Author Archives
James is a full-time writer.
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2015 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 400 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it… Read More ›
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Begin at the end and end at the beginning (or how to fail exams and confuse your friends)
Excuse me if these words look wobbly. I am taking a short break from NaNoWriMo 2015. National Novel Writing Month means just that – writing a novel in a month. 50,000 words minimum, 70,000+ if you want to hit a… Read More ›
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Living in Bath – cigar optional
It’s more than two weeks since we moved from South London to South Bath; eighteen days since we swapped the bars, restaurants and sirens for the stillness and silence that surround our new home when darkness falls. It feels like… Read More ›
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Acrophobia (or why I like the valleys)
I live with acrophobia, a psychological nuisance more commonly known as a fear of heights, and which loosely translated means being scared of peaks, summits or edges. In other words, when I am in high places I am frequently and… Read More ›
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Life in the slow lane: a swimmer’s guide to the pool’s natural hazards
I like to go swimming two or three times a week, and I like to swim a length for every year I’ve been alive. Up and down I go, counting the lengths, thinking about how old I’m getting and keeping… Read More ›
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Metamorphosis: Bean Bags, Flann O’Brien & Getting It Out There
A year has passed since I submitted the first 25,000 words of my novel as part of a creative writing MSt. Since then I have written, re-written, abandoned, restructured and despaired of, the remaining 60,000 words. Writing a novel takes… Read More ›
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Working the pile: a submission reader’s experience of a literary agency
For most of us writing is about trying to keep the dream alive. An hour every morning, two hours every night, weekends lost to pounding the keyboard. Sometimes we wonder if there is anybody else out there. But there is…. Read More ›