🎉 Over the moon to share the crazy wonderful news that my debut novel will be published in 2020 by Mantle/Pan Macmillan (UK) and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (US) 🎉
![[The view from 80 Strand, where the WriteNow London Workshop 2017 was held]
This September I was chosen to attend the Penguin Random House WriteNow Live day of talks and workshops. It was an endlessly inspiring day and it was so lovely to meet and...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/2edb65a91d96cfb96efd79dd34423e6f/tumblr_pef98yo5FE1s3bxy2o1_1280.jpg)
[The view from 80 Strand, where the WriteNow London Workshop 2017 was held]
This September I was chosen to attend the Penguin Random House WriteNow Live day of talks and workshops. It was an endlessly inspiring day and it was so lovely to meet and talk with the other authors. Afterwards, I was thrilled to be shortlisted for the mentoring programme and have my manuscript read by an editor whose feedback helped me immensely when it came time to submitting my novel to agents. If you’re in a position to apply for this scheme then do it! Everyone involved is so friendly and welcoming.
Thrilled to have a new story published by Kenyon Review Online. ‘In the Family Way’ was sparked by reading this amazing article from The Appendix about ‘earthsickness’.
Thrilled that my short story ‘A Visitation’ has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2016. You can read a short extract here.
Thrilled to have a ghost story, ‘Stomping Ground’, in Issue #2 of Banshee literary journal.
Today’s writing inspiration: The gold phantom mannequin that was sent around the Moon in 1969 in the Zond 7 spacecraft as a precursor to a manned Russian mission.
With sensors set into its body to measure radiation levels and made in the image of Yuri Gagarin, it’s currently part of the Cosmonauts exhibition at The Science Museum.
I reviewed ten phenomenal short story collections from the last ten years which you might have missed, for For Books’ Sake.
I rounded up my top ten literary ghosts at For Book’s Sake for Halloween
(image: Celeste Evans)
You can read my prize-winning flash fiction piece about an escapologist in a bind, Swirling Mist, here.