Gluten Tolerant — A Collection of My Liars’ League Short Stories

Cover of Gluten Tolerant

At this festive time of year, why not buy an ideal stocking-filler sized collection of my short stories.

It’s been out since earlier this year but the first story, Gluten Tolerant, is seasonally themed. It’s filled with aromas of baking stollen that waft through the chilly air that precedes a Bermondsey snowfall. Meanwhile things get a lot hotter in the artisan bakery overnight.

In addition to the title story there’s six other short stories of mine that have been selected and performed by Liars’ League, the award-winning spoken word evening.

Read about:

  • A Bermondsey baker whose dough isn’t the only thing to rise one snowy evening
  • An intern’s impromptu elevator pitch for the most calamitous disaster movie ever
  • The misadventures of a yummy mummy with a dating app
  • DIY adult movie-making in IKEA featuring a selfie-stick
  • Naked photography in a hipster’s Shoreditch loft kitchen
  • The petrol-headed rage of a spurned, knife-wielding opera singer
  • Lovesick rapping from the dock by a guilt-ridden, Premier League hard-man.

This volume collects the texts of the 10-15 minute stories that were memorably read by actors at the award spoken-word evenings in London, Leicester and Hong Kong.

Even better, buy a copy for yourself. It’ll be the ideal companion to sneak away with after Christmas dinner to avoid the relatives re-establishing battle lines over Brexit after the truce over Brussels sprouts. With seven stories at no more than two thousand words, it’ll help the Christmas pudding go down smoothly.

Gluten Tolerant won’t cost you a load of dough, it’s available at a mere £3.99 for the paperback and £1.99 on Kindle at Amazon here.

 

Post on the Liars’ League Site on Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds

In the run-up to the Christmas Liars’ League event, authors were asked to nominate some of their favourite seasonal stories — and to write a short blog on why they were chosen.

I did a piece, which was published on the Liars’ League website in December. It’s Posy Simmonds’ latest graphic novel, Cassandra Darke. I’ve loved Posy’s work for a long time — ever since her chronicling in of the Weber family’s attempts to live a politically correct existence (in the good old days when the phrase was more innocent and not politically charged).

The post can be found at https://www.liarsleague.com/liars_league/2018/12/my-favourite-christmas-story-mike-clarke-on-posy-simmondss-cassandra-darke.html

 

Amy Neilson Smith Reads “Gluten Tolerant” at Liars’ League

The video from December’s Liars’ League London event of Amy Neilson Smith’s brilliant reading of my story Glutent Tolerant is now on YouTube — the embedded video is below. Imho, Amy perfectly nailed my narrator’s voice and I love her voicing of the baker’s northern tones.

It was a wonderful night, full of festive bonhomie, and with another four excellent stories on the bill (see the Liars’ League YouTube site).  There was a fantastic turnout of supportive friends, including Guy, Sue, Laura and Mike from my City University course, but it was also lovely to see Anna there whom I’d met at the London Writers Café Christmas party last year.

Should you want to read the transcript rather than hear Amy’s superb reading then it’s available in full here on the Liars’ League website.

 

Gluten Tolerance at Liars’ League London”

Liars League -- Naughty and Nice -- December 2019
Liars League — Naughty and Nice — December 2018

I have another winning story at Liars’ League London.

It’s called Gluten Tolerant and will be read on 11th December at the Albany, Great Portland Street by the wonderful actor, Amy Neilson Smith. I went to the rehearsal on Sunday night and I’m sure she’s going to nail it brilliantly. It appears to be the first story on so arrive early if you want to hear it.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start. Being the Christmas event it’s going to be a very jolly occasion. Please come along if you’re in the area — but if you’re not able to make it then there should be a video posted fairly soon.

All details are on the Liars’ League website at: https://liarsleague.typepad.com/

Here’s the Twitter taster that the Liars used to promote my story:

2016 Wasn’t All Bad — If You Picture It Like This

On top of everything else that happened in 2016, it wasn’t a great year for my blog posts. I’ve managed to update the blog at least once a month for the past few years but since my post on the EU referendum at the end of June, I’ve only managed one more — an overdue review of Isabel Costello’s debut novel (albeit a long one).

Looking back, despite my best intentions, I’m still not exactly sure why I’ve not managed to keep up the previously modest level of posting activity. It’s probably prioritisation by default as I’m still writing and doing just as much interesting stuff in between. There’s also been various developments with the novel that I’m not really able to publicly blog about on here.

But one thing I’ve kept  doing, mainly because it’s nowhere near as time-consuming as blogging, is taking lots of photos.

So in the spirit of a picture telling a thousand words here’s a photographic run through 2016 with a bit of commentary along the way

Perhaps one reason for being distracted from blogging is that I’ve spent the past year working in Soho. For example this place is just around the corner…

Beer Porn @ Brewdog Soho
Beer Porn @ Brewdog Soho

…and even though it’s no longer the groovy Swinging Sixties, there are enough spontaneous ‘happenings’ around where I work for me to have grabbed the odd evocative photo, like this one…

Swinging Soho July 2016
Swinging Soho July 2016

I walk past this iconic place almost daily (it was interesting to see it featured in The Apprentice this year)…

Liberty at Night
Liberty at Night

…and along here often too (and at the moment it’s worth walking to the end of Carnaby Street to the pop up shop set up by the V&A Museum in association with their You Say You Want A Revolution Exhibition).

Carnaby Street
Carnaby Street

And there’s plenty of things to be distracted by nearby — like the amazing Christmas angels in Regent Street…

Regent Street Angel, Christmas 2016
Regent Street Angel, Christmas 2016

…or just weird London scenes like this.

