Characters in conflict

Yvette Cazalet

Conflict. It’s around us every single day in one form or another. Maybe it doesn’t seem that way, but scratch away at the shiniest of lives and beneath the veneer there’s sure to be conflict. Can’t do without it. It’s the stuff of life. Of interesting lives lived.

Of course, people don’t necessarily like or invite conflict. Would you? No? Me neither. In fact I’d say I’m severely allergic to it – probably based on too much early exposure… A theme touched on in my current manuscript. But it’s conflict that changes us. Moves us forward. Forces our hand at big decisions. It’s what we respond to in Story. And it can take on many guises, for example:

In Patrick Suskind’s novella, ‘The Pigeon’ – (and if you haven’t read it, you really should. But if you need more convincing, check out this in-depth review http://jim-murdoch.blogspot.com.es/2010/09/pigeon.html) In short…

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A Writer’s Worst Fear | Jane Friedman

“I am never more myself than when I ask, “What interests me most?” Only I know the answer.”
https://janefriedman.com/writers-worst-fear/

Daily Writing Prompt

Unfinished
thats what I am and all that’s infinitely remembered, all those times I’ve left things undone like full-stops with tails, like pages of text in pencil half rubbed away by the action of trying to find the line to cross, the stream to leap when its just the ocean reflected in all those critisisms and blindnesses to the little things I have in fact not left alone and incomplete

Daily Prompt: Disagree

via Daily Prompt: Disagree

Stick ’em up, c’mon now let’s do the dance and let our clothes be creased and damp ’cause what does it mean to be civil and wasn’t it ok when all the boys’d gather round in a knot of caterwauling to cheer on the elbows and knees dead centre, the ones with swinging punches and bravado tucked aplenty under a flat cap, on skewiff

No? You don’t think a good old punch up speaks truthful, but let me beg to differ if that suits you better for how civilised we can be inside our animal skins.

Melancholia (or, when you become winter)

Beautifully Bruised (on Exmoor’s Dunkery Beacon) – A Poem

Death followed her there, in burnt-umber magnificence he lay
scorching away all trace of the living, the Baron of barren

nestled in the moor’s shadowy cleavage, the sea, slab of icy steel
on which she floats, a cadaver awaiting post mortem cuts in the cold

tissue-paper skin, exposed, beautifully bruised inside
On a crag, a hawthorn tree bent in toil, an old crone scratching

an existence, mocking with bony fingers, arthritic
cackling in the wake of each zipping car, people rushing by

in other worlds, fleeting dervishes
not noticing her, high above her sorrows, above the cracks and

folds in the landscape hiding crumbs of despair, disappointment’s litter
A derelict mouse, a tiny bird’s jutting ribs the gateway for crawling things

Tiredness calcifies her bones as she lowers herself, serenely entombed
in the briars, the gorse and sprigs of long-lost heather

letting the moss creep, creep over her mouth and eyes
filling her lungs with cool sweet green, always touching her

Five Fascinating Facts about Jack Kerouac

Interesting Literature

Interesting facts from the life of Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road

As Jack Kerouac’s classic novel of the Beat Generation, On the Road, was published today in 1957, we thought we’d salute this iconic novel, and its creator, in a post for our ‘five fascinating facts‘ series.

1. Jack Kerouac typed up his novel On the Road on one continuous roll of paper that was 120 feet long. Kerouac called it ‘the scroll’ – a stream of tracing paper that Kerouac had created through taping individual sheets together. Although he wrote the original manuscript quickly, in just three weeks in 1951, Kerouac then spent time revising bits of the text before it was finally published six years later. Kerouac’s friends William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg both appear in the novel, as the characters Old Bull Lee and Carlo Marx respectively. The book became a key…

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Interview – 1 book in 5 questions : Candlemoth – R.J. Ellory

EmOtionS - Blog littéraire et musical

An interview with R.J. Ellory about his first book : 

Candlemoth (just released in France)

What is your feeling about the idea that the French public, who likes you so much, will finally discover you at your beginnings?

Well, as you can imagine, Candlemoth (Papillon de Nuit) was a very important novel for me as it was my first published book. I had previously written twenty-two novels and never found a publisher, so it took a huge amount of persistence to continue and not give up.

Finally, when this book was released, it was a major change in my direction in life, and it really strengthened the purpose I had to continue writing for the rest of my life. That purpose has not changed, and even though you are now reading something that I wrote thirteen years ago, it still feels like a very real and very familiar…

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My thoughts on Phobias and the genocide taking place in South Africa

couragecouer

Growing up in South Africa, I was always reminded by those around me that I was different to everyone else. In primary school, I had a much darker complexion than I do now, and super white teeth – the telling marks of a foreigner that betray you even when you put on your best English accent. It is just too obvious.

My name is Lovelyn Chidinma Nwadeyi. I am a Nigerian. Born in Nigeria to two Nigerian parents. Raised in Queenstown, Eastern Cape by those same Nigerian parents right up until I completed my Bachelors at Stellenbosch. I bear citizenship of both worlds. I speak fluent Xhosa, Igbo, Afrikaans and English. I can make sense of Tswana and Sotho. I enjoy a good braai, I love vetkoeks, especially the bunny-chow, I can’t get enough of Bokomo WeetBix, I love Ouma’s rusks and I can pull off my panstulas with…

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Why Short Stories Are Worth Reading

If you’ve never read a collection of short stories, you’re really missing out on a gem of an art form…

Seren Books Blog

In the publishing world, there’s one thing that’s almost always guaranteed: short stories don’t sell. But why?

Short stories are the first stories we’re ever introduced to, they’re our stepping stone into the world of storytelling. Whether they were told around campfires, painted on cave walls or sewn into tapestries, short stories have been passed down throughout the generations for as long as we’ve been able to tell them. From the Brothers Grimm to the Mabinogion to the many voices that make up the 1001 Nights, the short tales and fables our ancestors leave us are some of our first teachers: lessons such as ‘don’t stray off the path’ and ‘slow and steady wins the race’ are the product of short stories, not epic novels.

As adults we don’t need these kinds of stories – or so we might like to tell ourselves – we move on, quite literally, to…

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Doing something different: Introducing – Morpheme Records

Alphabet Bands

For quite some time now we’ve had a hankering for something, an eagerness to do something more than just write about music but to support bands in other ways. We’ve dabbled with gig promotion but the one thing that we always thought we be a lot of fun and exciting, would be to set up a record label. It’s an idea we’ve played around with for quite some time if we’re honest but it was only late last year when we finally thought, ‘yeah, let’s do it’.

And so Morpheme Records is born.

We want to use it to support artists we love beyond just posting about them and getting them on to Hype Machine. So it stands to reason that our first artist is one we have loved and supported for a while now (and it helps that he’s a local lad) Harry Edwards. We first encountered Harry…

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