Archive for the ‘Novels’ Category
Posted on February 13, 2013 - by Kate
Novel Cover Art
I’m excited to learn that Jason Anscomb of Rawshock will be designing the jacket cover for my novel. I think his collage and design work is fab, e.g. this stylish cover (left) for Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. I’ve had a few ideas cover-wise, mainly involving the long, red hair of the main character, Oona, floating away from her in the underwater scene, quoted here:
The boat dipped low. The oar rolled against her fingertips, slid further away. A wave slapped her face. Wood groaned underneath. She fell into the water, kicked against the boat, paddling the way Toby did when they were out on the beach. But she couldn’t move well for the band round her chest. She scrabbled. Her breath hurt. The boat slipped away. Her head went down. She bobbed up, mouth full, eyes burning. The man stepped out of the boat.
She went under. The water was so blue. Sunshine, silver-white, above her. The kind of day when women take their time. The sun soft as a kiss. Her chest on ice. Swallowing salt. Granny said don’t paddle past your knees – a trow will catch you! May held her hand, screaming at the waves.
Her chest sings. The sea is sapphires and silver. A selkie swims up to her with green weed snarled in her hair. Under the sea, girls become selkie wives, soft skin roughening to fins and scales. They can never return to the human world, for their kind don’t know them again. When the selkie comes close, she smiles and Oona knows everything will be alright, because it’s Ma and her arms are open wide.
I don’t know whether there’s some way of working all that into it (!) Maybe not…
Posted on December 1, 2012 - by Kate
Podcast of ‘The Argument Man in Winter’
I’ve been doing some volunteer teaching at Start in Salford, and recently our creative writing group has been working on poems with a winter theme. Youth Arts co-ordinator Francine Hayron recorded our pieces and did a lovely job of editing them and adding sound effects, compiling them all into a snow-filled collection. Here’s my contribution, The Argument Man in Winter, performed by David Jones, a talented performance poet at Start.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Posted on November 24, 2012 - by Kate
First Novel due out 2014
I’m delighted to announce that my first novel, The Monster’s Wife, will be published by Barbican Press in June 2014 as both a paperback and an eBook. Martin Goodman, editor at Barbican describes the tagline for their fiction as ‘Writing from the Discomfort Zone’ and The Monster’s Wife certainly fits that!
Following in the tradition of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Seaand Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly, The Monster’s Wife is a literary gothic that re-envisions Mary Shelley’s classic novelFrankenstein from the perspective of the girl Victor Frankenstein transformed into a Bride for his monster. Oona Scollay is a sixteen-year-old scullery maid living on Hoy, a tiny island in Orkney in 1798. When her best friend May disappears, Oona starts asking questions, but her search is thwarted by the conflicted loyalties within her close-knit community. When she turns up shocking evidence, Oona becomes the next victim. A prisoner in a dark room, living a hellish distortion of life, Oona must find a way to escape before her captor completes his plans for revenge.
I am currently working on a final edit and the cover art is under discussion. It all feels very exciting to think of the book emerging into print and I suddenly have a lot of new writing ideas…although I keep reminding myself I have to get this finished off first!
Posted on November 8, 2011 - by Kate
The Monster’s Wife
Egon Schiele, ‘Death and the Maiden’
I recently completed a novel, The Monster’s Wife. Following in the tradition of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Valerie Martin’s Mary Reilly, the book is a literary gothic that re-envisions Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein from the perspective of the girl Victor Frankenstein transformed into a Bride for his monster. Oona Scollay is a sixteen-year-old scullery maid living on Hoy, a tiny island in Orkney in 1798. When her best friend May disappears, Oona starts asking questions, but her search is thwarted by the conflicted loyalties within her close-knit community. When she turns up shocking evidence, Oona becomes the next victim. A prisoner in a dark room, living a hellish distortion of life, Oona must find a way to escape before her captor completes his plans for revenge.
About Me
I'm a writer and artist living in Manchester and I've had poems and stories published in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Storyglossia, Erbacce, Seventh Quarry, Ravenglass, Bliss and the Mammoth Books of Best British Crime. My debut novel is coming out in paperback and eBook in June 2014.
