The second collection of short stories, poetry and playwriting from the University of Gloucestershire Creative Writing students and it’s longer and better than the first. There’s a delicious mix of comedy, tragedy and boundary pushing here, and I’m certain we’ll be seeing a lot more from its contributors.
Nancy Drew is the story I have […]

‘This collection of short stories, poetry and personal accounts showcases the work of both new and previously published authors. All of the authors have generously given their work to the MS Talent project, which aims to raise funds for charities in the U.K. helping people with multiple sclerosis.
Charities benefiting from the project include the […]

I finished my conference paper on Taboo Collections this evening, and it’s actually shaped up a lot and took an hour less time than I had allotted for the final drafting.  So I spent the rest of the time reading bits of Dolls, which I haven’t looked at since sending the polished draft to bluechrome […]

Well, isn’t this all cool and professional? Didn’t know I’d been tagged until I hovered over ‘Kylie’ (Anthony’s pet name for me) and found it linked here. So, with only a fuzzy idea of the rules, here we go…
1. Link to the person that tagged you - the blueblog - CHECK
2. Post […]

A while ago I read a squeamishly good little book called Exquisite Corpse. It was about necrophilia and cannibalism. Great stuff on top of being very well written. I decided that I rather liked this Brite girl, and picked up Liquor, which was pitched to me as a story of two cooks […]

<– This is, allegedly, ‘the’ seminal book on transgression.  Published in 1986, this is the big daddy to read if you want to understand the theory behind this kind of literature.  I trawled around on the web for a week hunting down this very-much-out-of-print book and found prices ranging from £45 up to £150…  […]

This is Harvey, as he was two years ago.

At this point, I was trundling along in a Creative Writing degree having just taken it up as a single rather than a joint, and had a fuzzy idea of what I wanted to do with said degree. So, I picked up poetry and playwriting […]

I think if I had ever done drugs (aside from alcohol, which I enjoy swimming in from time to time), I’d have ‘gotten’ this book more.  I thought Junky was a masterpiece - a rambling, meandering and crazy book but excellent all the same.  I’d heard from many a source that Naked Lunch (actually a […]

My degree is officially finished as I handed in the last assignment this morning, and after weeks of nervously clinging to the short stories and proofreading until the screen is a smear, I’ve sent that off too.
Only thing left that I have to do this month is write the paper for the Oceans of Short […]

I spent a very interesting hour listening to a visiting lecturer this evening at the University.  He comes from the Field Chair’s, Nigel McLoughlin, old stomping grounds up in Lancaster and was one of the first people in the UK to introduce Creative Writing as a university subject at that very same university in 1969.
Professor […]