been to the Goldsmiths Infant Lab

OK, so a few things have happened since my last post (about reading serialised novels way back in January. Ahem). Probably the most significant of these is that I had a baby, though we also moved house, and Liars' League got mentioned in the Guardian's Top 10 Great Storytelling Nights and won a Saboteur Award for Best Regular Spoken Word Event. Don't ask me to sort these in order of importance because someone's going to get hurt.

Seriously though, I really did have a baby. (His eyes don't always look like that).

I was going to blog about the pregnancy – in fact I wrote all the posts – but then I got superstitious and didn't even want to talk about it until it was a done deal and the baby was safely out. He's now just over seven months old and is called Theo. I submit that just like everyone else's firstborn, he's the most attractive, intelligent, talented etc. child in the world and will surely end up running it. (Come on, he's cute).

Naturally I take every opportunity I can to show him off to admiring strangers, which is why this afternoon we found ourselves in an office in the Ben Pimlott Building, home of the Goldsmiths College Infant Lab. Although with a name like that it sounds like it should be growing foetuses in bottles a la Brave New World, it's actually where they study child development, and Theo was there to take part in an experiment on Visual/Tactile Attention in babies.

spoken on Radio 4

First of all, the Radio 4 discussion I took part in on The World Tonight last Thursday had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I had a couple of stories on Radio 4 back in August. 4 is a big, many-tentacled beast, and when the producers got in touch with me they didn't even know my name, let alone my history (such as it is) with the channel.

This is because the discussion I was asked to contribute to was about short stories (and specifically the impact of short story writer Alice Munro winning the Nobel Prize for Literature) and so I was contacted via Liars' League. This happened at 2.34pm on 10th October, and by 8pm that evening - having dashed out of dinner with my parents - I was in the studio. So what was it like?

written flash fiction

I have a confession to make: for the last four years I’ve been asking my short story students at City to write stories of exactly 100 words (“drabbles”) as an exercise, yet I rarely write flash fiction (under 1000 words) myself. I’ve published nearly 40 short stories since starting to write prose fiction, and only four have been 1000 words or less. And given that the next Liars' League is a flash fiction special, I've been reading an awful lot of flash recently (60 stories, to be precise).

A youthful and toothsome Drabble

I am, as anyone who’s read some of the other blog posts on here (average length 1000-2000 words) will know, naturally prolix. Brevity doesn’t come easily to me. If I’m going to sit down and write something, I usually want to spend a good few hours on it: I want to explore the setting, the character and the narrative arc at my leisure. I want, in short, to write without limits – especially word limits. I’m sure some of you know what I mean. Putting a bunch of words on a page has never been a problem for me – but the right words (and only the right words) in the right order, now that’s the challenge …

So last year, when I was asked to teach a Flash Fiction workshop at a university open day, I knew had to get some practice in – reading and writing it. Luckily I had to hand Sawn Off Tales by David Gaffney and Tania Hershman’s collection The White Road (both are especially noted as authors of shorter fiction).

... experienced a hurricane (Video links)

DISCLAIMER: This is a record of my personal experiences of Hurricane Isaac; I haven't had access to radio or TV news for a couple of days so cannot say whether it hit other areas of the city or other states much worse, but in our northern part of the French Quarter this is how it was on the ground, as it happened. Generally, the mood here now is relieved and cheerful that it wasn't a lot worse, and the clean-up's already well underway. Go NOLA :)

Tuesday, 28^th August 2012

CLICK HERE for video taken of the storm at 6.30pm on Tuesday

Tuesday was something of a washout: the storm was still playing hard to get (even though it had been predicted to hit around 4pm) and despite the fact that nothing much was going on, weather-wise, everything was still shut. It was dirty weather all day – heavy rain on and off and blustery winds; not the sort you'd want to be out in, admittedly – but the temperature outside was balmy, and the wind and rain were no worse than an English November (and a good deal warmer). Nonetheless, Bex and I were stuck at the hotel and pretty damn fed up. Little did we know how fed up and stuck we were yet to become …

... been on an American road trip

So here's the thing: I haven't updated this blog for a while (mea culpa - been busy promoting the book and writing the next one ... and the Olympics ... and blah blah fishcakes excuses ...)

BUT!

WE ARE GOING HERE!!!

Me and my sister Bex - well, actually more her, because she's extremely organised, and can drive - are about to realise a long-held dream of taking a road-trip across America!

We'll be flying, driving and possibly coaching or training to some of the best bits of the USA - many of which neither of us have ever visited before - including Boston, Nashville, Memphis (she's an Elvis fan), New Orleans, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, LA and finally New York - where I'm going to attend my very first Liars' League New York City event, having been a silent partner across the waves since its inception.

We are both unreasonably excited, and have probably packed far too much. But the deal is that if she drives, I'll blog the trip (with photos and everything) - so watch this space ...

AND HERE!!!