Half Term Projects

Half term projects and homework - argh.

I had hoped to spend a lot of time editing my novel but instead I've supervised the writing of a project on WW2 Liverpool, GCSE history revision, various reading assignments and pages of maths problems I can only just about remember how to solve. I feel like the mother in this hilarious blog post.

Yesterday, as part of the WW2 Liverpool project, we went to Derby House to see the underground bunker where the Royal Navy, Air Force and Marines worked to monitor enemy convoys and submarines. It was really interesting to step down several flights of stairs and into the 1940s. There were some beautiful old machines (typewriters, projectors etc.) and the walls were decorated with these gorgeous propaganda posters.

    

    

The Friday Gospels paperback launch

I'm going to be reading from Sweet Home at the paperback launch of Jenn Ashworth's new novel The Friday Gospels.

The launch will take place at Ebb & Flo the lovely new bookshop in Chorley on 20th July at 7 pm.

There's going to be cake and everything - I can't wait.

Catch Up

I have finally finished my marking which means I can resume editing the as-yet-nameless novel (next time I'm going to decide on a name *first*). 

I also need to start to think about how to approach a very exciting short story commission and an essay on The Book of Mormon Musical which I saw earlier this year (an hilarious, blasphemous, yet extremely affectionate portrayal of Mormonism and Mormons which left me with a jumble of happy/sad, uncomfortable, nostalgic feelings). 


Sweet Home update:

Sweet Home didn't make the Edge Hill Prize shortlist, but many congratulations to the collections that did (see here for details). It might just be the most exciting shortlist the prize has ever seen. I've looked at stories by four of the six shortlisted authors with my students this year (clearly I have excellent taste!) and I reviewed Hitting Trees With Sticks for the Short Review and wrote a feature piece about The Stone Thrower for Thresholds. I can't wait to hear who has won (I've got a favourite, but I'm not telling). 

Robaroundbooks has been profiling collections that were longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. You can click on the link to his blog to read his thoughts on Sweet Home which is profiled alongside Fireproof and Other Stories by Celeste Auge, Dark Lies the Island by Kevin Barry, Catching the Barramundi by Rebecca Burns and Tea at the Midland by David Constantine (collections pictured below). 

    

Treadmill desk update:

I'm still walking as I work. It's a bit addictive to be honest and it's starting to feel odd when I sit down to work.

The desk space is big enough to hold huge piles of student essays, stories and a rather odd PC solution (while I decide what to do about my ancient, but very much loved laptop). I've got a monitor propped up on packs of A4 paper so it's at eye level which works well (there's probably a more aesthetically pleasing solution, but I'm quite happy with it like this).

I've walked more than 40 miles in the past 3 weeks. I had expected the total to be higher and I think it may have something to do with the amount of time I've spent reading and marking student work - I found I needed to walk really slowly as I did this, sometimes at .5 mph - perhaps slower speeds are necessary for contemplation.  

Now that I'm finally back to editing my novel (hooray) a steady 1.4 mph seems to be working pretty well and I take back what I said previously about not being able to eat or drink while walking - it's actually pretty easy (although probably not recommended). 

The children love the desk. They like to take it in turns to use it for homework - and anything that makes homework more enjoyable gets a massive thumbs up from me.

A few words for my daughter

Sometimes it's hard having three big brothers, especially when they say mean things like, 'You can't come to the park and play football with us.'

Occasionally you get really cross and storm up to your room and shout things like, 'It seems like the suffragettes died for NOTHING.' And although I might laugh when you say things like this, it does make me sad (and angry) when boys (particularly your brothers) don't let you join in because you happen to be a girl.

This morning we stood at the computer together, smiling as we looked at the photographs here. You asked if we could take our own photographs and you raced off to think about who you wanted to be.

You came back with my book and pointed to the author picture on the back cover. 'I want to be you, Mum.'

And here you are.

Next week you want to be England footballer Natasha Dowie. I don't know who or what you'll decide to be after that, but you can be anything you want.

And if the boys say you can't play football again (I'd be surprised if they dare), we won't ask permission, we'll just follow them to the park and join in, regardless. Or we'll stay at home and make rocky road like we did yesterday. You can choose. 

The Stone Thrower

My shortlisted feature piece about Adam Marek's second short story collection, The Stone Thrower is now up at the Thresholds blog. 

