Every day next week, 17-21 March 2014, BBC Radio 4 Extra will be broadcasting my stories at 11am, 9pm and 4am. Here are the programme details. There'll be five stories in all, from both of my short story collections, Instruction Manual For Swallowing and The Stone Thrower: Fewer Things The 40-Litre Monkey Remember the Bride Who Got … [Read more...]
New short story on Visual Verse
I have a new short story online – The Factory Explosion - over at Visual Verse. They asked me to write a short story in response to the brilliant image below by Denise Nestor. It had to be 50-500 words and written in an hour. You can read the full story here. Visual Verse encourages other writers to submit stories and poems in response to their … [Read more...]
Stories and Supper event
On Wednesday 5 March 2014 I'm doing an event in Berkhamsted - Stories and Supper - where I'll be chatting with writer Julie Mayhew about my work. An actor will read one of my stories, and I'll read one, too. Tickets are £20 if you come for supper and wine, or £10 just for the stories. This is the first of a new format event from the guys that run … [Read more...]
Happy birthday Haruki Murakami, and the year so far…
Today is Haruki Murakami's 65th birthday. Happy birthday, sir. I discovered Murakami the same way I discovered Kafka - via MTV. There was an MTV spot called 'An A to Z of Japan', and the letter M was, 'Haruki Murakami, Japan's coolest writer', or something like that. I Googled him and read about his books, and the plots appealed to my love of the … [Read more...]
Happy National Short Story Day 2013
Today, the shortest day of the year, is National Short Story Day. Here are a few links for story fans: • The official National Short Story Day website includes a wonderful long list of classic and modern short story recommendations from authors, including their reasons for choosing them, as well as story readings and events news. This year … [Read more...]
A sketchnote: the evolution of an idea
I've always used doodles, drawings and diagrams as part of my note-taking process, but after discovering sketchnotes / visual note-taking through Sacha Chua's blog, I've started illustrating my notes much more deliberately, and legibly, with the intention of making them something I can share. Here's a sketchnote from this week, which I've tidied … [Read more...]
The question that ‘What Does The Fox Say?’ really asks
Have you seen What Does The Fox Say? yet? If not, here it is - you'll need to have experienced it before we begin to deconstruct it. After watching it a few times over the last week with my kids, it's become obvious that within the inane chatterings and costume-play, the singer Ylvis - our protagonist - is actually asking an important … [Read more...]
My Nan’s pumpkin pie recipe
My kids really got excited about carving pumpkins this year (you'll see from the photo that they went for a Minecraft theme). So I bought three, one of which was a real whopper. It meant we had a lot of pumpkin flesh to eat. Nearly 5 lbs of the stuff in fact. While looking for pumpkin pie recipes, I discovered that my mum still had my nan's … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- …
- 14
- Next Page »