been extensively rewritten as a result, and three more are on hiatus while I wonder how to address them. Many of the form rejections were on the encouraging side, saying that they had enjoyed the story, inviting me to send them further work or wishing me luck placing the story elsewhere. A few were not encouraging at all.

Kim Lao was right: embracing - and shooting for - rejection is a surprisingly freeing experience. It’s educational, and fun, and it really is just part of the process. When an editor says that they liked a piece but it didn’t quite fit their requirements, I choose to believe them. This year, I’ll be aiming once again for a hundred rejections.

And that story, the one that I was proud of, but that kept getting rejected? It was my first submission of 2020: it went out again on January 2nd, for the eleventh time. I’ll let you know ;)

How Did That November Writing Challenge Go?

This November, I took up the challenge of writing a minimum of 200 words per day.

So, how was it?

I managed my 200 words (or more) on 27 days of the 30. Two days were out for illness, and the final day of the month I was away from home organising an event. I took a notebook away with me hoping to get some writing time, but it just didn’t happen. However, during November I wrote nearly 13K words, of which 11.7K were adding to the extremely rough draft of my accidental novel. This makes it just over 20% of what anyone who won NaNoWriMo achieved.

My life is currently arranged such that, some days, there just isn’t time for writing. And declaring that I was going to make the time didn’t really change that. On days when I left the house at eight in the morning and got home around half eleven at night, sitting down to write even 200 words seemed like a very tall order.

On the other hand, it did force me to find ways to squeeze that writing in. Typing out the next part of a scene on my phone while squashed in to a carriage on the Central Line is surprisingly plausible - and Google Keep makes transferring it to my laptop extremely easy. I should do more of that. When driving, thinking through the next bit of writing so that the 200 words is a typing exercise rather than a writing task can really prune the time required once I get home. And when I only have half an hour to spare, it really is worth trying to squeeze a little bit of writing in. All of those are lessons that I can - I hope - take with me into the next month and the new year.

And I can, at least, wallow in the certainty that I was completely correct: NaNoWriMo is not for me. Or not at the moment. A couple of days ago I was chatting to someone who’s won NaNoWriMo twice, and she concurred: writing 50K words in a month while having a full time job - which she did once - is Not A Good Idea.

Carly Racklin originally suggested this writing challenge. She and Brina Williamson both took it up, and their support and companionship on Twitter was wonderfully welcome. We all wrote words during the month, and thus I declare that we all won.

Empiricism (or “I've got a banana”)

Earlier this week, I saw the notice pictured above. It was stuck to an office fridge, a casual talking point for those grabbing milk for their tea and coffee.

Now, I reckon there are basically two responses to this. No, actually, there are three - some people will shrug and move on, or ignore it, quite unconcerned about the habits of bananas when exposed to UV. Let’s not worry about them.

The other two responses are basically:

• “Wow, bananas glow blue under black lights!”

• “Bananas… do they? Really?”

Now, I am firmly in the latter group. I was also, I realised immediately after wondering whether bananas really did glow blue, in the fortunate position of someone who possesses both a banana and a black light (not literally about my person, of course - I had to wait until I got home).

The initial experiment was not terribly promising. This looks very much to me like a peeled banana illuminated by a light with a bit of a purple tinge. There’s definitely nothing I’d describe as “glowing blue”.

I was all ready to give up and add a stroppy post-it to the fridge on Monday saying “no, they don’t” when I realised a couple of things. My UV torch, which is basically a toy for looking at invisible ink, probably isn’t that great. And I’d assumed we were talking about the flesh of the banana - maybe I should have checked the skin as well.

Unfortunately, by this stage, I had made the banana into a milkshake and drunk it. I imagine this sort of problem doesn’t arise in the best scientific establishments.

Fortunately, I had a second banana.

What I didn’t have, though, was much of a grasp of what a banana-yellow object would look like under UV light anyway. How much of the blue-ness of the above picture is down to shining a blue-ish light onto it?

Obviously, this experiment required some form of control object to allow me to tell whether there was something special about the banana.