Instruction Manual For Swallowing

I've been marking first year undergraduate creative writing reflections this week. Many of my students mentioned enjoying Adam Marek's short stories. Although Instruction Manual for Swallowing is not a set text, I always play 'The 40-Litre Monkey' and 'Testicular Cancer Versus the Behemoth' (available for free at the Comma Press Story Bank) at some point during the year. I remember when I first read Instruction Manual For Swallowing - I loved it, and that's why I decided to discuss Adam Marek's writing when I entered the Thresholds feature writing competition. My piece concentrates on Marek's second short story collection, The Stone Thrower and it will be published soon. In the meantime, here's a whistle-stop review of Instruction Manual For Swallowing.

Instruction Manual For Swallowing opens as the narrator of ‘The 40-Litre Monkey’ follows a pet shop owner up a narrow staircase to view a record-breaking, Vaseline-slicked baboon whose expression says, 'I know I look ridiculous, but if you say anything, I'll pull your arm off.' In a wonderfully tragicomic scene, the men measure the creature and discuss the highs and lows of competitive animal growing. So begins a beautifully strange, kaleidoscopic collection. 

The characters in Marek's stories inhabit familiar, yet off-kilter worlds. In ‘A Belly Full of Rain’ Brendan fathers thirty six babies. He tries to be a proud father but he feels empty and fearful during the caesarean. It's only when baby twenty nine is stillborn that he is moved, tormented by the fact that she is alone, ‘floating in space, drifting forever.’ The emotion fades however, and the story ends as Brendan poses for a family photograph smiling because baby 17 has filled her nappy and he knows someone else will change it. 

In ‘Sushi Plate Epiphany,’ Gilby forsakes his family to go on a date. He ignores his wife when she calls to say the kids are sick, but he is reminded of them later in the evening when he is suddenly struck down by the same bug. It's wonderfully satisfying to see him hiding in the bathroom, 'firing hot liquid shit into the toilet bowl,' his bum 'swollen in his trousers.'  

The title story tightropes between horror and hallucination as its narrator becomes trapped in the intricate landscape of his own body. When his subconscious says, 'Screw you and screw your job, you can stick it up your arse,' and jumps from the summit of the engine room, the narrator is left with a wooden chest of instruction manuals and the realisation that it could take forever to learn to operate his own body. 'I wonder whether I too should leap from the ladder,' he thinks, in the dying moments of the story. 

Marek's stories have been described as meaty and funny, and they are underpinned by a 'nagging psychological realism' which means that no matter how strange the settings, the characters are all too recognisable. ‘Robot Wasps’ takes place in a delightfully alien world however, misanthrope Hum’s refusal to pay an exterminator to deal with the nest in his garden is distinctly human. The nest is Hum's final straw, the icing on his cake of his financial problems and when the young next door neighbour offers to help, Hum is tempted to blast him with foam and 'seal him up right there in the garden.'  

Other notable stories are ‘Testicular Cancer Verses the Behemoth,’ in which there's a satisfying synchronicity between Austin’s terminal diagnosis and a large scale disaster; ‘Cuckoo,’ a story about a man who inexplicably bumps into a grown up version of his baby daughter and realises, ‘she’s going to be amazing. She’s this incredible kid. The thoughts she has in her head, they just sparkle;’  and my favourite story of the collection, ‘The Centipede’s Wife’ in which a giant centipede makes a terrible confession and Grady, a human, listens without empathy; he finds the centipede's remorse comical, leaving the reader to wonder which creature is the greater monster.

Instruction Manual For Swallowing is clever and funny and big. The collection sweeps across genres and styles. It’s a like the cadenza in the first movement of a piano concerto; Here I am, it says. Look at all the beautiful, incredible things I can do. 

Marek's second collection, The Stone Thrower is just as skilled, but it's got second movement focus and restraint, and there's a single, unifying theme with subtle echoes and resonances throughout. My piece about The Stone Thrower is available to read here. You can read the other feature pieces by the winner - Nuala Ni Chonchuir, the runner up - Dan Powell and a shortlisted piece by Tom Vowler, at Thresholds, home of the International Short Story Forum. 

Just Keep Walking

The treadmill desk arrived on Friday evening. It's pretty big and we had to rearrange the lounge in order to fit it in. We decided to put it in the window so I've got something to look at when I'm not looking at the screen.

Minor Issues:

When I first tried to work on the treadmill on Friday evening, the desk was a little wobbly. Neil packed the bracket with a piece of thin card and it stopped (thanks for the hint below, Brant - we tightened the nuts with a socket wrench and it's great).

