Author: Sara Crowley

Review of Nik Perring’s Not So Perfect

Sara Crowley3 Comments
I “know” Nik Perring from the online bloggy world, but I don’t “know” him at all. We aren’t friends, tho’ he seems like a nice guy from his twitter feed and his blog. We have mutual writing pals but we’ve never emailed or met or spoken or gone beyond commenting on each others tweets/blogs. I wasn’t offered a review copy of his flash fiction collection “Not So Perfect” (humph) but as I run a dedicated Flash Fiction section at work I ordered a few copies in as I like to mix classic books with fresh, contemporary work. 
From what I have seen so far, Roast Books create gorgeous publications; books that stand out because of how they look, books that demand to be picked up and held, explored, read. Nik’s is no exception. It’s a small book – the size of a CD, so immediately looks different. Here’s the cover:
Delicious, eh? I had a wee flick through and liked it enough to buy it.
I read it in my lunch break and on the train ride home. To be honest I was so immersed in it that I didn’t notice I was at my home stop until the last moment and that never happens. What Nik Perring seems able to do is breathe life into characters. It’s a vital, difficult skill, made all the more impressive by the brevity of these fictions. With just a few pertinent details he makes characters feel real. He makes the reader care. His stories are brief but full. I was surprised by how romantic many of them are; beautiful, aching examples of love and heartbreak.

A grumpy man surprises his wife with a message in flowers, a woman heard sobbing through a wall may bring hope, a spurned lover can’t recall the last time anyone said his name, a man finds a lump on his dates breast…slices of lives reveal human nature.

It’s a cute book containing 22 wee stories (each complete with accompanying quirky line illustration.) It costs £7.99 and is available to buy from Waterstones online, Waterstone’s Brighton, or y’know, one of those other places. 

Stories at Neon Magazine

Sara Crowley6 Comments
 

                          (Image from Neon Magazine issue 23)

When Matt died I somewhat inevitably found myself writing about grief. Not as straightforward reportage, rather I wrote tiny, odd flashes of misery and loss. Three pieces in particular seem to belong together despite their differences. I call them Grief Triptych and am pleased to have found a good home for them at Neon Magazine ( a place that states it looks for “…the new, the experimental and the strange.”)

My second story at Neon is called “Inside VS. Out” and ostensibly has nothing to do with Matt at all. However, it was using his words “evenings of ordinary sand” and “moon worms” as prompts that was my inspiration. He wanted us to collaborate and write together and I hope that he’s cool with what I did.

Matt was very supportive of my writing and had an especial fondness for my concise flashes. Anyone who knew him knows from his music, artworks and humour that the weird, surreal and grotesque appealed to him. I hope he would approve of these fictions. I think he would.

The main thing I would like to say if any of his friends or family read them is that I wrote and published them in memory of Matt, but they are not about Matt. Rather, they are about me.

Matt Kinnison

Sara Crowley10 Comments

It is two years today since Matt died. Crummy kinda day. I send love out to Matt’s friends and family. 
I have a few flash fictions forthcoming in Neon Magazine that I have written in memory of Matt and I had hoped that some magic would come into play and they would be published in time for this ghastly anniversary. They haven’t, and really I’m at a loss for anything new to say. I miss Matt and time passing merely highlights to me how rare and true a friend he was. 

Matt’s small list of impossible things : cheese bow ties, stinging nettles with fingerprints, someone posting Jupiter through your letterbox, 50 year old babies, November being knighted, pudding before main course, tying a knot in tap water etc etc etc.

Most used words

Sara Crowley12 Comments

I’d forgotten all about the nifty WordCounter tool until today it popped back into my head. I have put together a bunch of my flash fiction and was curious to see if there were any over used words. I tried to guess what those words might be. “Salt” maybe, I know I use that quite often. But nope, my most frequently used word was “look” followed by “one” “back” “over” and “go”. It was only after I sent my manuscript off that I realised if I put those most used words together they form a message.  “Go look back over one.”

Oops.

I also favour “say” “think” “get” “want and “watch” which I think flows quite well. As does “head” and “down.”