After some hasty hunting, I lined up three banana-coloured objects. One of them is, of course, a banana. One is part of a vintage 1980s puzzle recently retrieved from a parental attic, the other is the container for a popular brand of milkshake powder (banana-flavoured, as it happens, though the chocolate one also comes in a yellow tub).

Holding the UV torch a little further away seemed to improve things.

However, I still wasn’t really seeing the “glows blue” effect. Everything looks blue, of course, but the banana isn’t noticeably more exciting than the puzzle.

Hang on, though… what’s that?

OK, it’s faint. But that definitely looks like fluorescence to me!

Around the darker, riper spots on the banana skin there are definite glowing rings.

I’m not writing this blog post to demonstrate that ripe bananas fluoresce (other people have already written scientific papers about that), or to flaunt my ownership of fruit and fancy torches.

Instead, I’m advocating for an approach to life. If you put yourself in the group that says “why?” and “really?” and “can I try that?” then you will never be bored. You’ll be better informed, and you’ll have more fun.

Be curious.

Be the person who thinks “well, I’ve got a banana….”.

How's the November Challenge Going?

This November, I’m attempting to write a minimum of 200 words per day. I stole this idea from Carly Racklin and have been tweeting relentlessly about it under the patently-made-up #IShoWriMoMo hashtag.

200 words doesn’t sound like very much, does it? That was the point, really. To me, the big hump to get over isn’t the actual words, but finding the time in the day to sit down and begin the writing. Once I’ve actually started, words do tend to come out - not necessarily good words, but words-comma-existent. My theory has always been that once a thing exists, it can be improved. If there are words, they can be edited and/or threatened until they turn into something decent.

One evening this week - arriving back home at around half-past eleven at night - I was tempted to skip a day. After all, this is a challenge I have set myself. Missing sleep for an arbitrary set of rules is silly; I can give myself permission to go to bed instead. Right?

I didn’t.

Partly, this is because I am the sort of person who invents silly sets of arbitrary rules and sticks to them. Ask me about January 2018, when each day I had to try a new drink, and (other than that) was only allowed to drink things from previous days. But mostly it was because I am hoping to use this month to blast through a first draft of my work-in-progress.

My WIP started as a short story, but is rapidly turning into a thing that I must reluctantly concede is a novel. I have previously lost impetus on long works, and I want to kick start myself into seeing it through to a conclusion. If I only add to it when I have the time, then that’s not a challenge. That’s just normal life.

The daily writing is providing results. My draft has grown considerably since November 1st, so I think the plan is working.

Which does, of course, raise a question: why am I writing this blog post instead of getting on with it?

Twas the Night Before NaNoWriMo...

It's November tomorrow and so, as any writer will tell you, it's almost time for #NaNoWriMo. That's National Novel Writing Month - an annual challenge, started two decades ago, to write a novel in a month.

In fairness, its really more International Draft-writing Month, but I don't expect anyone else wishes to join me in Unnecessary Pedantry Corner. I don’t imagine #InDraMo will start trending any time soon.

I've never attempted NaNoWriMo, because I've never felt that I had enough time to dedicate to it. 50K words in thirty days, plus a full-time job, would mean abandoning everything else to concentrate solely on a novel draft. Which is a fine thing, but realistically I am not going to do it. Or not without a lot of advanced planning which, once again, I haven't put in.

Earlier this week, I noted Carly Racklin's tweet about NaNoWriMo. In short, she wasn't doing it, but planned to - as she has in other years - make a commitment to write some words every day.

At the times in my life when I've been writing daily, I've been amazed at how much I manage to get done. So I'm stealing her idea, and resolving that this November I will write at least 200 words a day. Maybe 200 words of my current work in progress (a short story that has got catastrophically out of hand); maybe 200 words of something else. The act of writing is the important thing.

I hereby declare this #IShoWriMoMo: I Should Write More Month.

I'll tweet my progress as November unfurls. I'm relying on you to keep me at it!

Tell People You Like Their Stuff

Earlier this year, I read a story in the literary magazine The Masters Review. I often struggle with fiction marketed as “literary”, and wasn’t expecting to find a story so compelling that when I ran out of train journey I couldn’t quite put it down. I finished the last few pages while walking down a crowded platform, which is incidentally a terrible idea. Do not do this.

