So there I was, at the advanced age of sixty eight, published author an’ all, on the receiving end of the most withering of looks from my Russian teacher. ‘Where is your predicate, Laurie?’ she said, and I was darned if I had an answer for her. My knowledge of grammar is threadbare. I must…

I spent a good deal of yesterday gazing more in resignation than in hope at an airport departure board and so missed posting on the anniversary of Mark Twain’s death.  He is a perennially uncontested entry in my list of favourite authors. The day I grow tired of reading him I will truly be tired…

  So let’s talk about cultural appropriation. J K Rowling got a tongue-lashing this week from an American academic with a big Cherokee Nation axe to grind. JK has apparently dared to venture onto the hallowed ground of Native American beliefs and written, on her website, about skin-walking.  Miss Rowling doesn’t need me to defend…

Anal rape.                                                              Do I now have your attention? My loyal reader may remember the discouraging advice I received from my agent a few months back, regarding play scripts: no money to be made, and the only plays  people are interested in are those that address difficult contemporary themes. Reading reviews of the National Theatre’s current…

There are novelists who are enviably skilled at plot construction, there are columnists who always manage to hit my funny bone, and there are sleb authors who send me into a red mist of fury that they ever got published. But it’s a rare thing for me to be moved to tears by a poet,…

Writing a sequel is proving to be an interesting project.  The principal characters, their voices and in some cases even their hair colour, have come back to me easily. It’s the vast Greek chorus of walk-ons that’s the problem. Who the heck was Dorothy Kurlich? Who was Norton Beebe? And why? When you write a…

  Well, dear readers, I truly thought I’d die of stress and exhaustion, but here I am, to tell the tale. We have a pulse.  House moves are bad, we all know that. House moves with a dementia sufferer are bad with extra chopped nuts. It’s more than a month since I did a lick…

Not a lot of writing going on at present. Actually, not any writing, except things like FRAGILE and THIS WAY UP on packing cases. I’ve spent three weeks sifting, sorting, tsk tsk-ing and hurling things into a skip. If they ever make skip-hurling an Olympic sport, I’m your woman. One considerable achievement has been the…

I’m conscious that I’ve spent much of this year bemoaning the insecure lot of freelance writers so I’m rather pleased to have found something positive to say about it at long last. I spent this past weekend at a hotel in the south of England and it provided me with a front stalls view of…