Tuesday 29 November 2011

Three good publishing related news items this week.

First, my review of Morag Joss's Across the Bridge appeared in Northwords Now. A favourable review :) because I enjoyed it and what the author was trying to do. Northwords Now launch this issue with an event at the Scottish Writers' Centre on Thursday 8 December from 7pm.

Second, a surprise through the post! A copy of Le soir, quand je me couche: the French translation of As I Lay Me Down To Sleep. Really weird, seeing what you've written expressed in a different language through the filter of a translator whom you've never met. Thank you, Alexander Fox! I'm very pleased the book is out in France. And in one of the bigger sized paperbacks, too!


Third, an email telling me that Spilling Ink Review have accepted my short story 'Safety Glass' for issue seven of their influential e-zine. 'Safety Glass' is a difficult story in that it demands full attention from the reader as it's a bit of a puzzle. What happens when your protagonist's thinking is fuzzy? The story started out life when I imagined what it would be like to be a woman trapped between the two layers of a double glazed window (reading this as all kinds of metaphor) but it moved on to be about a woman trapped in a very different kind of glass. I'm glad Spilling Ink Review have run with the idea. It's a story I wrote at the same time as 'Grit', which was published in From Glasgow To Saturn e-zine.