Author Archives

James is a full-time writer.

• 2015 in review

  By James Ellis on December 31, 2015 • ( 0 )

  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 ›

• Begin at the end and end at the beginning (or how to fail exams and confuse your friends)

  By James Ellis on November 8, 2015 • ( 0 )

  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 ›

• Living in Bath – cigar optional

  By James Ellis on October 21, 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  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 ›

• Acrophobia (or why I like the valleys)

  By James Ellis on September 29, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  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 ›

• Notes on The III International Flann O’Brien Conference

  By James Ellis on September 23, 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  Last week I spent four days in the company of Flanneurs, Mylesians, academics, authors, onlookers and whiskey-drinkers. All drawn together by a fascination with the works of… well, it depends. For some he’s Brother Barnabas of Comhthrom Féinne fame; to… Read More ›

• Life in the slow lane: a swimmer’s guide to the pool’s natural hazards

  By James Ellis on September 5, 2015 • ( 0 )

  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 ›

• A Sublime Sleight of Hand (or Why I Love The Comforters)

  By James Ellis on August 31, 2015 • ( 0 )

  UNKNOWN WRITER: It is almost sixty years since the publication of Muriel Spark’s debut novel The Comforters (1957) and for me, it remains one of the finest metafictional novels of all time – all because of one simple, almost casual, feat of… Read More ›

• Metamorphosis: Bean Bags, Flann O’Brien & Getting It Out There

  By James Ellis on August 27, 2015 • ( 0 )

  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 ›

• Working the pile: a submission reader’s experience of a literary agency

  By James Ellis on August 8, 2015 • ( 0 )

  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 ›