Poetry to write novels by - a Book Slam blog

I wrote a piece for Book Slam about two things...  1) how when I'm writing novels, it's poetry that inspires me the most, and 2) the poems that inspire me the most when I'm writing novels. Go HERE to read it.

Sainsbury's magazine

Step into Sainsbury's and in this month's magazine (November issue) you'll find me, along with two other writers - including fellow Headline author Colette McBeth - talking about the writing courses that helped us on our way. For my part I'm indebted to the Arvon Foundation. Photographer Alun Callender side-stepped the piles of junk in my writing room to take this picture of me and my work space - peer close enough and you'll be able to scrutinise my pen pots and check out my book stacks...

To read a more detailed account of why I love Arvon you can visit the Foundation's website HERE.

Redbridge library awards

Back in the summer I wrote about how The Book of Summers was voted Fiction Winner in The Big Red Read Award 2013. Readers in the London borough of Redbridge's thirteen libraries chose it as their favourite of the shortlisted books, and I was pleased as punch. Last week I visited Fullwell Cross Library to pick up my award, having had to sadly missed the ceremony in May. It was a great chance to meet some readers, see inside one of Redbridge's really quite smashing libraries (Fullwell Cross is an especially snazzy example), and say thank you...

Time for a little then and now shot, I think...

Here's what I looked like the last time I came home with the silverware...

... and last week at Fullwell Cross, clutching my posh Fiction Winner glassware...

A big thank you to all who voted for The Book of Summers, and everyone at Fullwell Cross for making me feel so welcome.

A portrait of the artist as a young (& old) man

This week I posted the last page of my Swiss Sketchbook, a snow-dusted view over the Lausanne rooftops. Today, I thought it was time I added an appendix. Those who've followed the progress of the sketchbook from the beginning will know that the artist, Alwyn Hall, is my dad. You can read my first post, which includes his biography, HERE. This is what he looked like when he was seventeen...

He painted this self-portrait in the summer of 1961, in his makeshift studio, a spare bedroom in his parents' house in Northamptonshire. He told me he used a mixture of oil paints and cheap domestic decorating paint, mixing in sand to give it a textured finish, after the style of the Cubists. It was later included in an exhibition called 'Three Young Artists', in Northampton in 1964. These days it hangs on the wall in my mum and dad's house, literally part of the wallpaper as I was growing up, and it was only when he sent me a photograph, with the title 'portrait of the artist as an old man' that I was reminded of its existence. When we were younger, my sister and I were always amused by its audacity - the brooding looks, the come hither pose - it was hard to connect the young man of the painting with our ole dad. And while I still enjoy its ripe sense of confidence, nowadays I've a greater appreciation for the fact that it exists at all - that a boy's vocation became his life. Here's what that boy looks like today, at work in his studio in Devon...

Thank you, Dad, for bringing my Swiss Sketchbook to life in such marvellous fashion. Readers, I hope you've enjoyed this pictorial tour of some of the settings in A Heart Bent Out of Shape as much as I have.