Word Factory

I'm very excited that Red Room is going to get its first public airing tonight at the Word Factory salon in London. Bill Broady is going to be reading from his story 'Heathcliff versus Sherlock Holmes' and I'm sure it will go down a treat. It's a very funny story - one that I actually laughed out loud at the first time I read it - so I hope everyone enjoys it. If you're going along to the event, then copies of Red Room will be for sale and, as well as Bill, there will be some other contributors in the audience so get them to sign your copy. There are more Red Room events planned next month and a signing in January, but I'll give an update on those soon.

Hawthornden Fellowship

A Hawthornden Fellowship is something I've dreamt about for a while now - the chance to spend a solid month writing in Hawthornden Castle, near Edinburgh, in the company of other writers... well, who wouldn't fancy that? I'm therefore hugely thrilled to have won a fellowship for next year - lucky me. If you want to know more about Hawthornden, Vanessa Gebbie wrote a wonderful blog post about her time there (there's another post from Camille DeAngelis here - look at the beautiful wintry photo of the trees in the ravine). So you can see why I'm excited - a month writing, no/few distractions, meals provided (including lunch brought to your room)... can't wait. It will be a great opportunity for me to work hard on the novel and to get it looking something like a novel... that's what I hope anyway. I'm also really excited to find out who I'll be there with too. I'll write about my fellowship after I've been sometime early next year - many thanks to the admissions committee for choosing my application.