I think I probably need to adjust the desk to make it a little higher, but it's quite heavy and I need to get someone to do it with me (Neil did this last night - I think it will probably need to go a bit higher so I'm not looking down all day).

I don't have Bluetooth on my phone or laptop so I can't access the online stuff which sounds great (stats, exercise plans etc.). I'm not too bothered about this at the moment as I can write down how far I've walked and how much time I've spent walking at the end of each day.

Things I've learned:

It's very easy to walk while typing/marking essays/messing about on the internet/talking on the phone.

Different tasks seem to work with different walking speeds. 1 mph is about right for editing and typing.  

Good stuff:

The desk itself is pretty big so there's loads of room for piles of marking and/or books and files etc. 

It's much easier to walk than it is to stand still, so even if I'm just checking my emails or messing about on Facebook for 10 minutes, I switch the treadmill on.

I've walked more than 20 miles since Friday evening and my calves are zinging (in a good way).

I can see that if I just stop eating so much chocolate it's going to be a great way to lose weight. Plus, while it's easy to walk and type, it's actually quite hard to walk and eat and/or drink (yes, I've tried both).

The treadmill goes up to 4 mph which, if you've got legs as short as mine, is a jog, so there's scope to go a bit faster at times.

Shortly Speaking

There is a lovely, detailed review of Sweet Home at Shortly Speaking, a blog about contemporary short fiction. The review concludes with the following paragraph:

Whether she turns her unflinching gaze to the obscure realities of parenthood or experiments with lighter and more playful modes, Carys Bray comes across as a very exciting new voice in fiction. Sweet Home is not only a successful promising debut, it is a funny, dark and poetic exploration of domestic life that bears the mark of a skilled storyteller. In these stories, Bray finds a fine balance between plot, character and language, with none being sacrificed to the others.  

This is me as I read the review on my phone →

Even though it's a Monday, I sang in my car all the way to work - at the top of my voice. And when people stared, I smiled at them.

Ebb & Flow Bookshop

This morning my friend Claire Massey (who has a gorgeous new website) posted this picture on Facebook. She took in a beautiful, just-opened indie bookshop in Chorley called Ebb & Flo. 

Sweet Home is right there next to Nicholas Royle's First novel and below Jenn Ashworth's The Friday Gospels - yipee!

A group of us are hoping to get together to explore Ebb & Flo, buy books and eat cake - all my favourite things at once, I can't wait. 

You can follow Ebb & Flo on Twitter.

I will walk 500 miles

I haven't exercised for ages. I know I should get up earlier; I should take a break in the middle of the day and go for a walk; I should go out running once the kids are in bed - I should do lots of things, but I don't. In recent years my backside has developed into a sort of portable, writer's cushion. 

Neil tries to be helpful and encouraging. He reminds me that exercise has been shown to help low back pain and that walking is good for heart health. He sometimes shows me things like this Telegraph article which discusses the benefits of walking for an hour a day for elderly people or the American Heart Association study which has found walking to be as effective as running (if one expends the same amount of energy). 'Look at this research that shows walking 10,000 steps a day will significantly improve health, build stamina, burn calories and benefit the heart,' he says and I reply, 'that's nice,' and carry on typing and eating Maltesers while sitting on my cushiony behind.

Neil likes to try things. For example, he recently did some research about bare foot running and decided to try it. I went with him (I wore trainers, he went bare foot). I didn't realise people run differently without trainers. If I had to describe it, I'd say they run like Thunderbirds: it was the first time I didn't feel embarrassed for myself on a run, in fact I ran extra fast to try to get away from my scary, puppet-like running partner.  

Neil's latest interest is the treadmill desk. He's been researching them and he's keen to see if they can improve fitness and concentration (via increased oxygen to the brain). 

Can you see where this is going? 

He needed to find someone who sits at a desk all day and doesn't do any exercise at all. And he didn't have to look far.

Guess who's trialing the treadmill desk? 

Neil and I went to Gym World in Oldham this week and had a look at a desk. He was impressed (I was too - it turns out I can type AND walk at the same time) and we're taking delivery of a one next week. I will be blogging about the desk here and over at Neil's blog where I will try to sound sensible and discuss things like statistics and fitness (I probably won't mention my backside). 

In other news I had a lovely review of Sweet Home from writer Dan Powell and I'm really pleased to be on the Thresholds feature writing longlist. 

I'm off now, until next time, when I will be righteously exercising while typing, rather than sitting on the sofa, trying not to drop the hundreds and thousands from my Nobbly Bobbly between the laptop keys.