Love & shadows

Oh, you want to hear about fairy-tale retellings? You want to know the secret of why I write them? Is that it? Fine. Come a little closer. These aren’t some enchanted beans I’m selling, this is the re

Life has a bad habit of mirroring art. Sometimes, this can be in a deeply sad way. A while after I wrote about the assumption of guilt in a traumatised young woman with poor social skills, I watched a

This month’s story, ‘A School Story’ by M.R. James, is a ghost story within a frame narrative. It offers a number of interesting features, and, as always, you will get the most out of this masterclass

There are, of course, many ways to tell stories, and I’m sure most of you will be used to writing and/or reading short stories and novels alike. But let us not forget there is a middle ground – and I’

Novels, for me, have come from somewhere I wasn’t looking. In my twenties I was carrying an idea about a woman wandering around Ireland on a quest she didn’t understand and I sat in the Reading Room o

We have wandered many months through this land of Building Blocks. It is time for a break. Learning is a weary trek. And writing is not all about learning. Writing is about, well, writing. The doing o