My Next Book

This is a crime against blogging, but it's been a year since my last entry. I started a full time job at Lancaster exactly a year ago... and a few other things went to pot. Like this blog. But other things have gone much better.

After publishing The War Tour, I've been working on a novel, well kind of novel. The War Tour, was, for obvious reasons, rather far from my own experience (though as I have discussed elsewhere, things are more complex than that). But my second book stems much more directly from the experience of illness and disability and the role as carer. In many ways, these issues have shaped my life. And I want issues that have stemmed from this to be at the centre of my next book.

How I go about that has changed over the past year; the way this kind of material is fictionalised, the form, the approach, has gradually morphed with each word I wrote. Things are now coming together. The structure of this book is more cohesive than my first collection. But there is still something fragmentary about it. I'm still attracted to different stories bumping up against each other, but those connections this time are much more novelistic.