March Roundup

March is already shaping up to be a slippery little fiend of a month – and I’m sure I will enjoy every moment of it. Join me…

I’m in Edinburgh!

1st March: See Edinburgh’s beautiful buildings lit up with famous quotes as part of enLIGHTen. Download my story ‘Sleep Pictures’ then get yourself down to the Roxburghe Hotel at Charlotte Square to have a listen.

I’m in Glasgow!

4th March: Don’t miss Words Per Minute’s Feminisms special, featuring novelists Helen Fitzgerald and Jessica Gregson, new writing from Amber Sparks and Suzanne Egerton, live music from Two Wings and Doves of Disorder. It’ll be braw.

I’m in London!

6th March: Pop down to the Queen of Hoxton at 7pm to hear me read at The Special Relationship. I’ll be joined by the fabulous Katy Darby, author of The Whore’s Asylum.

I’m in Glasgow Again!

8th March: Draw, listen, talk, laugh, think, create, observe, learn, share as we celebrate the one hundred and first year of International Women’s Day, and the end of a year-long community project raising money for 5 women’s charities. I’ll be reading with fellow lady-writers Helen Sedgwick and Kirstin Innes.

I’m in Copenhagen!

23rd March: I’ll be reading at Copenhagen Central Library at 4pm along with the wonderful writers Allan Wilson, Raman Mundair and William Letford.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, it’s my 28th birthday. Phew. After all that, I will most definitely need a sit-down, a cup of tea, and several handfuls of biscuits.

Thievery is a series of blog posts about my story inspirations.

The Story:

‘Fuck You Too, Pixie Meat’ is published in Gutter #5.

An extract:

Some girl was up on stage doing her thing, standing on her tiptoes to sing because it hadn’t occurred to anyone to lower the mic after the boys had played. Her band was Bitches on Acid, or Cuntfight, or Slit, and they had red glitter drumskins and Hello Kitty stickers on the bass. You know exactly how they looked: pink hair, smeared lipstick, and muffin-tops anchored over the waists of their jeans. There was even a plastic unicorn standing guard at the front of the stage. You know exactly how they sounded too, but who needs more than three chords anyway?

The Inspiration:

Like many misunderstood teen girls in the 90s, I adored Courtney Love. I was all about kinderwhore style: big black boots, torn slip dresses, red lipstick. I had long multicoloured hair and I’d adorn it with cheap diamante tiaras or tie it up with rosary beads (see photographic evidence of me at 16). Oh, I thought I was the shit.
Read More >

Thievery is a series of blog posts about my story inspirations.

The Story:

‘Francis Observes How Babies Are Made’ is published in New Writing Scotland #29.

An extract:

Francis is watching the moon. It is white like a bowl of milk and it makes the plain outside the window look black and silver like it’s on television. Francis hopes that if he stays very still then maybe he will see the moon move. Kulowali says that a beautiful woman lives in the moon because she flew there to get away from a man she did not love. The man knows that she is in the moon but although he spends all day looking for her, he can never find her. Francis thinks that the man sounds silly, and is glad that he is clever enough to look at things in the nighttime as well as the daytime. He likes the story of the beautiful woman in the moon but he is not sure that that is Science. A thing is only Science if it is observable and repeatable.

The Inspiration:

Dad is the wee blonde boy at the back.

My dad spent a few years of his childhood in Nigeria with his two brothers. It was the years of the Empire and my granddad had a job that was something to do with the British government, though I don’t really know what.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my parents and grandparents a lot. This is largely because my dad recently died, and of course that brings up all sorts of memories and thoughts about opportunities missed.

Read More >

I wrote a smutty, Virgin Mary-themed flash fiction called ‘Sex Lives of the Saints’, and you can read it at Tawdry Bawdry. Hope you enjoy it! Here’s a sneak preview:

Just so she doesn’t think I’m hopeless, I run my fingertip along her neck: a raised white scar, soft as fog, the width of a match.

‘My father,’ she says. ‘He was hit by lightning.’

I’m delighted to announce that I have an agent!

Francesca Barrie at Johnson & Alcock will be representing my first novel, Rust and Stardust, as well as (hopefully) whatever comes next. Short story collection? Novella? Genderqueer burlesque mime show? Watch this space…