Just how long was the labour? How difficult the birth? Then there is the problem of the name - even the secret story of my conception. My secret story was that I was conceived during an air raid. I believed this last myth for many years, then counted the months and decided that timing made this impossible. As for the name, another (true) part of my birth myth was being named after Wendy in Peter Pan, which had its first radio (‘wireless’) airing around that time. Then there is the story that my father carried me to my christening plodging waist deep in snow.

Telling stories about ourselves is a way of making sense of who we are and I guess writers do that in spades. And on websites…

‘A new novel? What’s it about?' It is always such a difficult struggle to answer this question which I hear time and again both from friends and passing acquaintances. ‘Tell me in one sentence!’ was an even harder request from my dear editor. Of course I struggle to comply. But the point is, a novel might have a distinct narrative, but still it is about many things, its real meaning filtered through the layers that give the narrative real substance.

Take Sandie Shaw and the Millionth Marvell Cooker (Headline) just out in paperback. The purest narrative string here is the love story between a student worker in a factory and a young Hungarian who is a manager there. But it is also about:

• the energy of successful factory life in the boom times of the 1960s
• the intriguing and complex character of people who then worked in factories.
• friendships between women, and between women and men, in the liberating 1960s
• the changing roles of men and women
• the emergence of iconic celebrity figures
• the strains of mother-daughter relationships
• immigrants integrating into British life – being a stranger in a strange land.

In my view, without such layers any novel would very thin fare - better served by comic strip than the richness of language and well realised social contexts, elements of which – according to my letters and emails - find many, many echoes in the lives of my readers.

My forthcoming novel The Woman Who Drew Buildings (Headline) has its own unique narrative string and its own list of very different layers and themes – but more about that next time!

This spring also sees the publication of my short story collection Knives (Iron Press). These short stories – some of which are on my website - range from the inspired ravings of an old woman, once respectable and now on the streets, to a young man who goes to view a house and has a near miss with a psychopathic killer, to a young woman - more sinned against than sinning - hell bent on self destruction. There are other, less pathological stories in the collection - of a woman breaking free from a long and confining marriage, of a boy learning his craft deep in the bowels of the earth. But I think that more than violence, more than darkness, all these stories reflect the knowingness and the sense of irony - even comedy - that is the human saving grace of people under stress and in either physical or psychological confinement.

More extras here - try the links about forthcoming

Workshops/signings; a new workshop about Reading to Write; also Life on the Out, a piece about ceasing my interesting work as a writer in residence at a prison.

Perhaps you would also like to look up my new venture with friends Avril Joy & Gillian Wales on http://www.RoomToWrite.co.uk

Also in the Articles section is a piece about how KNIVES came into being - Thinking about KNIVES

Oh, and another short story Forms of Flight will be here on the website after it is published this month in the Sunday Express magazine.

I am now working on a new novel, some of which will be written during a two month sojourn in Agde in the sunny Languedoc area of France. It is my lifetime dream to do this and when I am there – writing, drawing, researching and just chilling- it will feel as though all my birthdays have come at once. It’s a very long way from going to your christening in waist-high snow!

Best wishes to you, and happy reading
 

Best wishes