The sun’s out, the temperature is finally up out of blanket-over-my-knees territory, and I’ve got a whole lot of writing related stuff to tell you about. Yay?
Thing the first: Usk Literary Hub/Book Haven is a new initiative by Saron Publishers to help local authors promote their work. It’s based at Sprokwobbles cafe in Usk and will be launching next Friday, May 20th, from 6-9 PM. If you’re in the area, you can pop along to say hi, pick up a copy of The Word, or chat to other local authors.
Thing the second: I’ve got a story in Issue #8 of Wyldblood Magazine, which came out last month. “Crane Flies” is about loss, killer bugs, and why you should always listen to weird old ladies. You can pick up a copy here.
September, and the grass in the top meadow is thick with crane flies. Pip dislodges them with every step and they drift into the air, limbs gangling, to swoop and flit at apparent random, threatening to dive-bomb her face or tangle in her hair.
She remembers hearing, once, that they were the most poisonous creatures on the planet, but they couldn’t harm you because they didn’t have mouths to bite with. Auntie Cath said that was a load of old bollocks, but then Auntie Cath was always full of it.
I also wrote an article for New Welsh Review about writing and neurodivergence, which is available to read for free on the website.
As a young reader, I devoured books about mad girls.
Fiction and memoir; all kinds of disorders. Girl, Interrupted and Prozac Nation; Wasted and Life-Size; The Bell Jar and In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl. There was something in all those books that spoke to the trauma of (cis) female adolescence, of coming of age in a body marked as an object of desire or disgust – but there was more than that.
Plus, keep an eye out for new stories coming up in the next issue of Fusion Fragment and the upcoming mini-anthology Ebb Tides, and one from my alter ego, Louise Long, in a collection of masquerade stories from Duck Prints Press.
…And I’m done. Phew!
JL GEORGE 