Oxford Street, Summer 2016
Oxford Street, Summer 2016

Sometimes it’s been restorative to occasionally get away from it all and lie (albeit briefly) under a tree on a patch of grass in one of those rare summer lunchtimes.

The Best View of London on a Summer Lunchtime
The Best View of London on a Summer Lunchtime

I don’t say much here about the ‘day job’. Until late 2015 that was partly because I might have been taken out and shot if I said too much! OK. That was meant to be a gross exaggeration about working in a government ministry but the way Theresa May’s government is treating its civil servants then perhaps it’s not. Nevertheless, I have a hazy recollection that I may have signed the Official Secrets Act, not that I had access to much secret stuff but I did work almost literally at the heart of government. I walked daily through the doors of a large ministry — one that was often on the front page of the newspapers — and shared lifts with cabinet ministers.

While I wasn’t exactly Sir Humphrey, I was given invaluable direct experience of the the way government works.

And in terms of writing benefit, I gained insider knowledge of the criminal justice system, through working with the police, HM Courts and Tribunals system ( even doing some work for those seditionary “enemies of the people” in the UK Supreme Court).

It’s all fantastic material should any of my future novels head in the direction of crime or politics.

The organisation where I now spend most of my nine-to-five working hours couldn’t be more different.  I won’t go into specific detail but it’s a media-tech company (hence the Soho base) and uses a lot of clever technology to encourage people to pay money to look as absurd as the people below…

The Future of Entertainment?
The Future of Entertainment?

(Apparently the gun isn’t on sale yet.) Actually, the VR (Virtual Reality) experience is so immersive that these people won’t care how they look from the outside. I’ve tried VR and it’s convincing. I predict that the technology could be on the cusp of going mainstream. And don’t take my word for it — creating a VR game was another activity to be featured on this season’s Apprentice.

2016 produced some unexpected recognition for my writing — non-fiction this time.

I was elected (or admitted or whatever they do) to full membership of the British Guild of Beer Writers. It might seem surprising to some that this organisation even exists but it has a few hundred members, including household names and virtually every author of a book on beer or pubs or contributor on the subject to any broadsheet newspaper or TV or radio broadcast.

I was elected to full membership on the basis of published examples of my writing (which I don’t tend to talk about much on this blog) so it’s a huge honour to be in the company of so many illustrious and expert writers in that field.

Here’s the image that adorns my entry in the BGBW website directory.I’m hard at work at the beer tasting side of the job!

British Guild of Beer Writers Profile Picture
British Guild of Beer Writers Profile Picture

Being a member of the guild let me rub shoulders with the movers and shakers of the beer writing world at their awards ceremony, including the odd, hairy beer-loving celebrity.

Two Hairy People
Two Hairy People

But even though my blog posts may have slipped off the radar, I’m still writing a lot of fiction, even on holiday in France (see below).

Writing by the River Dronne in France
Writing by the River Dronne in France

I could get used to that lifestyle.

With various things happening with The Angel (which, as it’s a book, have been invariably slow moving, I’ve been hard at work on another novel. A heavily adapted version of the new novel’s opening even won a prize in the Winchester Writers’ Festival Writing Can Be Murder crime writing awards this year.

I’ve kept in touch with many writing friends, enjoying their successes, for example, with winning stories at Liars’ League and other writing -related developments that can’t be blogged about. I’ve also kept up my involvement with the RNA (see previous post) and received another great critique from their New Writers’ Scheme.

By providing a series of non-negotiable deadlines every few weeks, my membership of a writing group in London has proved invaluable. I’ve propped myself up and carried on writing well into the early hours on several occasions by working on a piece from the new novel. In the summer I carried on once or twice for the whole night — going to bed (briefly) once that sun had risen.

The standard of my fellow writing group members is generally excellent (one reason why I burn the midnight oil to try to make my submissions at least presentable) and we’re very fortunate that the group is run by someone who’s a professional writing tutor at City University and novelist.

The group’s feedback is excellent — both illuminating and honest — although not usually as brutally frank as the comment below.

Honest Feedback
Honest Feedback

I’ll save details of the current work-in-progress for another post. However,  the next few photos might give a clue about some some of the things I’ve been doing that could act as background research for the world of the novel.

Here’s a shot of a pile of books waiting to be read…

Books for Research 1
Books for Research 1

…and below is another example of my methodical approach to shelving books (Owl Song At Dawn is an excellent novel published this year by my old City University creative writing tutor, Emma Claire Sweeney, who organises Something Rhymed — see earlier post).

Research 2
Research 2

I’ve not been to any music concerts quite as jaw-dropping at Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn (whose recording of the shows was released a few weeks ago and allowed me to relive sitting right in front of the spectacle — and the sonic battering of Omar Hakim’s drums — listen to the extended version of King of the Mountain on the CD and you’ll know what I mean).

But during the year I’ve been to see a couple of other giants of music from the past thirty or so years. Most recently I saw Nile Rodgers, also at the Hammersmith Apollo, who performed an incredibly energetic set of hits by Chic, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross and others (several of which I heard a few days later being played from loudspeakers in Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland) and he also played an obscure favourite of mine, Spacer, originally by French singer, Sheila B.

Nile Rodgers, Hammersmith Apollo, 23rd December 2016
Nile Rodgers, Hammersmith Apollo, 23rd December 2016

Seeing Bruce Springsteen live has been one of those bucket list items I’ve always wanted to experience so I took my opportunity when he played Wembley Stadium in June along with 80,000 or so others. Elsewhere in the stadium were Bruce fans and writing acquaintances (and tweeters) Louise Walters (whose second novel is published imminently) and Pete Domican.