After a bit of dithering, I dropped an email to the author telling them how much I’d enjoyed the story, and why. The dithering was largely because I assume writers getting published in heavy-hitters like The Masters Review will be deluged with praise all the time, and are probably fed up with total strangers landing in their inbox to gush and have opinions at them.

I got back a genuinely lovely reply, which among other things suggested that (at least in this case!) this is not true. The author gave every impression of having been delighted to receive an out-of-the-blue compliment from someone on the other side of the world.

Having let my first proper, published story loose in the world a few months ago I, as a very minor and beginner author, was overjoyed to hear from people who liked it. Especially people who told me why, or pulled out something particular to comment on. My favourite bit of feedback remains the email from an old friend who, in between complaining about IT problems and updating me on his kids, simply wrote “loved this bit” and quoted a single sentence. It was my own favourite sentence from the entire story.

Since then I’ve been trying to do a better job of telling people that I like their stuff. On Twitter, it’s easy to share something, say how good it is, and tag the creator in so that they catch it. I’ve had a few lovely interactions on Twitter recently with people whose work I’ve enjoyed.

My guide to telling someone you like their stuff is simple: be honest, be kind. Be specific, and say what you liked or why - it’s much more meaningful than a blanket “that was great”. Don’t necessarily expect a reply. Don’t offer critical feedback (unless they asked for it, in which case knock yourself out).

Now, go forth and praise the good stuff.

Experiments in editing

Some time ago, I came across this post on Tumblr: Writing advice you’re not going to like. I recommend reading the whole thing, but the executive summary is: do not attempt to edit your writing, instead re-write it from the ground up using the previous draft as a reference.

As predicted in the article, I didn’t particularly like the advice. But here was someone of considerable writing experience assuring me that it was a revolutionary approach. In addition, I had a story that needed some fairly drastic action if it was ever going to make it in the world. Trying the re-write-from-scratch advice seemed like a worthwhile venture.

I took my printed copy of my story, which was much scribbled on in red and green ink. I found a purple pen and did some more scribbling. Then I opened up a nice new text document on my laptop and started typing.

At this point I would like to report that the text came together in a new way, I managed radical change, the rewritten story was immediately snapped up by an important and influential journal, and will shortly be published to massive acclaim. Sadly, none of those things is true, so much as I would like to report them, I shan’t.

As a strategy, rewriting really didn’t work for me at all. I’m a decent copy-typist, so at any point in time the path of least resistance was typing what was already on the existing page. Obviously, this is equivalent to letting a paragraph stand in edit, but because you’re furiously typing it feels like you’re making huge progress. I did rewrite some sections altogether, but far more often I typed in something close to the original, then edited until there was nothing left. In short, what I did was regular editing with extra busywork.

This is, obviously, not what the original poster had in mind. The process may be sound, but my first attempt to implement it certainly failed miserably.

What struck me (hilariously after the fact) is that to some extent I’ve always done this anyway. My first draft is usually, time permitting, written in long-hand with a pen. Once the first draft is finished, I type it up and frequently do fairly drastic revising as I go. This is a completely normal part of my writing, which I had inexplicably failed to equate with someone telling me to do exactly that.

For writing anything - fiction, essays, CVs - I’ve always regarded it as a two-stage process:
1. Make it be
2. Make it be good
To be honest, doing (1) feels like the hard part. Editing something to improve it is always easier than creating something out of nothing. (That’s not to say that I don’t get stuck with editing; a story I’m very fond of has been stranded in limbo for months since I realised the ending hinged on a series of ghastly puns, and I set it down until I could come up with something better.)

I’ll certainly try the re-writing again in the future. Sadly, however, it isn’t a magic bullet.

Of course it isn’t :-)

Writing the answers

In the spaces between publications of Luna Station Quarterly, the magazine puts out a series of interviews with the authors from the latest edition.

The interviews themselves are fairly short, but I always look forward to reading them. Especially for a story I’ve particularly enjoyed, it’s interesting to hear some of the background to the story’s creation or the author’s thoughts on an issue the plot raises. More than anything else, it puts me in awe of the authors, and the huge amount of thought that goes into the construction of a narrative.