My list of 25 ends with “mouth” “little” “hand.”

What are yours?

Titles are hard to keep thinking of

Sara Crowley2 Comments

I have a teeny bit o’ froth up at LitSnack – Wednesdays Go Like This. I think someone challenged me to write a flash with the word bilious in. Which I did.

I went to London yesterday and met up with a few writing chums. It’s a little like internet dating in that we met online and know each other through our writing but hadn’t met in real life. You get a fair idea of what someone is like through their words and fictions, but I was still nervous. No need though, they were all lovely. Phew.

Perfect first date night for writers? Lorrie Moore in conversation with John Mullan as part of the Guardian Book Club. Ah Lorrie, how I love you. She seems so unflappable, calm, wise, witty, beautiful, and oh boy is she talented.

I think a podcast of the event will be up at some point at the Guardian, and I didn’t take notes but I think she said the following:

In a short story she will write a beginning without knowing the end, then the end comes to her and she’ll write that, go back and write the middle to unite the two parts. (I find that interesting because though I may begin with only the vaguest idea of what I am doing I still plug away at it in order. I work towards an ending, but I never stop, write the end and then get the two parts to meet. I may give it a go.)

That a short story focuses in on something out of the ordinary in a character’s life – illness, death, divorce, an affair etc – and in the examination of that event we will have the “ordinary” revealed too.

In answer to the accusation that all her work is melancholic she responded by saying that all life is underpinned by the knowledge that we will die so is inevitably melancholy.

Erm, lots more, but I think it’ll have to wait for someone who actually took notes to blog it, or for the podcast.

Words and pictures

Sara Crowley2 Comments

I think that the coolest thing about reading at Sparks is the privilege of seeing how someone has visually interpreted your story. I feel very lucky that my story ended up with Nikki Acott of Maverick Photography.

Plans. Needs. Blues was originally published at Dogmatika but I’ll post it again here so you can see just how brilliantly the image works with it:
Plans. Needs. Blues

You have left the station and are trying to remember your way to the town centre. You are two hours early for the appointment with the psychiatrist who wants to discus the state of your child’s mental health. You are trying to formulate a plan.
The spring morning is sharp and bright. You stop in the middle of a wide road. It is not a safe place.

You go to a café and buy a mocha. You wipe your mouth after each sip in case you retain a creamy moustache. You hold a paperback, scan the words but do not read them.
You think of your son’s cuddle; the warmth of his body pressed against yours. You rub the teeth marks that remain imprinted on your arm. It has always been love/hate with him. When you start to trust the peace, he will erupt. What pours forth could be words, violence, urine, tears…you never know. You clamp your lips; lip on lip, pushed hard.
In the street, you check your watch. There is still an hour to go. You walk into a shop and look at rings in the shapes of flowers, butterflies, snakes. You pretend you may want one.
A greasy sickness slides over you. Moisture dots your top lip. Your head begins a soft pulsing. You enter a department store and locate the washroom. In the cubicle, your stomach churns and shit splatters into the toilet.
You only have ten minutes. You speed walk.
A bus passes; its destination is a place you have never been to. You flirt with the notion of going there right now.
This will be the eighteenth health care professional that you have spoken to this year. You met her for the first time two weeks ago when she ‘assessed’ your child. You remember the pictures and mottos that she had tacked to a corkboard above her desk. There was a postcard: blue water, blue mountainous shapes, another place that you have not been.
You knew that the tranquil scene was a trick to make you feel calm, just like her quiet voice, her careful body language. You know that she is another woman who will say she can help. Your son is ten years old and you have stopped believing anything will change.
Outside the hospital, you check your face in a handbag mirror. You apply another layer of lipstick. You are wearing a suit, a tactic you have learned disarms.
You wonder how other mums cope. You walk towards the huddle of smokers outside the main entrance as the plan you have been struggling with snaps into focus.
You lay down in the ambulance bay. You can’t decide whether to lie on your back or to curl in your sleeping position. You try both. Neither is comfortable. You wait for help.
I love this. Big thanks to Nikki and please do check out her website which is packed with fabulous photography.