Springsteen’s stamina and his rapport with a stadium audience are awesome. He played from around 6.30pm to just before 10pm, non-stop. The sound where I was sitting in the south stand was fairly ropy but I was more dumbfounded by the behaviour of the people in the (not very cheap) seats around me. As can be seen from one of the earlier photos, I like a pint of beer, but many of the mostly middle-aged, middle-class audience seemed to treat the Springsteen show like a visit to a very expensive pub — possibly reliving their rose-tinted memories of some student bar. They constantly shuttled to and from the very expensive Wembley bar and then, inevitably, to the toilets. While loudly declaring their devotion to ‘The Boss’, some dedicated fans danced with their backs to the stage and got so drunk they either had to leave before the end. Some wouldn’t have remembered it anyway.

Springsteen,Wembley, June 2016
Springsteen,Wembley, June 2016

I was a little dubious in advance about another music-related experience in the summer — visiting the Latitude Festival in Suffolk in July. I wanted to go mainly to see Grimes: who’s nothing to do with the music genre grime, but a hugely innovative and original musician from Canada whose music defies any easy description — being both catchy and experimental — and mainly, but not exclusively, electronic.

It was described as one critic as being simultaneously like everything you’ve ever heard reassembled and remixed in a way which sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before. That strikes me as something interesting to aspire towards in writing.

What massively impresses me about Grimes is that, with the exception of a couple of guest vocalists, she writes, sings, plays all the instruments, produces and engineers her recordings. I never get bored listening to her most recent album, the brilliant Art Angels . ‘Don’t be boring’ is another great rule of thumb.

Her live performance was equally original and self-reliant, accompanied by only a couple of dancers and her recent collaborator, Hana, on guitar (on left in photo below).

Grimes at Latitude, July 2016
Grimes at Latitude, July 2016

While waiting for Grimes, I had an unexpected opportunity to see Slaves, a two man guitar and drum modern-punk group. While the group themselves would be unlikely to dispute that their music is the opposite of subtle, their performance was amazingly good humoured (with songs about commuting like Cheer Up London or fat-cat bankers ‘Rich man, 
I’m not your bitch man‘) and created such an engagement with the audience that the FT reviewer described it as ‘life affirming’.

Before Slaves I was blown away by an electrifying performance by Christine and the Queens. Along with Art Angels, I must have listened to Chaleur Humaine (Christine and the Queen’s debut album) more than any others this year. I went to one of their two shows at Brixton Academy in November for a repeat of the live experience.

Brixton
Brixton

I’ve always had a fondness for French electronic music (Air are another of my favourites). When Héloïse Letissier (Christine is her alter-ego) announced ‘Welcome to the French disco!’ at the start of Science Fiction, one of my favourite tracks, it seemed an appropriate riposte to the narrow-minded bigotry and xenophobia that has scarred other aspects of 2016 which far too many despicable politicians and newspaper editors  spent much the year cultivating.

Christine and the Queens are inclined to do unexpected cover versions live and I had the spine-tingling moment of serendipity when they covered Good Life by Inner City, at the time of its release in the late 1980’s a much-underrated track, but one of those tracks everyone seems to know — maybe because of the almost improvised vocal line that wanders where it’s least expected? But I guess Christine and the Queens may have picked it as an antidote to all 2016’s other shit?

At the other end of the socio-political spectrum to Slaves’ music, I’d been wary of Latitude’s reputation as the Waitrose of music festivals — with rehabilitated hippies regressing to the behaviours they liked to say they indulged in their youths. And, indeed, during the day there was indeed a scattering of baby-boomer types trying to press-gang their extended families into enjoying the festival in a conspicuously worthy way.

Boomer grandchildren were transported around in flower-garlanded trolleys like this one…

Starting Them Young at Latitude
Starting Them Young at Latitude

…and as it got later the place became more like a pop-up Center Parcs, except the vegetal aromas in the forest weren’t coming from wood burning fires. Eventually as the night wore on and the older people retired to their luxury tents the sound-systems and DJ sets attracted large, bouncing swathes of  younger people, like moths to the flashing lights.

Wandering through the woods I came across a series of artists’ nstallations — and immediately recognised the brightly-coloured faces of David Shillinglaw’s work (whose studio I visited a couple of years ago with Love Art London). He’s an exceptionally friendly person and showed me around his unmistakable collection of positively painted sheds, which transformed into a music sound-system after dark.

David Shillinglaw at Latitude 2016
David Shillinglaw’s Exhortation at Latitude 2016

I’d visited Latitude for the music but was most impressed by the festival’s showcasing of all types of art. When I first arrived I stopped off at the the literary arena to listen to an author interview with the Bailey’s Prize winner, Lisa McInery. It was a nice touch to have a bookshop on site.

Coming a few weeks after the EU referendum result, Latitude was a refreshing distraction that emphasised the pleasures found away from the poisonous and vindictive political atmosphere. Ironically, the industries represented by Latitude — art, music , comedy, dance, theatre and literature — are those in which the UK is an undisputed world leader (reflected in much of the content of this blog over the past few years) but seem undervalued by the closed-minded, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, expert-dismissing philistinism of the pro-leave bigots.

The opposite of a huge festival like Latitude is the proverbial gig in the back of a pub. I spent a fascinating evening in July on the Camden Rock’n’Roll Walking Tour, led by Alison Wise. Covering the amazing musical heritage of a relatively small part of London between Camden Town tube station and the Roundhouse near Chalk Farm.

