Car

Car

I've had this story knocking around in my head since a friend told me the bones of it one night in a pub. He was great storyteller and at least some of the stories he told were true. He has passed on so there is no way of checking it out.

If there was any truth in what he told it's buried in the morass of my invention. I have thought of writing a book of variations as I have considered at least a dozen frameworks into which I could put the essential elements.

However, this one is the only version I've managed to make any progress with. And although I don't consider it finished (Is a short-story ever finished?), I consider it complete. And as I've never even managed to complete a first draft of anything else it's unlikely to find a suite of companion stories anytime soon.

Anyway, having recently reached the figure for 300,000 page views on this blog I thought I'd mark the event and spare myself the bother of collecting more rejections (at the rate I submit it would take years to reach a respectable number of rejections) and self-publish. Anyway, I've issued enough pronouncements on other people's writing. Now they can strike back.

Here's the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3xRokQqsoEGaHZSTzNYdXkyU3c/view?usp=sharing


Love to hear your comments... (or would I?)

Self-Obsessed

Self-Obsessed
I have a number of unfinished blog posts but I don't feel like returning to any of them at the moment. Rather I am wallowing in a period of self-obsession. I find these things come in patches. Sometimes it seems like the universe, or at least the little dusty corner of it that I inhabit, is speaking directly to me. Or that I am surrounded by a reverberation of echoes. Not surprising seeing as I watch and listen from my own seashell skull, tuned to the sound of my own waves.

My post on Miss Lonelyhearts nominated for Prize / Canvassing your VOTE!

Miss Lonelyhearts post nominated for Prize

I was pleased and flattered to find my post on Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts nominated for the 3QD Arts & Literature Prize 2015.

I was even more pleased that I was nominated by Tom over at the wonderful Wuthering Expectations blog.

There are 45 blog posts nominated and twenty of them will be shortlisted to be judged for the final prize by Jonathan Kramnick, Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University and author of two books, Making the English Canon (1999) and Actions and Objects from Hobbes to Richardson (2010), and many essays.

I am under no illusions that I will win as there are many excellent entries from many prestigious online publications. However, I would like to get to the shortlist and so I am shamelessly canvassing that readers who enjoyed the post on Miss Lonelyhearts go to the following link where they can cast a vote for me (or, I guess, someone else). The list is arranged alphabetically and so Vapour Trails is at the very bottom, No 45.
Post listing nominees with links to articles. The link you need to click to vote is at the bottom.

Thank you!

Blood in My Eye

Blood in My Eye

To add injury to inertia, my recent bloggers block has been compounded by an injury received playing football this week.

Having received an elbow in the eye I am currently walking around with smoke-like trails of blood in the visual field of my right eye. It is like my own personal Northern Lights, in red.

I am under doctors orders to look ahead and not downwards or upwards. I was told not to READ for a few weeks. Also no activity beyond a gentle walk which endangers my recent flirtation with improved fitness and reduced weight...

At least when I get the all clear i'll be raring to go again.

Just before I got the doctors advice I re-read Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts which was, if anything, better than I remembered. One of the greatest masterpieces of American fiction. I was also loving B.S.Johnson's The Unfortunates. More on both when I return in a few weeks..

It's Been a bit Quiet Around Here.

I seem to have briefly (I hope) lost my blogging mojo but I did make this video/slideshow for The Knocking Shop's track Half-Orphan. The song was written in memory of my mother and she 'stars' alongside me in the video. It was made as a Valentine's Day card to her memory.

I hope you enjoy it.

Hopefully it will be back to book-blogging business here soon!

Essay published on the Thresholds International Short Story Forum.

Essay published on the Thresholds International Short Story Forum.

The blog post previously known as Four Stories and Me, which I had written for a competition on the Thresholds International Short Story Forum has been edited to Three Stories and Me and published on Thresholds.

The site is hosted by The University of Chichester and has a number of interesting essays and links for lovers and authors of short stories everywhere.

Pay them a visit - THRESHOLDS

The Goats are Singing - for Dermot Healy.

photo courtesy of Steve Pyke: http://www.pyke-eye.com

The Goats are Singing - for Dermot Healy.

The news filtered in yesterday on Facebook and Twitter of the tragically early death of one of Ireland's greatest writers, the inspirational Dermot Healy. Séamus Heaney called him the heir to Patrick Kavanagh. Roddy Doyle called him Ireland's greatest living writer. My thoughts are with his family and friends, whose loss is immeasurably greater than the loss to readers, but the loss to readers is great too, as he was a master.

As a reader I have been savouring the fact that his most recent novel, Long Time, No See is on my shelves, waiting for me. I had also been thinking of re-reading his classic novel A Goat's Song, the title of which comes from the etymology of tragedy (from the Greek - tragos ‘goat’ + ōidē ‘song). And if his early death is a tragedy, he has left great work to remember him by. I have read two of his novels, A Goat's Song and Sudden Times, and his absolutely masterful memoir The Bend for Home. He also wrote short stories; the screenplay for Cathal Black's hard hitting docudrama, Our Boys; four collections of poetry and a number of plays.

My Bookshelves on Another Person's Blog

My Bookshelves on Another Person's Blog

Over at Savidge Reads there is a regular series called Other People's Bookshelves. I am "Other Person Number 43" if you feel inclined to have a peek at my shelves.

On Vapour Trailing, an update.

The Moon on the tide at Midnight. (holiday photo)

On Vapour Trailing, an update.

Things have been quiet around here as I was on holiday for a week and have found it difficult to get back into the swing of things since returning. The best weather in months is also pulling me away from th'internet.

However, I am working on a post on the second last volume of À la recherche du temps perdu and am into the last 100 pages of the final volume. Completion of my main target for the year is at hand, Hurrah!

One of my other targets for the year was to write a short story and to try to focus my mind I have signed up for a very exciting course with novelist Keith Ridgeway. I hope to have positive things to report from this over the next ten weeks. It includes directed reading as well as writing. http://someblindalleys.com/index.php/workshops/fiction-with-keith-ridgway/