Planning a Novel 3: Sleuths Galore

I’ve been looking at other novelists’ sleuths – medieval or otherwise – as part of my current work on a series of medieval murder mysteries. The novel I am writing features a Catalan female troubadour and is set in 11thcentury Toulouse. Other sleuths I’ve been studying include Ellis Peter’s Cadfael, Donna Leon’s Brunetti, Lee Child’s…

Medieval novel playlist

I’m currently undertaking NanoWriMo November – aiming to write 50,000 words of my new novel about a female troubadour (or trobairitz). NanoWriMo asked for a playlist for my novel so here it is: The working title for my novel, A Morsel of Love’s Bread, is taken from a line in the troubadour poem, ‘Ab la dolchor…

Rambling vine

I am a guest on Alison Morton’s writing blog today, talking about how living in France inspires and affects my writing. ‘I fell in love with the pace of village life, which gives me focus to write.’ ‘My writing is inspired by material culture—objects in museums, archaeology, illustrated manuscripts—and by sensory experiences of places.’ ‘I…

Text is material

‘For all writing, you need to be nosy.’ ‘To me, text is material in the same way as stone or paint are.’ ‘A pen is like a prosthetic for me. It’s like a visual artist needing a sketchpad always to hand, or a sound artist needing to record on their phone.’ ‘The first thing with…

Writing on performance art workshop

Gresol Art in Girona and La Bonne in Barcelona are collaborating to present a new performance and performance art workshop by Esther Ferrer as part of Intangible Environments. The performance is on 26 October 2019 at La Bonne. The workshop takes place 27-31 October 2019. I am contributing a session on writing about performance.  I last engaged…

The Garden of Earthly Delights

I am starting an artist’s residency next week at Matadero in Madrid as part of the Microhabitable project, co-organised with Serpentine Galleries and INLAND. I’m intending to explore human and non-human entanglements through twitter fiction and a publication.  I will build on my previous published and installed texts – Meanda, The Water Age, Ink Tourettes. I’m interested to…

Making It Up

At Falmouth University Thursday 22 March 11.30-13.00 giving the keynote presentation in the Research Students Symposium. How do we make something from nothing? How do we get from the blank page to the book or the artwork? I will focus on the development of my future fiction, Meanda, set on a water planet. The symposium is…

Experiencing Suspense

Can I get through treacherous snow and howling winds in the UK today to reach the Gers in south-west France for a weekend workshop with a group of delightful writers? If I make it, we plan to consider narrators, voice, tense, creating characters, creating suspense, settings, and constructing fictional worlds. That should be enough to…

Writing in exile

In my interview published today on The Displaced Nation, author Harriet Springbett talks about being an English writer living in France: ‘When I go back to England and see bookshops stuffed with books, or blogs featuring new books every day, I feel intimidated. Writing stories suddenly seems rather pointless and I wonder what I can…

1,000 years back and 1,000 years forward

Some readers of my posts may feel confused by the polarised nature of my activities: on the one hand writing early medieval fiction and the other hand writing future fiction about exoplanets and other life poetics. I get quite confused by this paradox myself! However, the medieval historian Henry of Huntingdon, writing in the 12th…