I was especially pleased that we stopped off in several pubs on the way. Each pub had a strong association with one of Camden’s music scenes through the last few decades. The Hawley Arms was Amy Winehouse’s local (with the likes of the Libertines as regulars), The Good Mixer was where the leading Britpop bands hung out, the areas around Dingwalls and Camden Lock have many punk associations and the Dublin Castle in Parkway launched the careers of Madness and many other early eighties bands.

Dublin Castle, Camden
Dublin Castle, Camden

And here’s me with Molly from Minnesota (the only time I’ve ever met her) inside the Dublin Castle in a photo taken by Alison at the end of the tour.

A Pint with Molly from Minnesota in the Dublin Castle
A Pint with Molly from Minnesota in the Dublin Castle

It’s surprising how many of Alison’s tours round Camden and elsewhere are filled by tourists from overseas rather than native Brits or Londoners. Even though I’d worked in Camden for five years a while ago I still learned a lot from the tour — all relevant for writing purposes too. Alison also does Bowie Soho tours and album cover pub crawls which I’m sure are excellent.

I’ve read a lot of books over the year, although nowhere near as many as I’d intended. I’ve worked my way through a lot of musical biographies and autobiographies, including Chrissie Hynde’s frank Reckless, the bizarre Paul Morley prose of Grace Jones’s I’ll Never Write My Memoirs and the beautifully written (and non-ghosted) Boys In The Trees by the wonderful Carly Simon.

A few Sunday Times bestselling blockbusters have also made it on to my reading list, mostly out of curiosity to understand the reasons for their success. After having read them, in most cases, I’m not much the wiser.

So I’ve been busy, enjoying lots of new experiences and taking many more photos than those above. It’s even more worthwhile then those experiences to settle into the subconscious, interact and collide and spark off little bits of unexpected inspiration I can later use in my writing. And to help the process, there’s nothing like  taking a bit of time out and reflect.

So the last photo in the post was taken on a long walk between Christmas and New Year s the sun was setting over the Chilterns — a hopefully prescient, peaceful image to usher in 2017.

Deer Against the Chilterns Sunset
Deer Against the Chilterns Sunset

Selfie Stick

Selfie Stick, the short story of mine which won through to the first Liars’ League London event of the year is now online in all its formats. Watch the video of Lois Tucker’s excellent reading on YouTube below…

And if you’d rather read the words, the story is now available on the Liars’ League website — here. And there’s a podcast too, which you can also find on the LL website.

The story on the website is the edited version of the story, as close to the performed version as I can remember. One of the great things about having a story read at Liars League is the opportunity to attend the rehearsal in which the actor and also the Liars organisers contribute their thoughts on the story. Everything’s very democratic and the author isn’t obliged to accept any changes but I’ve found that everything that’s been suggested as an edit in my stories has always been for the better. Not that huge alterations are made but it’s an unusual and very valuable opportunity to get a reader’s (or listener’s) perspective on a story.

Seventeen Sizzling Sex SecretsI was very fortunate that Lois was able to read my story. I felt confident that she really understood the tone of the story and the character of Ellie, the narrator and protagonist — she really looked the part too — and even apparently lives not too far from Stoke Newington (watch, read or listen to the story and you’ll understand). It’s a brilliant (and addictive) experience to listen to words that you’ve written hold the attention of an audience and also produce more than the odd laugh and I’m very grateful for Lois’s professional skill in allowing me that privilege.

Speaking of addiction, this is my third Liars League London story and the fifth overall but it’s certainly not a case of everything that I submit to Liars League being selected — far from it. Apart from a lucky streak with my first couple there have been many short stories I’ve sent in that haven’t made the cut. I like to think that’s because I tend to write them at the last minute and may have run out of time to finesse the ones that fell by the wayside but, in truth, it’s probably down to the excellent standard of the stories submitted by other writers.

On the PullI was told that the number of submissions for February’s Clean and Dirty theme was particularly high and, as evidence, the other stories read out on the night were all extremely good. These were:  Coming Clean by Sherry Morris, Zoe versus Zita by Michael Button, Saving Face by Emma O’Brien, Gloves by Elisabeth Simon and The Marriage Inspector by Niall Boyce. They can all be found on the Liars League website and I highly recommend them.

My story was last to be performed on the night and it was unnerving to listen to the stories preceding mine. I was paranoid whether it would hold its own against what the audience had already enjoyed. Hopefully, in no small part due to Lois’s performance, it went down well.

As the venue, the Phoenix in Cavendish Square, was packed out with punters who’d paid for their £5 worth — with literally standing room only — I hoped they’d feel like they’d got their money’s worth at the end of the night. For this sort of event it was a very respectable sized audience. It’s a venue used by many well-known stand-up comedians — the likes of Russell Howard and Holly Walsh were playing the venue at the end of February as part of the Phoenix Phringe.

Another brilliant aspect to having a story read at Liars’ League is the way the Liars promote the performance on social media — both before the reading and afterwards when the videos and website are updated.

I’ve taken a few screenshots of the tweets and Facebook posts that have very inventively promoted my story and, if I can be forgiven indulging myself, I’ve added some into this post.

I particularly like the Tweet below, which I’ll resist repeating in the main post because I don’t want to receive even more spam.

