poem: double homicide

'It happens'
hit me like a one-two punch.
I replied with a stare.
First at you.
Then at her dress,
slung over our feature chair.

'It happens'
but the judge didn't agree with me.

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The Diary of a Whatever I Am Now: Transition period.

Transition: 'the process or the period of changing from one state or condition to another'. I wanted to make this blog more of a regular thing once my PhD was over, for several reasons. Partly it’s just to log what happens next and this, in itself, is two-fold: I want to have some kind of documentation of this recovery process (yes, that’s what I’m calling it) that follows the PhD, but I also live in hope that someone who is struggling with having finished their PhD might find this blog some day, and breathe a hefty sigh on realising that the weird grief-cum-relief they’re feeling right now isn’t totally abnormal – in fact, it might even be quite common. I also want to get into the habit of writing more – something I’m encouraging my own students to do now and I hate giving out writing advice that I haven’t/am not taking myself, and so here we are. This is my first post as a Whatever I Am Now (because I still don’t have balls big enough to write The Diary of a Writer in th...

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When people ask me how I wrote Copycat , I have to explain to them the constant state of panic that I was in while I pulled this book together. Intention , my debut novel which was also published by Bloodhound Books, was a labour of love that lasted three years in total, and five years to the point that it was published. I wrote that book as part of my PhD programme, which also means that throughout those three years I had a great support network in place to get me through the process of writing a book. The reason behind the Copycat -panic then was that this would be the first novel I would write without someone holding me up, and those first steps to get the book together were nervous and wobbly ones to say the least. Copycat ’s first draft came together in about two months. At the beginning and end of most days, I would sit down at my laptop and I would push and push until I managed a few hundred words at a...

The Diary of a PhD Student: Wait, is that a finish line?

As of about half an hour ago, my PhD novel is with a wonderful collective of beta readers, and my PhD research paper – the second draft – is in the email inbox of my supervisor. Boom. I’d like to take a second here to thank all of the amazing people who offered to read the book. I put a call-out online and it didn’t for a second cross my mind that so many people would offer their time and patience towards reading this project. So many people offered, in fact, that I’ve had to turn people down and only send it to a select few – which has broken my heart a bit, I won’t lie. When the list of possible readers was edging close to twenty, I panicked and emailed my supervisor: ‘Bizarre question: How many readers is too many readers?’ It felt like I was giving him a riddle, but he understood the concern: ‘You don’t want more feedback than you can handle at this stage, and different people will approach the text differently. Maybe one or two for thing, one or two for an...

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