This post is the second in a series which starts HERE (October 2014) The graveyard is littered with plastic bottles. They are piled around the inside of the low wall. My sixteen year old daughter is crying at her father’s grave as she watches her uncle pour water from his plastic bottle onto the tomb stone. ‘The water…
Trouble in Tunisia is a serial blog about time spent from 1996-1999 running a water-sports base on the beach at Port El Kantaoui, near Sousse, and about returning there in 2014 to introduce my sixteen-year old daughter to her blood relatives. This blog series touches on life for a Westerner in an Islamic country and…
I keep getting achy neck muscles and a slight headache, and think I’m coming down with something. Then I remember it’s because I’ve been walking (sometimes running) the streets of Inverness with a rucksack full of books on my back. It’s practice for solo-trekking the 65-mile Speyside Way from Buckie to Aviemore as soon as…
There are heaps of articles about the pain of literary agent rejection. I identify with many of them: been there, done that. The first traumatic part of the process is the time-consuming business of identifying appropriate agents and preparing the specific submission they want. Agent One wants a 567 word synopsis (single spaced, Ariel 10 point),…
The worst thing about insomnia is the boredom. I wake at 2.30am, and I’m feeling kind of cosy and snuggly in my bed. I go for a pee (should have done those pelvic floor exercises like my midwife said) but when I get back to bed I’m still only half awake, and there’s a chance…
Blogging for the last month has been tremendous fun. I’ve got a lot off my chest and I’m delighted at the lovely feedback I’ve had. It’s motivated me so much. Getting to grips with Twitter has been interesting – once I got over my stranger-fear. Highlights were being retweeted – twice – by Saira Khan,…
I tell people I’m currently writing the plan for my third novel (I’ve no idea why, it just blurts out of my mouth). They say something like: ‘That’s fantastic. You’ve written two novels! Where can I buy them?’ (I’m not suggesting they intended purchasing it, but people are generally polite). ‘Well, that’s the problem. You…
Everyone’s life looks great on social media, and I’m sure mine is no exception. I post about things that make me happy, or things that make me laugh. I post about the many things that irritate and infuriate me. But I never post about the things that make me feel truly awful. On days when…
I trudged along the desolate mountain road, sweating in the heat. There was dense forest on either side of me and a series of sharp bends ahead. I was roughly two miles from the Swiss village I was aiming for. My rucksack was heavy and painful; two days earlier I’d lain out all day reading…
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