Ear P*rn

As can hopefully be divined by the tone of the tweets, the story is a very post-ironic, tongue-in-cheek description of a couple revitalising their relationship through homage to a particular genre of 1970’s film-making (and making a few nods to its more modern and ubiquitous re-invention). When I started writing the story I asked my Facebook friends for inspiration on the genre (which is euphemistically referred to as featuring ‘soft-focus sex kittens’ in the story — not to be confused with internet cat memes). My friend Jon, who came along to the reading, pointed me in the direction of this classic Grolsch ad Fortunately my timeline didn’t become any more polluted. I have very upstanding friends.

Spice Up Your Sex Life

Despite the tweet above, when I re-read the story I was surprised that despite its depiction of rather graphic situations, the writing itself is not explicit at all — nothing that would remotely interest the Bad Sex Award. Anything lurid is all in the reader’s imagination — and in the case of the performance given an expertly knowing wink from Lois’s reading. As she comments on Facebook…PHWOOOAAAARRR…

PHWOOOAAAARRR...Indeed
PHWOOOAAAARRR…Indeed

Come and Listen to My Story at Liars’ League London — 9th February

I have another short story being read at Liars’ League London. Titled Selfie Stick,  it’s part of their Clean and Dirty pre-Valentine’s themed event for February 2016 (guess which of the two it tends towards).

The evening starts at 7.30pm downstairs at the Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London — near Oxford Circus tube and close to John Lewis.

I believe it’s going to be read by an actor called Lois Tucker. I found myself mentioned in her tweet (pictured below). ‘Fruity’ and ‘SAUCY’ is her verdict!

Selfie Stick -- The Actor's Verdict!
Selfie Stick — The Actor’s Verdict!

No more spoilers — all will be revealed on Tuesday on the night itself.  There should be a video, transcript and podcast to follow provided by those nice folks at the Liars League.

Please come along and join me for what’s always a great evening — only £5 on the door. There are five other stories to enjoy — the website teaser sounds intriguing.

www.liarsleague.com for more details.

Buy My Book! (Or Download It for Free if You’re Quick)

The Cover of my eBook: Do You Dare Me to Cross the Line?
The Cover of my eBook: Do You Dare Me to Cross the Line?

As hinted in the previous post, I’ve been dipping my toe in the waters of ebook creation and my first offering is now available for download (free for a limited period until the end of Tuesday 7th April) on Amazon for Kindle readers (and Kindle reader apps).

The ebook features four short stories, all  of which were selected and performed by the Liars’ League.

Read about:

  • Naked photography in a hipster’s  Shoreditch loft kitchen in Do You Dare Me to Cross the Line?
  • An intern’s impromptu elevator pitch for the most calamitous disaster movie ever in Elevator Pitch
  • The petrol-headed rage of a spurned, blade-wielding opera singer in The Good Knife
  • Lovesick rapping from the dock by a guilt-ridden, Premier League hard-man in Well Sick for a White Guy.

All are 2,000 words or under so can be read in ten minutes or so.  10-15 minute stories that were memorably read by actors at Liars’ League’s award spoken-word evenings in London, Leicester and Hong Kong. Click on the cover image to download the book.

Links to three of the live performances can be found elsewhere on this blog. The exception is Well Sick For A White Guy, which was performed in September by Liars’ League Leicester. The video for this story hasn’t been made available online and the only place the text can be found is in this ebook (unlike the two Liars League London stories which can be read on the Liars League website).

Well Sick For a White Guy might actually be my favourite story of the four. The reading would certainly have been fun and I’m rather sad that I missed it, although Alex Woodhall and Sarah Feathers’ readings of the first two stories in London were excellent in person and Bhavini Ravel’s great reading of The Good Knife can be viewed below.

I’m not normally a fan of giving away intellectual property for free because of the way it eventually undermines the ability of creative people to get a decent reward for their work. However, it’s the fact that these stories are in the public domain already which has encouraged me to publish them together as an ebook — and people did pay to hear all of them read for each public performance. Therefore I’d have the book on free download indefinitely if it wasn’t for the rather strict promotional rules on Kindle Direct Publishing (only five days in any ninety day period).

When the promotional period is over, the book will revert to the current Amazon Kindle minimum price of £1.99 — which is less than the price of a cappuccino in Pret A Manger or half a pint of beer in most pubs in London (i.e. not much at all compared with the relative effort that goes into the creation of each).

You don’t need a Kindle to download to as Amazon will provide Kindle reading apps for iPhones, iPads, Android devices, PCs and so on.

As well as experimenting with the mechanics of self-publishing, my motivation for publishing it is purely give anyone who’s curious enough a concise taste of my writing and if anyone who downloads it feels kind enough to leave a review then that would be great.

I don’t make any great artistic claims for the cover image above (anyone spot where it is?) but it’s a fact of self-publishing that you need to have one — and not one that rips off anyone else’s image rights (that’s my own photo). The eventual image was voted for overwhelmingly (out of a not-very-inspiring selection) by my Facebook friends!

And my stories are rubbing literary shoulders in exalted company as Liars League is now on Radio 4! A series of three readings — from Hong Kong, New York and London — is currently running on Sunday evenings at 7.45pm. The first story was broadcast yesterday. While my stories have no connection with those broadcast, it’s a fantastic endorsement of overall quality threshold of the Liars’ League events and is a very positive reflection on my fellow LL writer alumni.

Liars' League Listing in the Radio Times, Easter Sunday 2015
Liars’ League Listing in the Radio Times, Easter Sunday 2015

My collection has been put together with the blessing of Liars’ League — Liar Katy Darby helped me pick the title and had a look at an early version of the ebook. I’ve actually been doing Katy’s  highly-recommended Writers’ Workshop short course at City University between January and March this year to help develop ideas for the next novel — keep reading this blog for more news on that over the next few months).