Issue 38 includes my story, Violent Silence, so in due course some questions turned up for me in my inbox. And I thought: oh no. Now I have to write answers which make me sound as together and professional as all these other people.

Also: I wish I had written a story about a kitten, and not something that would lead people to ask me about the moral implications of hybrid human/robot consciousnesses.

In the event, I actually quite enjoyed thinking about the questions. And then I wrote far, far, far too much that waffled off into philosophy I am highly unqualified to discuss. So I deleted and started again. And again. You know how it goes :-)

The interview is now out in the world! You can read it on LSQ - like everything they do, it’s beautifully presented (and is even illustrated with a piano-playing robot). LSQ regularly tweet out links to author interviews (and lots of other bloggy goodness), I recommend following them!

Need a summer party game? Try kubb!

I wouldn’t go so far as to say summer is here in the UK, but on Friday the rain let up long enough to go to the park and pretend that it was June.

I was introduced to a game I’ve never played: kubb. I’ve heard the name before, and had a vague idea that kubb was the Swedish equivalent of knurr and spell. It isn’t, it’s more akin to bowls or quoits, and it’s actually a really good game.

Firstly, it involves throwing stuff about. And who doesn’t like doing that? You throw wooden batons to knock over wooden blocks, so when they make contact there is a very satisfying clunky noise. Secondly, it’s simple enough that a bunch of people who have never played before can get up and running in a matter of minutes, but still has a little bit of strategy. Thirdly, you can play without stopping your conversation or putting your beer down. Teams are fairly fluid so people can drop in or out as they choose, meaning it works well for a big group. It’s ideal summer park entertainment.

I suspect our game wouldn’t have met championship standards (and not least because the pitch was laid out by a few people saying “yeah, that looks like about 5 metres”). Holding a wooden baton at the end, and throwing it underarm such that it doesn’t spin in the air, is quite surprisingly difficult. Hitting a block happened rarely enough that even the opposition celebrated it each time.

It’s not a game you can improvise easily, because you do need a series of specifically-shaped wooden blocks. However, you can pick up a set for not much more than twenty quid, so if you’re looking for a fun beach game, give it a whirl.

It's here!

My beautiful shiny copy of Luna Station Quarterly is here!

I’ve always read issues of LSQ in e-book format, and I was expecting the paper publication to be a fairly slim A4 magazine. It’s not! It’s basically… a book.

A real book, which is, if anything, even better and real-er than I was expecting. It feels solid, and has gorgeous cover art, and an appealingly literary font, and an ISBN. I never thought I’d be excited about an ISBN! And this book has a story of mine in it, with my name on it.

I’m still delighted, OK?

For as long as I can remember I’ve written stories; for at least fifteen years my new year resolutions have included variations on “write more, get something published”.

Now I have success in my hands. And it’s got an elk on the front.

Violent Silence is loose in the world!

Luna Station Quarterly…

…which is a speculative fiction magazine…

…with a beautiful print edition…

…has published my story, Violent Silence.

And I couldn't be more delighted!

You can grab a copy of the magazine from Amazon, or from Weightless Books. You can also read it free online.

This is my first publication, the first time a piece of fiction I've written has gone through the whole process of submission, and selection, and been made into a typeset page which I can turn.

(I can't turn it yet, because the paper copy is still winging its way to me through the postal system. But I will! And there will be pictures, oh yes, there will be pictures.)

It makes me very happy that the publication will be Luna Station Quarterly, too. I've loved LSQ since I opened issue 29 and read How Lady Nightmare Stole Captain Alpha’s Girlfriend by Kristen Brand, and realised that here was a magazine that would print funny superhero stories, alongisde whimsical sci-fi, and gritty fantasy. And still manage a consistent feel for each issue. I subscribed on the spot, and I still love the variety of voices and viewpoints they publish.

I’m grateful to LSQ’s editorial staff for making it all happen, and for being so quick to answer newbie questions. I’m honoured to be appearing on their pages with all their amazing authors. I’m revelling in the idea that this might just mean I am a Real Writer.

But mostly I’m excited.

