I was delighted when I discovered that Nicholas Royle was releasing two more Nightjar Press single-story chapbooks. There was talk of the venture going electronic, but it wouldn’t have been the same. The essence of these little books is the ability to have and to hold. They are exclusive in their production – just a single […]
Tag: Nightjar Press
Launch of Salt ‘Best British Horror 2014’
Salt Publishing’s Best British Horror 2014, edited by Johnny Mains, will be launched on 11 July at Covent Garden Waterstones, 18.30. Some of the contributing authors will be present for readings, wine, Q&A. But, sadly, not Elizabeth Stott, so I recorded a short extract that I have uploaded to SoundCloud : https://soundcloud.com/elizabeth-stott/june-2014 (Also accessible from sidebar.) […]
Blog Tour – The Writing Process – My Turn…
The idea of the writing process is often talked about in creative writing literature. Whatever your take on it, writing well and consistently requires hard work and dedication. Halo not polished enough in my case, but I do know that magical thinking is not enough! Writer Kathleen Jones invited me to follow her in the ‘writing […]
Touch Me With Your Cold, Hard Fingers
I find myself in the company of Nightjars. As I blogged previously, a new story of mine is being published as a single-story edition by Nightjar Press. It will be launched on 27th June as part of the Didsbury Literature Festival. See ‘News and Publications’ and my earlier blogs on ‘Nightjar’. Nina Allan, who wrote […]
Dead languages, useless knowledge and rocks from outer space
This little ramble is inspired by a memory: my mother once said that she couldn’t understand why Latin – a ‘dead language’- was taught in schools, and why anyone would want to learn anything so useless. Latin is embedded in English grammar along with other linguistic influences, and is our ancient language of prayer and […]
Reading the 21st Century
Born in the mid 20th century, in a not very bookish household, my earliest literary influences were Enid Blyton and comics. Especially comics, which I could buy for myself at pocket money prices from the corner shop, long before I was old enough to take myself off to a library. The comic format seems an obvious […]
Fiction Within
Why is creative writing such hard work? Part of the reason is that writers deal in emotions and it is intense. Fiction is ‘real’ when the emotions are evoked. It is not just about story and plot – that is more like a game of logic, which in itself is challenging. Emotions – even fictional […]
The Life Validated
A cold February afternoon twenty years ago, when visiting a hospice where my father was dying, I met a man of 60 who was in respite care, but was terminally ill. He seemed calm and content. ‘I’ve had a good life’, he said. He had no regrets about dying. I was a young mother with […]
New Year Blog – Resolutions and the Apocalypse
We have not only survived another Christmas and end/beginning of a year but also the 21st of December 2012. Endings are beginnings. The Mayans encoded that into their calendars – they reset them each new cycle. Of course, some preferred to interpret the Mayan ‘prophecy’ in terms of an apocalypse. There are always anti-Pollyannas who have a death […]
The Virtual Fireside
People often talk of the ‘universality’ of stories, how they transcend time and culture with common themes that entertain, instruct and link societies. Perhaps the love of stories is a defining characteristic of humankind. Ancient traditions of storytelling are physical – by the use of spoken and sung language, as a fireside activity by a […]
Elizabeth Stott - to Blog or Not 