I’ll be looking at other means of distributing the ebook but it needs to be exclusive to Amazon for the next three months so, if you’re interested, download it as soon as possible. Watch the blog or follow me on Twitter for when it goes on free download again.

Incidentally, if you want to watch Alex Woodhall’s superb reading of Do You Dare Me to Cross the Line? one more time in person then he’ll be performing it at a special event — the Studio 189 Spring Ball organised by my friends Sabina and Fay on 25th April in north London. It also offers a private viewing of some erotic artworks and an opera singer — all for the bargain price of £30.

Studio 189 Spring Ball
Studio 189 Spring Ball

 

The Good Knife

My short story, The Good Knife, was performed on 23rd February as part of Liars’ League Hong Kong Hunter and Prey themed evening. The story was read by actor Bhavini Ravel.  

Please do watch and enjoy Bhavini’s performance in the video below – she delivers the story with drama and suspenseful timing and does a great job of getting into the character of the narrator. It was a shame to have missed through being in stuck in the UK  — unfortunately a return plane ticket isn’t part of the deal but it’s a great feeling nevertheless to know your work is being enjoyed half way round the world.

The video lasts just under 10 minutes (1,200 words) it comes in a little shorter than the other videos posted from Liars’ League London last year (Do You Dare Me To Cross the Line? and Elevator Pitch.) The sound is a bit indistinct in places but the story’s still audible.

The Good Knife is my fourth story to be read by one of the Liars’ League franchises (I had another read in Leicester in September) and slightly different in tone – being a story of revenge and abandonment although it still has a little of the humour of the London stories (well, the audience laughs in the places I hoped they would, anyway).

As far as I can tell, the text of The Good Knife isn’t on the Liars’ League Hong Kong website (the video is on their Facebook and YouTube pages) but should you want to read the text then watch this space over the next few days for some news about how you might do so.

Elevator Pitch

As mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been fortunate enough to have another of my short stories selected as a winner by the Liars’ League . Titled Elevator Pitch, it featured in the May event, themed Beginnings and Ends.

Elevator Pitch was the final story to be performed on the night. This will have been due in no small part to the actor, Sarah Feathers’s, tremendously energetic and humorous performance, which I’m sure will have sent the audience homewards with a real buzz.

The video is now available on the Liars’ League website along with the manuscript of the story. I’ve embedded a link to Sarah’s reading below. It lasts just under fifteen minutes. (A podcast is also now available of the whole night’s readings.)

As in March, I went to the rehearsals the weekend before the show, met Sarah and sat in on the read-through. The story involves three characters in a confined space and Sarah did a brilliant job of bringing each character to life, using body language, gestures and facial expressions to complement the dialogue.

It’s an incredible privilege to watch a professional lift your words off the page and voice plausible characters that hold an audience’s attention. It feels like alchemy – and, as mentioned in the post after March’s Liars’ League, it’s an invaluable insight into how writing is interpreted by a reader.

It’s fascinating to discover details that an actor has added into the story on their own initiative before the rehearsal – in this story Sarah had some great views on how to deliver the male character’s voice.

Some of the Liars’ League stories tend to focus on narratorial exposition or one character’s internal voice and this can make them extremely compelling (Birth Plan by Uschi Gatward in the latest event was a good example). However, my story is quite dialogue heavy, with three very different characters and this can be quite challenging for an actor performing a reading – how many different voices (accents, variations of delivery) can be juggled simultaneously in such a short time?

As did Alex Woodhall with his reading of my previous story, Sarah met the challenge brilliantly — each character has an unmistakable and convincing identity. This shouldn’t be surprising as Sarah is one of Liars’ League’s most regular actors and she’s also narrated many popular audiobooks, including the recent, bestselling Philippa Gregory novel, The White Princess.

Katy and Liam, who run the Liars’ League are also very insightful editors and directors: with their help the story also evolved considerably during the rehearsal – and afterwards. Its many contemporary references – mainly movie actors’ names – were batted around with alternative suggestions offered, even by email on the day of the performance itself.

We found it most difficult to settle on the heroine in Isabel’s pitch: a kick-ass, British submarine commander – you’ll need to watch or read the story before this makes much sense)

After going through countless others, we settled on Kate Winslet. There was something a little surreal — and metafictional — about how we ended up casting an imaginary lead role for a piece of fiction within a piece of fiction that itself was concerned with casting movie stars. Weird – but it didn’t raise any Sunset Boulevard mogul ambitions in me (although I wouldn’t mind living out in Santa Barbara again – the place where I was trained in screenwriting by a genuine Hollywood old-timer).

The story appeared to go down well with the audience – Sarah promptedlots of laughs (in the right places) from the audience, which included my friend Fay again plus ex-City University coursemates, Guy and Sue and Alison Burns, who ran the City University Certificate in Novel Writing (now the Novel Studio) at the time Sue, Guy and myself took the course.

The night went far too quickly and it was fantastic to see everyone – and to meet Jim Cogan – whose excellent and poignant story The Memory Man preceded Elevator Pitch. In fact, all the stories were entertaining and captivating and would repay anyone’s time watching, listening or reading them on the website or podcast.

I feel very lucky to have had two stories chosen recently (the selection is done anonymously, by the way) and the quality of the writing on the evening shows how difficult is the Liars task every month — picking from what obviously seems to be a sea of excellent submissions. It’s no wonder the event was recently voted one of the UK’s Top Ten Storytelling Nights by The Guardian.

