Author
I was so excited to see the final cover for THE AMERICAN GIRL. I love the mysterious image of a girl used in the design and the blurb for the book, “What she can’t remember, they’ll never forget.” The novel – due out with William Morrow (US) and HarperCollins (UK) July 2016 – is now…
“A superb debut, an atmospheric and gripping mystery… bursting with the most beautiful and lyrical prose.” K J Wignall, author of The Mercian Trilogy “Startlingly original…brilliantly weird and dark.” Sara Maitland, author of A Book of Silence To a tiny island in Orkney, peopled by a devout community of thirty, comes Victor Frankenstein, driven there by…
It was a great pleasure to interview Victoria Delderfield at the launch of her debut novel, The Secret Mother, at Urmston Library in Manchester on Wednesday night – an event hosted by the lovely people from Urmston Bookshop. Vicky and I took the Creative Writing MA at Lancaster at the same time and she workshopped parts of her…
I had a lovely time at Waterstones in Lancaster last week reading from my work alongside the wonderful Zoe Lambert, author of The War Tour. Zoe read a riveting and thought-provoking story ’33 Bullets’, in which “a Kurdish academic flees persecution and while imprisoned in a UK detention centre still tries to write an article…
Gothic Tales & Twitter Stories The lovely Naomi Kruger and Yvonne Battle-Felton of the Northwest Literary Salon have invited me to give a reading at their next event, which will take place at 7pm on the 4th of September in Waterstones in Lancaster. Naomi and Yvonne will introduce readings from myself and novelist Paul McVeigh. Paul will be…
What she can’t remember, they’ll never forget I’m excited to announce that my second novel, The American Girl, is coming out with William Morrow (US) and HarperCollins (UK) in July 2016. The novel draws on my teenage adventures staying in the South of France as an exchange student and a description of it is now up on…
Many thanks to editor Finn Jackson for asking me to write a feature article for the latest issue of Cake Magazine. When she wrote to me to say that the subject for Cake 7 was the body (human, animal, monster), “how we celebrate it, dissect it, wonder and rage at it”, I was intrigued straight away, but it was…
I’m really looking forward to visiting Lancaster next week to talk about The Monster’s Wife and catch up with old friends. So if you happen to be in County Main next Wednesday at 4pm feeling at a loose end, it would be lovely to see you there! “Our former Creative Writing MA student, Dr Kate Horsley,…
I’ve recently had another chance to collaborate with artist Vineta Gailite. Vineta’s hand-made dolls, sculptures and shadow puppet theatre work, Imaginary Islands, are beautiful, eery and full of atmosphere. I love the way each of her pieces tells a story or draws on one. For our last project together, I commissioned Vineta to make some special puppets and…
I was so thrilled when my publisher at Barbican Press, Martin Goodman, called to tell me I’d been shortlisted for the Scottish First Book of the Year (Saltire) Award. I travelled to Hoy and wrote The Monster’s Wife out of my fascination with Shelley’s novel, with Orkney as place and because of my sense of the developing…