dancing in the wind

Friday Fiction: A Historical Literary Dinner with Ezra and Dorothy Pound, WB Yeats, Iseult Gonne and Georgie Hyde Lees

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literary historical

This is an extract from Dancing In The Wind, the second book in my WB Yeats trilogy.  It is narrated by … Read more

Skin Diving. Chapter 3.

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My New Novel (Serialised fortnightly on Fridays).

Chapter 3. Send Me A Girl.

The Story So Far: From the ‘Advanced Psychotherapeutic Facility' in upstate New York to which her father, Mack, has admitted her, Mel McIntyre mines family history and her own memory for details of a 20-year-old tragedy: the death of  baby sister, Tara.  Mel has reason to believe the mysterious circumstances of this death connect in some way to the recent suicide of her twin, Jamie. Previous Chapters Can be Read Here. Now Read On:

Ah the girl breaking out of the box. That classic image of the flamboyant 1920s: femininity dressed up as liberation.

When planning this scene to tickle Mack’s nostalgia bone, Scottie and Zelda had originally intended to deliver a cake. But they didn’t have the utensils to bake one big enough and they couldn't afford to pay a baker. (And what if it broke en route? And anyway, how did a girl get to breathe in there?)

It was Scottie who had the idea of using the

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Skin Diving. Chapter 2.

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My New Novel (Serialised fortnightly on Fridays).

Chapter 2. Gaining Entry.

Previous Chapters Can be Read Here. The Story So Far: Mel McIntyre has been delivered to an ‘Advanced Psychotherapeutic Facility' in upstate New York by her father, Mack. The mystery of her baby sister’s death twenty years ago in questionable circumstances has long haunted the McIntyre family and knowing the truth of what happened has become crucial for Mel. Now Read On:

The good doctor doesn’t know it but he has a tree growing out of his head. No, this isn’t what my mother likes to call ‘one of Mel’s phantasmagorias’. For Zelda, having a mad daughter is just another

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Writing My New Novel Online

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Do you like reading fiction? Over the next year or so, as I write my new novel, I'm going to be sharing it episode by episode here in the blog.

I'm really excited about this experiment — seeing how many of you choose to read along and seeing what effect writing it as a serial will have on the story. It's scary to write a long piece so publicly but exhiliarating too.

The big 19th century novelists – Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle and of course, the great Mr Dickens – did it this way. Which is why so many of their novels are

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A Crowd of Stars

Read WB Yeats' poetry with commentary by the muse

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Read Maud Gonne's words about the poetry she influenced