Check out my lush new business cards, designed by the super-talented (and rather sexy) Susie McConnell at Firebrat. I love them!
Luckily you don’t have to go out with a graphic designer to have a fancy business card – Moo do lush typewriter and vintage notebook designs. Let me know if you want to order any, as I can wangle you a 10% discount.
A while ago, Vinyl Poetry asked me to take part in their Grocery List project. At that point I was beginning to make notes for my second novel, Rust and Stardust, and so here is my list:
What’s the grocery list for your current project?
“She found me with my hands around chickens, fingers stretched wide, thumbs over beaks. My skirt, mud-weighed, tugged at my ankles as I dipped low. Silly to curtsey while armed with birds, I knew, but it had to be done. If I’d let go they’d’ve flown at her, chuttering through her red hair. And what a sight that would’ve been! The lady, still horsed, with her legs one on either side and her skirt hitching up to show a handspan of stocking. And her horse as white as cuckoo-flowers, with its little red haunch-spot not quite hidden by the bridle. I kept my thumbs tight over those dangerous beaks.”
Last year my story ‘Underskirts’ won third place in the Bridport Prize, and now you can read the whole story online at PANK magazine. Hope you enjoy it!
Thievery is a series of blog posts about my story inspirations.
The Story:
‘How I Learned To Love A Real Man’, first published online at BURST.
Reprinted in Eve’s Harvest (Odyssey Books).
An extract:
Thirteen heralded my Goth phase. I had brief affairs with Heathcliff (too obsessive), Mr. Darcy (too pouty), and Jonathan Harker (too wussy). I went through a brief but decidedly creepy phase of swithering between Edgar Allen Poe and Humbert Humbert. I soon realised that a lust for thirteen year old girls is not necessarily a good thing in a prospective lover.
The Inspiration:
The short version is that I wrote this story because when I was a teenager I had a crush on Rasputin. Just process that for a moment before we continue.
A crush.
On Rasputin.
I’ve always had unusual crushes. Some may say ‘odd’, but I think they all make perfect sense. Right now, for example, my secret boyfriend is Danny Trejo.
PHWOOOOAAAARRRR.
I think it goes without saying that if Danny Trejo was an actual, real, non-famous man who came up to me in a bar and was all “hey baby, wanna get dirty?” (because I imagine that is what he would say), then I would say “no thank-you” and move to another seat. Or perhaps throw my drink in his face and run away before he could wipe the vodka out of his eyes, depending on how scary he looked at the time.
The point is that while the face of Danny Trejo is not attractive, the general persona of Danny Trejo is very sexy indeed. I can’t really explain this, because if you’re not nodding in agreement as you read this then I can never convince you. And that brings me to Rasputin.
Similarly, Rasputin is not attractive. I mean, check this shit out:
He’s obviously a total creep. And yet, and yet! My teenage brain considered him to be the ideal boyfriend. Clearly, a beardy dead Russian mystic is the perfect partner for a queer bookish goth teenager in Glasgow. The rom-com script practically writes itself. Again, I can’t explain this, because if you’re not nodding then I’ve already lost you.
I should add that I had some slightly more normal crushes, like King Charles II and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (they’re normal guys for teenage girls to fancy, right?). Then again, I’m pretty sure I genuinely had a crush on Humbert Humbert and Edgar Allen Poe too. Maybe I just needed to get out more.
Obviously I’m not the only person who can see Rasputin’s appeal, because the illustration that goes along with my story in Eve’s Harvest makes him fit for the cover of a romance novel:
How about you? Who are your unusual crushes?
It’s always exciting to have a piece of writing in an anthology or literary magazine, whether in print or online. But I’ve also been involved in some fun and inspirational projects that were a little more unconventional. These are my favourites.
Abe’s Penny is an art project and literary magazine in the form of postcards. The editors, Anna and Tess, pair up writers and artists to create four postcards that are sent out to subscribers – four postcards make one story, so there’s a new story every month. I was paired up with Australian photographer Graham Miller, whose photographs are a beautiful exploration of loneliness and landscapes. Here are two of the photos I was sent:
It seemed to me that the photos had a clear narrative through them, and I imagined the people in the photos all being part of one family – three different generations, the changes they’d gone through, and the things they never managed to say. I wrote the story as if each postcard was written by the person in the photo. Here’s one of them:
Before taking part in this project, I had never written stories to go with photographs, and I had never written a story in four stand-alone parts. It was a great experience and I’m so proud of the result.
likestarlings pairs up writers so that they can have a conversation in poems. Each pair produces five poems in total – three from one poet, two from the other – with each poem written as a response to the previous one. I was paired with George Ttouli, an English poet. Our conversation began with my poem ‘homemakers’:
we will build
we will build a house
of stone or pine or ice
or whatever they will let us have
whatever they do not want.the heat between us will
melt the house
burn the house.
we will warm each other
together on the forest floor.
we will build ourselves on the forest floor.after they take everything
we will have what we built.
You can read the rest of the poem-conversation here.
The Triangle project was a collaboration between writers, musicians and artists. For the print part, 41 authors wrote interlinked pieces inspired by one another in a triangle form. It’s based on theories of OuLiPo so the methodology is a bit complicated, but there’s an explanation of how it worked here.
I wrote about breakups and body-mods, mainly because I have a bunch of tattoos and I’d just broken up with someone. Here is my piece. The formatting is a bit weird, so in case it doesn’t show up here is a sideways photo of it from the print version:
How about you, writers and readers? What are your favourite unusual writing projects?
Fractured West Issue 2 is launching this Sunday! RSVP on Facebook
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