monster soup

Very happy to see this kind review of The House on the Moon from Teika Marija Smits on her website.

I love this little collection but it seems to have flown under the radar for the most part, so it’s lovely when it does get a bit of attention!

Meanwhile, someone on substack mentioned the setting for the first story in that collection, and I just happened to have a photo to hand of the actual place where this story is set. Truth be told, I have about four million photos, because it was just too stupidly beautiful. I hope I get to go back someday.

My writing group has been featured on the Mslexia blog. Check out the article here!

I’ve been in a few writing groups over the years, but the Novelistas is the smallest and the funnest! We started off as almost total strangers and we’ve still never met in real life. (I was supposed to meet up with Sarah a few months ago, but I ended up spending a week in hospital instead… a sign that it’s a bad idea to try to jump between dimensions?) They’ve been my biggest cheerleaders and constant support whatever I’ve got up to (travelling around Croatia for three months, going off grid in Finland, being despised by various cats…) And I generally just feel super lucky to know them – and super proud we got an article into one of the UK’s biggest writing magazines!

You can check out the other novelistas here: Ninette Hartley, Mel Piper, and Sarah Myles.

I’ve got a new little book coming out in July (but you can pre-order it now). It’s a collection of seven short stories, all set in the same universe – which is our world, except that a house has inexplicably appeared on the moon. The house drives some people mad, while others don’t even believe it’s real. But everyone, from under-employed millenials to global superstars, is affected.

I wrote these stories over a period of three months while I was travelling around Croatia, which is a very beautiful country with some of the best-looking people I have ever seen in my life. Some of the settings in the House stories are lifted straight out of Zagreb, Split, and the islands of Korcula and Badija. But I swear to God I didn’t kill anyone there. Not even a little bit.

Ten years have passed since I arrived in Edinburgh, got a job, found a nice wee flat by the river, worked out that ‘how’ meant ‘why’ and that ‘getting your messages’ was nothing to do with telecommunications, ken. Ten years walking the cobbled paths, the snaky wynds, up and down thousands of steps, along the river, along the railway paths, to the sea, to the hills, to the forests. Some of my favourite things to do in Edinburgh: walking through New Town streets in winter, peeping into the houses with round red rooms and paternosters and oil paintings. Trying to get lost in the tangled higgledy-piggledy overlapping streets of the Old Town. Cycling to the beach at Silverknowes and walking across to Cramond, tide permitting, or up along the River Almond, looking for kingfishers. Having stupid hair and pretending to be famous during the festival. Looking out of my window in the mornings, seeing a heron or cormorant or once, thrillingly, some otters playing in the river. Sitting in my flat with the windows open, watching a torrential storm, lightning flaring over the water. Other things I’ve loved: being in a falling-apart classroom with too many students, trying to work out what the fuck a poem was about. Sitting in the workroom with colleagues, laughing ourselves silly over some nonsense or other. In lockdown, standing outside in the snow with my neighbours, drinking cups of tea and pretending to be normal. Lately, sitting out in the sunshine with the neighbours, slagging off the airbnb wankers in my stair.

Ten years. And now I’m leaving. My job is finished. Notice given to my landlady. All my stuff is packed in a yellow suitcase. I don’t know where I’m going, not exactly. But when I get there, I’m going to write. That’s the plan. That’s the whole of the plan. Wish me luck!

The people at Unsung have been busy putting together an anthology of stories “raising awareness of mental health issues” with the proceeds going to a mental health charity, Together for Mental Wellbeing.

There are some amazing writers featured in the anthology, including Aliya Whiteley, Alison Moore, Nicolas Royle, Malcolm Devlin and many more. I’m one of the ‘many more’ – my story is called The Lightness of Their Hearts. I have forgotten everything about this story, to the point that I’d forgotten the title and keep calling it The House on the Moon, which might have been its title once, some time in the distant past. It’s the only short story I’ve written in quite a long while, and I’m just too scared to read it now in case I want to change/delete it all. All I can tell you is that it features a house, the moon, some balloons and some post-natal depression. Hopefully it passes muster as part of this wonderful-looking anthology.

If you’d like to support the anthology and get hold of your own copy, details are here. And please share with friends and on social. Most of us are only too aware of mental health issues, but what sometimes escapes our attention is the fact that others are aware of us, and sharing our troubles. I hope this anthology will make its readers feel understood.

My short story collection This House of Wounds has been nominated for a British Fantasy Award. So that’s nice! The other nominated authors are Maura McHugh, Laura Mauro, Paul Tremblay and Aliette de Bodard, so obviously I’m not expecting to actually win!

Having said that, I was surprised and delighted to take home the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction for my story White Rabbit a couple of years ago, so who knows, I might get lucky again. That story’s in This House of Wounds, along with another story called Her Bones the Trees which was also nominated for the Best Short Fiction award last year. So it’s a lovely honour and I hope it will spark some interest in the book. Apparently my collection is now available at The Last Bookstore in LA and I’m very much hoping that Charlie Kaufman will wander in and buy a copy. I assume he lives in LA. If not, this plan is a bust.

I was very pleased to see Julie Travis’ fantastic Tomorrow, When We Were Young nominated for the Best Short Fiction award this year. It’s a book I absolutely loved and which filled me with wonder, and was one of my standout reads of last year. Congrats to all the nominees in all the categories. I’m only sad we won’t all be having a drink together at the award ceremony!

In other good news, my copy of Aliya Whiteley’s latest novel Greensmith arrived this morning and it looks amazing. I’m a massive, MASSIVE fan of her books. The cover blurb from Irenosen Okojie calls it “a brilliant, mind-altering, intergalactic delight.” Eek.