Thanks to Jo Mortimer for hosting such an eclectic and friendly flash fiction night and inviting me along. 

Oh, and tee hee. My husband came to this and it was the first time he’s seen me read. It was a funny kind of situation reversal for us as I have sat through a gazillion of his gigs (he’s a drummer) and I have told him this is what his future holds as I may just be getting a taste for it!

P.S Was good to meet bloggy/tweety pal James Burt too. What a nice guy!

Linktastic stuff!

Sara Crowley6 Comments

I keep forgetting to mention that I am in The Best of Every Day Fiction 2  – an anthology from those EDF peeps. It’s available in hardback or softback. Thanks to EDF for including my wee story “The Collector of Shiny.”

I was pleased to be in the debut issue of kill author and I am pleased that they have been voted best new online magazine or journal in the storySouth Million Writers Award. Woot woot! Speaking of the Award, kudos aplenty to all the writers who have been listed in the notable stories list. There’s some really good, good writing there (special mention must surely go to Roxane Gay who has, what, six stories nominated?)

And tooting my own (plastic, red and yellow, imaginary toy) trumpet, it’s been brilliant to get my writing mojo back after a long time being ill and brain fuddled. I have been writing words that please me, and feeling pretty good about it. I started subbing again (after a long time of not) and yesterday I got acceptances for 5 pieces of work. Five! In one day! (Though if I break it down, four pieces were accepted by the same place, does that count? But – I sent four hoping that they might find something to like amongst them and am THRILLED that they said, yup, we like, and took them all.) The other piece found a home somewhere I have really wanted to be published, after a requested rewrite. I spent some days nervously checking my emails, and hoping that my rewrite was solid. So yay!

And – the best words to hear on going into work?
“I saw a rep. last week, he had some new short story collections so I took them for you.”
Yup. Life can be good.

Ye Olde Bookshoppe bits…

Sara Crowley5 Comments

If you say “Where are your guide books?” with a Scottish accent it really does sound like “Where are your gay books?” And if you ask this question in Brighton, which is known as the gay capital of the UK, we will have a lot to show you.

Kazuo Ishiguro and Haruki Murakami are two different people. I know! Pesky similar sounding Japanese names, eh?

Shakespeare wrote plays. (He’s rather famous for it actually.) That’s why his writing can be found in our “Drama” section instead of “Classics.”

We have copies of the for-a-very-good-cause-and-containing-lots-of-excellent-writers-that-I “know” “100 stories for Haiti” on sale and appearing in my short story display case NOW!

WHOOOOOOSH is the sound of the gorgeous McSweeney’s 33 selling very swiftly (also in my short story display case, unless it’s gone already!)

Lookit:

Blooming irresistible if you ask me.

Not really a review…

Sara Crowley3 Comments

I said that I would review “AN A-Z of possible worlds” by A.C Tillyer aaaaaages ago. I have put it off and put it off because the truth is I wanted to love it so very much but I don’t and I didn’t want to say that.


It looks beautiful and utterly unique. I am a huge McSweeney’s fan and the presentation of these stories put me in mind of the care and attention that McSweeney’s publications have. It comes in a red box embossed in gold with the letters of the alphabet. Each story has it’s own wee booklet and it is just gorgeous.

See

Roast Books have done a wonderful thing here, and I am excited to see what else they do in the future. Their website is very interesting – looky looky!

So, hurray for Roast Books, hurray for publishers that take chances and produce works of such fabiosity, I am only sorry that an A-Z really didn’t do it for me. I love the concept but found the stories to be more tell than show, and they all seemed to share the same rather dry voice. I am entirely prepared to say that may just be personal preference as there seem to be plenty o’ rave reviews around the blogosphere. I think also that the price is a large one to pay to take a chance: when I pay £20 for a McSweeney’s it’s a lucky dip of writers, some I will like, others I won’t and I can just flip on to the next, here Ms Tillyer’s is the only voice on offer so…

Eep. Sorry.