Short Story at Liars’ League London — 13th May

I’m very surprised and delighted to have had another short story selected for Liars’ League London. It’s for the May theme of ‘Beginnings and Ends’ and the reading takes place on Tuesday 13th May at the Phoenix near Oxford Circus. The show starts at 7.30pm.

I went to the rehearsal last night and met the actress, Sarah Feathers, who’ll be reading the story, which is called Elevator Pitch. Sarah was fantastic in the read-through and I think she’ll put on a brilliant and entertaining performance.

Please come along — there’s another four great stories on the bill, which will satisfy all tastes, and there’s also the famous book quiz during the interval. It’s also a very social event with lots of like-minded literary fans enjoying the readings.

Details are on the Liars League website. (By the way, the pub serves food at the table during the performance so you can eat while listening if you like).

The Liars’ League Experience

My short story Do You Dare Me To Cross the Line? was selected as a winner for this month’s Liars’ League London event (see previous post for an account of its selection and the rehearsal).

It was performed last Tuesday evening by Alex Woodhall and, as the Liars video all the stories, the reading is now available on Youtube (along with the other four excellent stories by Ursula DeweyKassalina BotoPhilip Suggars and Eleanore Etienne (co-incidentally a fellow graduate of the City University Certificate in Novel Writing — now the Novel Studio).

The video is embedded below. It lasts just over fifteen minutes.

The transcript of the story is now also on the Liars’ League website — minus a one or two slight tweaks made at the rehearsal for the performed version.

My story was the last on the bill, which meant me enduring an evening of nervous anticipation, although this was eased a little by my consumption of more than a couple of drinks on the house. I made such good use of this unexpected author benefit that I turned up at Marylebone station suddenly realising I’d lost an hour somewhere (chatting to the actors, other writers and organisers I think) so had to get the slow, stopping train and didn’t get home until nearly 1 am. The next day I felt like one of my characters the morning after the story’s night before.

I was very grateful for the company of several friends who came along to support me, including Rachel and Bren Gosling from the City course, my writer friend Fay and Sabina, the street art guru (see previous posts). There were a couple more people from the City course who were intending to come but who were beset by last-minute hold-ups.

It was a fantastic evening — the downstairs bar at the Phoenix was packed-out. I reckon there were well over a hundred people.  I needn’t have fretted about the reception for my story — Alex read with such verve and superb comic timing that the audience’s attention seemed to be seized for the whole fifteen minutes it took to reach its climax — and with plenty of laughs heard along the way (thankfully I didn’t imagine them — they’re on the video).

I was flattered afterwards to receive some enthusiastic compliments about the story, not only from friends (Bren wrote me a wonderfully congratulatory email) but also from some encouraging comments made via Twitter and Facebook. And the story’s characters appeared to have been vivid enough to pass the crucial ‘what happened next?’ test. I bumped into one of the other authors on the tube on the way back and she asked me ‘Did they go on to have sex? I think they did.’ If you want to see if you agree with her then listen to the story — I’d be very interested in blog readers’ opinions.

Having a winning story for the Liars League would be great news at any time but it was particularly welcome for me at present — a couple of months after the much-anticipated results of the MA novel dissertation — when I’m still wrestling with a few changes to the end of the novel prompted by the feedback. It’s also been five months since the MA draft of the novel was handed in — so it’s been brilliant to had have this event to give real impetus to my writing.

I can also draw some motivation because, while it’s a self-contained work, Do You Dare Me To Cross The Line? perhaps unsurprisingly shares similarities with the novel: genre, setting, brand of humour. While the narrative perspective is different –it’s first-person, present tense — the dynamics between the characters are reminiscent of some scenes in the novel — the tensions and awkwardness of trying to guess the intentions of others whom one cares about — or wants to. That the story was picked as a winner and enjoyed apparently positive reaction of the audience encourages me to think there’s a market for more — at least a novel’s worth I hope.

Besides the thrill of hearing my words read expertly by a professional, the Liars League experience also allowed me to get some insight into my writing from a refreshing and almost unique perspective. One of the great mysteries of the writing process is that all readers interpret fiction in their own personal way — a skilled author employs words economically enough to communicate the essence of the story’s action while prompting the reader’s imagination to invoke scenery and background.

It’s an exceptionally difficult balancing act: too little exposition and the reader will fail to grasp vital elements of the narrative; too much detail and the pace will falter and the reader will be swamped and bored — and in a short story there are far fewer words than a novel to play with.

Working with the Liars League actor and editors, and also sitting in the audience and observing the reaction of people hearing the story for the first time, provided valuable insights into what worked in my story and what didn’t — and also how the Liars had imagined the action, setting and characters. While the event is a reading, the actors can dress to some degreein costume  and their delivery, spoken and non-verbal, projects their own interpretation of character, particularly for first person narratives. 

It is, therefore, rather the opposite of the sort of forensic collective copy-edit of prose that risk bogging down Creative Writing workshopping sessions (‘I’m really not convinced by that comma). Nor, because the story has won through the selection procedures, will it be the kind of creative writing workshopping experience when, for the best of intentions, workshoppers’ suggestions extend a little past the scope of a structural edit: it would be great if turned your shy, sensitive artist character into a grizzled Scottish trawlerman possessed by an alien or why not relocate your novel from a Deptford loft apartment to a Roman gladiatorial amphitheatre? ‘It’ll up the conflict and sense of place’.

Slight exaggeration, perhaps, but in a workshop the written text can be seen as something malleable and interactive — when it’s read out loud as a story it seems much more fixed psychologically.  

