What first drew you to writing?
Mr Majeka, Roald Dahl, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird and Raymond Carver (in that order). I remember writing a poem about daffodils when I was maybe 6 years-old, but I got accused of copying it, which made me feel inordinately guilty and angry, and I think it put me off for a while. But it’s always been there in the background, which I have been pretty secretive about forever. Writing and running are the best things I do to stop me being moody and irascible.
What’s your favorite line from something you’ve published? Where can readers find it?
Maybe the last line of my CNF story, Through all the Blackholes, about my youngest son’s illness, since it’s a fairly hopeful note to punctuate notes on a very difficult time.
But there is hope in each time Billy wakes or smiles his crooked smile or learns again something new or something he had to learn again, and in each time his brother draws us all in or says: I love you all the way around the stars and beyond our galaxy, which is called the Milky Way, and through all the black holes, which is where things get swallowed up and lost forever, and back again.
I wrote it during a hellish time, when my youngest son was just about to have his fourth brain surgery before he even turned one, and in amongst a year long chemo treatment. There was a magic to how my sons kept us all going, and I guess putting everything down on paper helped me a lot too. Everything just seemed to be happening so fast, but there was also a lot of waiting around that we all did and not being able to sleep while in hostels near by the hospital, so there was a lot of time with your thoughts too.
It sits behind a paywall unfortunately, but can be found at Hinterland Magazine. But here is one that’s not behind a paywall — “Heifer, Milk & Mango”:
In hot Haiti sun, on the NGO compound at rue Pelican, Boy scrambles up the bark. Through mango tree leaves, illuminated lime green, in his fluorescent cocoon for one, he lays pressed to timber slats of the forgotten treehouse of 2010.
It started as a poem 15 years ago when I was working in Haiti after the earthquake there. I found the notepad recently, all rain soaked, and turned it into a story about cultural and ethical imposition, which sounds pretentious — it’s really about a goat, a chef, a boy and a mapper, and some… voodoo.
Your story, Bleeding Seamonster, was published in our anthology: Women Who Burn. If the story were adapted for film, who would you cast?
I’ll need to play with time a bit here, and cast from different eras. I’d go for Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Dad, Trix as Jodie Foster (older than in Taxi Driver, younger than in Silence of the Lambs), and if I’m thinking of the MC in a cinematic way, maybe Dustin Hoffman of Midnight Cowboy timing, or Gary Oldman in Leon, depending on the degree of cynicism I felt on the day of casting.
How do you stay encouraged as a writer?
I never joined a writer’s group until this year, and that’s been a massive help. I joined the Smokelong group for flash fiction writing led by Christopher Allen. Getting regular feedback makes a huge difference. Also, editors that feed back are invaluable, even if they’re rejecting me. There’s some great flash writing about, like Mario Alibierto, Travis Flatt and Kate Horsley, who are pumping out terrific new stuff with startling regularity.
What story do you want to write but haven’t yet?
My great-great-uncle escaped being hanged on a technicality in 1913. He was only 17 at the time, but his partner in crime was 18. Since my uncle was thought to be the guiltier party, locals protested to the Home Office against the hanging of his accomplice. This was rejected, and on the night of the hanging 50,000 locals marched from the local town down to Manchester’s Strangeways Prison, rioting with petrol bombs and fighting with police.
It was always a family secret, which I only found out about from my Gran once I used to visit her on my own as an adult. I’d like to spend some time researching it a little more, and understanding the impact of it on the victim’s family (a man was killed in a bungled robbery), why the locals fought so fiercely against the hanging, and what happened to my great-great-uncle. He was rumoured to have moved south to London to start a new life and become a barber, but all the family has of his is a couple of paintings he did in prison.