Back in the early 80s, when I was knee high to most of the population, two unrelated events occurred across my relations. My aunt bought my cousin a small, white, plain desk as part of a plan to redecorate his bedroom. Meanwhile one of my uncles, living down south, continued to collect comics. In particular, 2000 A.D.
Read MoreI hate starting novels. Short stories, when they’re feeling generous and playful, can pop into being like you’re opening a bottle of champagne. Or, as is more my experience, they can budge into being like opening the stubborn lid of a fairly decent jar of coffee.
Maybe a better metaphor for this involves cars. Starting a short story can be like starting a car. The idea comes to you with some sense of theme and ending, if you’re lucky and you’re not trying to ignore the deadline breathing down your neck and asking why you’ve not got your shoes on yet.
Read MoreWe take in so much information on a daily basis. It makes sense that certain things will just slide past our attention after we’ve seen them enough times. Building sites, shops, queues at bus stops. They’re in our world every single day. They become white noise, background details. Scenery. I had a moment yesterday when I noticed something on my wife’s desk at work that I had completely been looking through for months. Don’t worry, it wasn’t divorce paperwork.
Read MoreOh, summer. Cruel, hot, possible globally catastrophic summer. Soon you will be gone, never to dark our barometers and shorts drawers again. No longer will people walk into a room and declare ‘oh, isn’t it hot in here’ or ‘oh, isn’t it cold in here’ like some demented, inbred thermometer parrot. No longer will people claim to love the summer but always seem to be the first to reach for the air conditioning, thus exposing themselves as a total fraud.
Read MoreI’m trying to remind myself these days that horror is a many splendoured thing. In fiction, that is. I’m not watching the news, smiling a slow snake smile and muttering the word ‘beautiful’ to myself. I’ll leave that to the people pulling the politician’s strings. Surely there must be someone watching the blossoming groundswell of chaos reaching far across the world today and congratulating themselves. Before turning to Hitler’s living brain (now safely implanted inside the body of a gaunt, pale, asthmatic gorilla) and offering a deeply worshipful high five.
Read MoreSometimes, the universe speaks to you. Or that’s how I choose to see it. I suppose it’s just coincidence, really. It’s either that or I’m deciding to pick up on the same, repeating cues to assemble my own, personal breadcrumb trail. It’s a way of making sense of the noise. Or using the noise to make sense of yourself.
Read MoreHello. Thank you for calling The Blank Page Free Range, All Organic Blog Farm. We here at Blank Page value your continued support of our fledgling, little business and apologise for not being in to help you at the moment. Please leave a message after the beep and one of our highly trained, expert blog harvesters will get back to you as soon as they can.
Read MoreSome weeks, you just can’t win. It’s not right, it’s not fair. They're the horrendous traffic jam when you're already late. They're the one email or customer that is going to totally derail your plans to get through Monday unscathed. The large, slow moving spider that appears as the shampoo starts to sting your eyes. It’s basically some sort of event horizon conjured by statistics and chance.
Read More