Support Your Local Library

Yesterday morning, I walked into an estate agent’s and had a long chat. Before I left, I gave them my name, address, email and phone number. I’m not planning to rent a new property any time soon, or indeed use any of the services they offer.

I was, however, keen to put my hand up and join the campaign they’re running. They’re an independent, local estate agent, with close ties to the community - and right now, they’re determined that our local library isn’t going to close. So I signed up. I also did the next most useful thing I reckon one can do to help a threatened library: took myself through the door and borrowed some books.

When I moved here ten years ago, I had a daily commute which involved a 50 minute train ride in each direction. I was also absolutely broke, and couldn’t afford to buy new books at anything like the rate I was reading them. Getting my first library card in some years, I got to be surprised all over again that libraries have loads of books that you can just borrow for no money. Really! Just shelves and shelves of books, and the staff let you help yourself and take them away.

My local is small, a sort of satellite to the main library in the centre. (The main one has recently been redeveloped and moved to a new, modern space so it can offer greater access to digital and self-service facilities, provide a range of study areas, and be a flexible events space. And, what do you know, it’s also about 50% smaller. But I digress.)

In the time it took me yesterday to choose a book, and pick up a second because it had a cool cover, around fifteen different people had passed through. A small child was reading aloud, an even smaller one was reaching upwards valiantly to pass a giant stack of returns to the librarian. A few older people were reading papers in companionable silence, and people from teenage to middle-age were using the public computers. You want community? Try your local library.

During the week, I saw this amazing Twitter thread from a UK librarian. I also read the Hugo-nominated story A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies, which makes almost exactly the same points in a very different way. Libraries are lifelines, and safe spaces, and vital local hubs and magical places full of books.

And if it means mine might stay open, I’m even willing to talk to estate agents.

Gable vs. Dormer

Recently, I was writing a story in which someone had a vision of a house. I had a really clear idea of what I wanted the building to look like; very much like the house in the picture above. I reckoned that it should be possible to do better for a description than “the windows on the top floor had pointy bits going up into the roof”.

Are they gable windows? A gable is the triangle-y part on the end of a ridged roof, but does it apply here as well? Asking around, no one understood what I meant by “gable window”.

A cursory search suggested that maybe what I wanted was a “dormer window”. In which case I felt it was time for a quick redesign of the house in the story. I dislike the word dormer; I associate it with bugalows, and with sad towns that have become nothing more than London commuter overspill.

I took myself off to consult Rice’s Architectural Primer, which is an absolute delight of a book. The cover blurb promises “an indispensable guide to the vocabulary and grammar of British buildings”; the pages are packed with lovely illustrations and the most amazingly obscure words. Twenty minutes later I still had no idea what the windows were called, but was quite taken with vermiculated rustication, and had learned the difference between torus and scotia.

After some more browsing, I concluded:

1. A dormer window is set upright on a sloping roof, so these are not dormer windows.

2. These are probably just windows, with gables above them.

3. The above is more or less useless if no one else understands what I mean, and frankly “pointy bits going up into the roof” may well paint a better picture.

Ah, well. Back to the writing!

Many thanks to Denise for sending me a photo of her house to demonstrate the pointy bits.

Raglan

On a recent foray into Wales, I paused to explore Raglan Castle.

“Notice,” said the guide book sternly as I passed the gatehouse, “the machiolations”.

Fortunately, it went on to explain that a machiolation is “an arched opening at battlement level, through which suitable missiles could be dropped on a besieging army”. If you wish to notice them, you can do so on the top of the gatehouse towers over on the right hand side of the picture above.

Honestly, machiolations aside, it's a really good castle and well worth a visit. It's a fabulous mix of different historical layers as subsequent owners changed it from a medieval defence into a fancy status symbol with pleasure gardens, then had to bring it hastily up to snuff for the Civil War. Sadly it turned out to be on the wrong side of that particular conflict, and the keep was deliberately undermined to collapse into the moat when the Right But Repulsive side won.

Galley Slave

Today, for the first ever time, I was sent a galley draft to approve for publication.

It was terribly exciting, and made me feel very important and like a proper author,

It also had a paragraph inexplicably missing from the middle of the story. I am, as yet, unsure whether this was a mistake or a test…