Latest news

2011-07-27T04:38:00.000-07:00

My short story Dreadless is to be published in the 11th edition of Matter.http://www.makingwritingmatter.co.uk
I have now completed my first novel Practising on Melons and I am seeking representation.
A series of plays I wrote in collaboration with Steel Valley Beacon Arts Trust were performed at Wortely Hall, Sheffield on 7th July 2011. http://www.shu.ac.uk/news/release.html?ID=883

2010-10-18T04:01:00.001-07:00

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds - Albert Einstein

An Introduction

2010-04-30T03:47:00.001-07:00

“Writing another novel are we, Anna?”

Even as a seven year old, barely a week went by without one of my classmates grinning and eyeing up reams of my stories, thicker than their sandwiches.

"Oh yes, when I grow up, I want to be an authoress," I'd answer blithely.

While some shelved away their childhood ambitions in dusty corners, along with all the not-so-buoyant Astronauts and Footballers with two left feet, I clung on to my pen and my dreams.

Recently reunited after 20 years by the "add as a friend" button, a certain classmate asked, tongue in cheek, "so how's that novel coming along?"

"Like a dream," I answered, without a trace of sarcasm.

My urge to commit life to paper, or in more recent years, screen, is stronger than ever. My desire to make those words leap out in 3-D without the need for silly glasses has both kept me sane and almost driven me insane at times.

By the time I graduated from my English degree in 2000, I had already experienced enough peculiarities to fill a Top 100 countdown of Eastenders' 'duff-duffs'.

Some days, I seemed to court controversy simply by getting out of bed. If I wasn't chasing muggers down the street in pyjamas and five-inch heels, trying to convince to my acid-addled housemates to stop talking to crunchy nut cornflakes or being accosted in cemeteries at 6am by hippies with totem poles, I was writing about my experiences. When you have a story magnet embedded under your skin like a tracking device, what else can you do?

Of course, there were times when I wished I had stayed in bed, such as when I was punched in the face so hard my front tooth fell out, the time my home was mistakenly ransacked in a police drugs raid and the absolute terror I felt from the moment I learned my boyfriend had been diagnosed with psychosis to the moment he took his own life.

Most of my stories have roots in my personal experience, with a generous dousing of fertile imagination to make them flourish. I love to eschew mundanity by making the humdrum sparkle. I gain sustenance from injecting plausibility into the absurd. I revel in leading my readers on a macabre journey veiled in such beauty that they’ll never look back.

Following my graduation, I trained as a journalist, scribbled poetry with blunt pencils on rickety bus journeys and scribed short stories when I should have been writing scoops on the opening of the disabled toilets at the Darby and Joan club. I went on to work as a freelance writer and it was then that my first novel Practising on Melons began to take shape.

I am now on the MA Writing course at Sheffield Hallam University where I am studying novel as my main subject. I am relishing the luxury of being able pour all of my time and energy into my creative writing. By the end of 2011, I hope to have a fully polished novel and who knows, at some point in the near future, a publishing deal…?

Snippets from the tangled thicket...

Latest news

An Introduction