As mentioned in my Blog Hop post from last week, the relay has continued this Monday with three writers from my MA Creative Writing course taking up the baton. All are great posts about three fascinating novels.
I’ve seen drafts of Kerry Hadley’s novel The Black Country while workshopping on the Manchester Metropolitan University course. She describes it very well in her post — a story that skilfully reveals a very dark core from an ostensibly everyday suburban situation. And the narrator plays an intriguing role that’s still a mystery to me, having not had the chance to read the complete novel. Kerry’s blog is at: http://kerryhadley.weebly.com/kerrys-blog/another-blog-hop
Anne is working on a new piece of writing, House of Scars, which is in the science fiction and/or fantasy genres, as was her work on the MA course. In her previous work, Anne showed her talent at creating a credible , dystopian world — inhabited by characters the reader can immediately relate to. To do this in an alternative reality seems a lot harder task to me than placing a novel in the contemporary world where the reader can bring their own points of reference to the writing. Anne originally comes from Denmark but the quality of her writing is so fluent you’d never suspect she comes from the trendy land of Scandi-noir and this year’s Eurovision. Anne’s blog is at: http://annekirstinejensen.wordpress.com/
Matt Cresswell, who’s based in Manchester. In addition to his writing he runs Glitterwolf magazine which is described on its website as ‘a UK-based literary and arts magazine that publishes the best poetry, fiction, art and photography by contributors identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.’ Matt is also working on a new project since workshopping with me on the MMU course. From the blog post it sounds like a highly imaginative story —Tintwistle & Co., which is set in ‘a sort of steampunked London’ and featuring ‘a short, sharp, opera-singing detective’. Matt’s blog can be found here: http://mcresswell.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/blog-hop-monday-the-return/
And next week the blog continues (and goes international too) with contributions from:
Kip Jankowski: http://avadakipdavra.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/there-is-never-enough-time-never/
Eygló Daða Karlsdóttir: http://moonsith.wordpress.com/
Leonie M. Smith: who Anne will be hosting on her site: http://annekirstinejensen.wordpress.com/
Emma Yates-Badley: http://emmawritinganovel.wordpress.com/
I look forward to reading their Blog Hops on 2nd June and thanks very much to Kerry, Anne and Matt for their great contributions.