Virtual Book Tour
I’m excited to announce the dates for the virtual book tour for The American Girl. See the banner above for the where and when of upcoming reviews of my new novel coming from a range of amazing and talented reviewers.
Girls of Summer
My new novel, The American Girl, comes out soon and I’m getting excited (and a little bit nervous!). I’ve been lucky to have some lovely feedback from some authors I really admire, including Megan Abbott, Lori Rader-Day and Hilary Davidson. It meant a lot to me that writers who have inspired me were generous with their time and read my […]
The Secret Mother
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 novel on the course. I remember […]
Gothic Tales & Short Stories
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 about the poet Ahmed Arif, […]
Northwest Literary Salon Reading Event
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 reading from his first novel The […]
Cake Magazine
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 really her reminder of the […]
Bride of Frankenstein Art Collaboration
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 in return I made her […]
Scottish First Book of the Year Award
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 character of “the Bride”. It was […]
Article in The Scotsman
I was thrilled to wake up to this lovely article by Alistair Munro of The Scotsman: A novel dubbed a sequel to Frankenstein, that tells the story of the monster’s bride, was inspired by a trip to Orkney, the author has said. Kate Horsley, whose debut novel The Monster’s Wife is shortlisted for the Saltire First Book of the Year prize, even set her story […]