Often writers are asked to read out their own prose in Creative Writing workshops before it is discussed — this was the way the City University Certificate worked, although I don’t know how the Novel Studio handles it. This has its merits — certainly reading out loud exposes clumsiness in phrasing and the rhythm of the prose that often lies undetected when read silently on the page — I always read drafts of my novel out loud for that reason. Reading a piece in a class also ensures that any less conscientious students, who’ve not prepared properly, will know what’s goingabout to be discussed.

Nevertheless, a writer who has an aptitude for reading out loud will always breathe extra life into prose whereas a hesitant, self-conscious monotone will muffle the merits of the word on the page (most writers I know tend slightly towards the latter). Also, a writer will always know his or her own intentions — where to place the emphasis, what type of voice or accent to use for a character or narrator — even if this isn’t evident on the page and, consequently, not communicated to a reader of the written word.

If a piece is to be read out loud in a Creative Writing workshop, I prefer it to be read by another student. This lets the writer hear the words spoken by a reader new to the work and takes away any direction that’s not explicit from the text itself. It gives an insight into how an ordinary reader might encounter the writing on the page.

That’s why Liars League was so illuminating. From my experience at the rehearsal (see previous post) Katy Darby and Liam Hogan, the editors, had clearly made a connection with the voice in the narrative and cast Alex in the part accordingly. It was very satisfying to me, as the writer, that they’d also picked up the subtle dynamics between the three principal characters, even when this was only hinted at with a line or two in the story.  The changes they suggested to the text served to increase clarity and remove ambiguity.

Alex also made contributions of the type a reader might unconsciously add to the text. He’d decided the character Anja was Icelandic — which I thought was a great — there’s nothing in the text to suggest any nationality beyond her name and the rhythm of her speech. He also used some great comic timing to emphasise lines that I’d hoped might raise some amusement if read as I’d intended by an ordinary reader but, when spoken to an audience, raised a proper laugh — the ‘distressed [BEAT] brick’ being a great example.

(One of the advantages of writing plays or screenplays is the ability to add in [BEAT]s or other direction that’s not seen by the audience.)

Despite having written the words, it was a process of discovery for me to see how the story came alive in the minds of other people. The imaginary world of the story as viewed through the lens of Alex’s performance was different to what I’d envisaged while writing it — but that’s the magical property of fiction — everyone has their own interpretation. 

So while it was an honour and a great pleasure to have my story selected and read by the Liars’ League, I also learned a surprising amount from the experience about my writing, how it’s interpreted by other people and how I can improve it. And it’s for that reason, as well as being a great literary night out in the pub, that I’d wholeheartedly recommend other writers submit their short stories to the Liars — either for truth or dare.

Liars’ League London — Come and Hear My Story Performed

I’m thrilled and very excited that a short story of mine (called Do You Dare Me To Cross The Line) has been selected as one of the Liars’ League’s winning entries for their March reading event.

It takes place on Tuesday this week (11th March) at 7.30pm at the Phoenix pub at 37, Cavendish Square, London, near Oxford Circus. There are five stories in the reading and, with a common theme of Truth or Dare, all promise to be extremely entertaining. Please do come along (it’s £5 on the door), listen to some excellent readings and say hello to me. Full details are here on the Liars’ League London website.

For those who aren’t familiar with Liars’ League, it’s a collaboration between authors and actors — a mutually beneficial arrangement which gives each the chance to showcase their skills by making use of the talent of the other. So professional actors bring their training and experience in performing, while the authors provide new and original writing.

Liars’ League is a prestigious and well-known fixture in the London literary circuit (and has associated events elsewhere in the world and the UK). (I was contacted before I’d had chance to email anyone with the news by Emily Pedder, who runs City University’s The Novel Studio course — whose predecessor course I took in 2009/10. One of my fellow graduates described the Liars’ League as ‘really famous’.) I found, via their website, that Katy Darby, who’s organising this month’s event, spoke about the short story as a form on Radio 4’s The World Tonight at the end of last year — pretty authoritative I’d say.

I first encountered the Liars’ League about a year ago when I attended the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook short story competition awards at the Bloomsbury Institute, where the top three prizewinning entries were given readings by members of the League’s company of actors.

Videos of all the performances and texts of the stories are published after each event on the Liars’ League website and I’ll post a link from this blog as soon as Tuesday’s become available.

While I’m relieved it’s not me standing up and reading out loud, I’m still starting to feel nervous about how an audience will respond to the story: will it grab their attention; will they pick up on any hints or clues; will they laugh in the right places? (FYI, if you’re planning on being in the audience there are bits that are deliberately meant to be funny!) They’re the kind of questions about your reader’s response that you wonder about as a fiction writer but you rarely have the opportunity to discover the answers first hand.

By contrast, one of an actor’s core skills is to thrive on live interaction with an audience and to exploit their experience in delivering the material. And having attended the rehearsal for Liars’ League in London last night I’m sure my story’s in excellent hands. It’s being read by actor Alex Woodhall whose interpretation of the story and phrasing of the narrative and dialogue provided a captivating and enthralling perspective.

I was also impressed and flattered by how Katy Darby and the rest of the Liars’ League editorial team perfectly grasped the underlying dynamics between the characters and suggested small but perceptive changes to improve the impact of the story. I’ll say no more because the proof will be on the evening itself and in the subsequent video.

I’ll blog later about the evening’s experience but, despite the nervousness, I’m looking forward to it hugely. I know a number of friends (some of whom have been mentioned on the blog) have said they’ll try to get along and I’d love anyone else to come along who might enjoy a great night of literary entertainment.