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...

Copycat: Second book fears, panic-writing, and plans for a sequel

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 Whatever I Am Now: Corrupted Hard Drive.

Take a walk with me. We’ll go back to August 2010, late August, when I finally found out that despite my below par A-Level grades, there was a university in the country that was prepared to give me a chance. Praise be to them. Ahead of starting this journey, my generous mother bought me a laptop. A brand spanking new laptop. That my kind and patient sister, and her partner, set up for me and taught me how to use. They deliberately picked something that would suit the university life style – and they were bang on the money in that respect. That laptop lasted I-don’t-care-to-remember how many assignments and a 10,000 word undergraduate dissertation. Let’s not forget, either, that during my first and second summers home from university, I also wrote two “novels” (I use that word in a bland and unimpressed tone, incidentally) that were typed on that same laptop. From there, we moved to postgraduate studies. More assignments and eventually a 25,000 word dissertation. By this point ...

A writer's life for me

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