Straw Into Gold : Writing, Reading, Making

I confess, I am really excited about this. I am very proud of my story, Too Much Tea, which is published today in this beautiful paperback. I’ve only been writing memoir for around a year – I’ve previously concentrated on fiction. I’ve had to do a lot of thinking – not only about the differences …

One of the textiles pieces I’m most proud of is this quilt, which I made for the wedding of two of my loveliest friends. I’ve made quilts before – by which I mean, I’ve chosen fabrics and cut them and pieced them into a quilt top, and then I’ve sent the top of the quilt …

I am so fortunate to be able to say that I read an early draft of Carmilla Voiez’s novel Starblood way back in the dim and distant past – 2010, I think – when somehow I ended up as a (virtual) member of a writing group based in Aberdeen… I’m currently in the middle of …

I have avoided detailed spoilers but I do give some indications of the overall storyline – so please don’t read this if you don’t want to know anything at all about how that develops. I finished reading the latest Margaret Atwood yesterday – the long awaited follow up to The Handmaid’s Tale, which I first …

I’ve been meaning to add some of my best textile arts projects here for ages. Kate Savage, the narrator and hero of A Savage Art, is a textile artist and I loved imagining her various art works – although I lack the skill to carry them out. However, I am an enthusaiastic amateur and I …

I’m so pleased that my first ever published short story, A Dog’s Life, is appearing in this anthology, edited by Elizabeth Zelvin, and published today. The kindle version is available here on Amazon UK and here on Amazon US, and I believe a paperback edition will be appearing soon. Mine is the only story set …

After a long fallow period, I’ve been working on some textile art pieces again. Anyone who’s read A Savage Art might guess that there’s some wish fulfilment going on, and it’s absolutely true. I would love to be a textile artist, like my heroine Kate. I don’t have her talent, and yet, I do enjoy …

Yes, I know – a very childish and quite deliberate misplaced modifier… You can’t be surprised, surely? For a long, long time I have been convinced that I am totally rubbish at short stories and it’s beginning to look as if I might just have been wrong. I’m thrilled to say that I’ve had a …

I’ve just finished reading this fabulous memoir On Chapel Sands by Laura Cumming, about the secrets and lies in her mother’s childhood. There’s an excellent extract from it here in the Observer ” This is how it began, and how it would end, on the long pale strand of a Lincolnshire beach in the last …

Crime fiction readers and writers, that’s who, according to the self-serving, publicity-seeking founder of the Staunch Prize, which was set up to encourage the writing of thrillers without any violence against women. I wouldn’t normally be quite so sure I knew what someone’s agenda was, but I do have a rule which is not so …