Sometimes you are lucky enough to read exactly the right book at the right time. This was the case with "The Night Brother" and me. It was the perfect piece of fiction to read after "Caliban and the Witch". While the beautiful prose and rich characters would have been enjoyable at any time, the poignancy of the subtext was enriched when read with knowledge of the history of women's struggles. It is set in the late 19th - early 20th century, Manchester, England. A time of suff

I think Victor Lavalle sums up perfectly the intent of this novella in its dedication - “For H.P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings.” This story is set in New York in the 1920s. Charles Thomas Tester is a man from Harlem who earns money to support himself and his prematurely aging father by grifting. He has the reputation of being a go-to guy to fetch esoteric objects, and it is when he is hired to fetch a book for a white woman in Queens that the story begins. It’s

I have been really lucky this year and have read some wonderful books, but this book is my favourite so far. I came across it while studying an online writing course “Moving the Margins”, a great course by the way. They included the first 50 pages of this novel as study material, but once I’d read 50 pages I knew I needed to buy the book and read the rest. It’s amazing. The genre is best described as magical realism. It’s set in New York and the central character is a young m

Work in progress - my new novel "The Secret Lives of Melissa Powell". Excerpt from first draft. The Secret Lives of Melissa Powell Carmilla Voiez Wanda arrived at the inmate’s door with a bundle of letters. The absence of her mentor, and the associated unease Dawson always brought with them towards cell D41, should have given Wanda all the confidence she needed to initiate contact, so why wouldn’t her hands stop sweating? Why did she feel like a thief in the night, sneaking a

I came to a halt, a full stop, a period of rest, while writing "Venus Virus". Another project started demanding my attention. Without fixed deadlines, I agreed, like a child rushing to open all the presents on Christmas morning. "The Secret Lives of Melissa Powell" is only a working title. I might decide on another later on. It's a story about prisons, literal and metaphorical. It's less of a horror story and more a tale of mysticism. I suspect the best definition for it, if

Is perception reality? Is magick simply madness? Is there a point in space, time or perception we can access that allows us not only to change our own reality but that of other people? These are the questions that the first episode of season 2 of the astoundingly good show “Legion” provoked. It ties into the stories I write and those of other writers including Paulo Coehlo and Carlos Castaneda. The Ballerina and the Revolutionary touches on these themes, as does the Starblood

I’ve raved about Haruki Murakami before, but I can’t help it. I’m a fan girl. “A Wild Sheep Chase” was the first of Murakami’s novels published, but it shares the same mix of the real and the surreal, the mundane and the strange, as later books. At the start of the book the unnamed narrator splits up with his wife and is confused that no trace of her existence remains in his apartment, not even a slip. It’s strange, but it wasn’t until page 225 that I noticed neither the main

Originally published in the 1970s and recently translated into English, Giorgio de Maria’s short novel “The Twenty Days of Turin” is remarkable in the way it mirrors society in the twenty-first century. There is something about the lyricism of Italian writers that speaks to my soul. Along with Umberto Eco's, de Maria's storytelling and descriptions warm me in ways that run counter to the bleakness of the stories. If I could decide to be reincarnated as an Italian writer I wou

Slade House is a strange little book. The start is very strong, the middle is repetitive and the end feels like a tagged on battle of good versus evil. It’s told in sections of nine year intervals and is based in and around Slade House, a place out of time, protecting two soul-sucking vampires. Although most of the characters are adult, it feels like a young adult story in its simplicity. Many of the scenes are strange and surreal. Repetition of time, place and action is a th

I wish I could write books like Haruki Murakami, where the real and the unreal bleed into one another. The mundane seems extraordinary and magic hovers in the wings. Although it isn’t my favourite of his books, Hard Boiled Wonderland is still a beautiful read. It's a book about identity and consciousness. It’s written in first person and the narrator switches between different locations from chapter to chapter. One of these locations is not in our world, although it is called