Photos of poetry in action, and a new book

Although I wasn’t able to make it to Cathy and Angela’s poetry readings at 8th Day Coop in Manchester last month it looks (and sounds!) to have been a great event, with an appreciative audience (and they were particularly happy to buy Cathy’s new book Look At All The Women. This is good news for me as a publisher!). And just a reminder, you can still get Cathy’s book, and Angela’s wonderful collection of poems Letting Go at a discounted price in our store at the moment. I thought I’d share some photos of the event, hopefully encouraging anyone who’d like to perform their poetry, to give it a go! Sarah Miller and Rosie Garland were also there, giving fine performances, so thank you to all who attended and made it a night to remember.

Angela Topping
Cathy Bryant

And another couple of lovely photos to share: the cover of our new book, and a box of the new books hot off the press!

It’s not too late to get £2 off the discounted price by pre-ordering from our store. The Writing Prize Anthology is officially published this Tuesday (30th September), so it’ll be shipped out to those organized folk who have managed to pre-order. And every copy of the book bought pays for one entry ‘fee’ to the 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize. Bargain! Go on, why not write your own ‘Story of Us’ and send it to me. It’ll make me very happy.

Writing Prize & YouTube video goes live!

It’s official! The 2014 Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize is now open and accepting entries. For more details about the prizes, who the judges are and how to enter please click here.

Also… as I’m writing this post, two of my authors, the wonderful Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant, are getting ready for their poetry gig at 8th Day in Manchester tonight. They will be joined by the poets Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller. Due to family reasons I can’t be there unfortunately, but hopefully this video of Cathy reading her poem ‘Look At All The Women’ will be *almost* as good as being there in person! Please do have a watch and share it if you enjoy it.

‘Look At All The Women’ by Cathy Bryant

Wonderful reviews for Look At All The Women keep popping up. The reviewer in the summer issue of Mslexia thought it “wickedly funny” and Zion Lights – writer, journalist, mama – recently wrote on Twitter that she was “Blown away by Cathy Bryant’s poetry in Look At All The Women“. Stephanie Siviter, who won a copy of Cathy’s book in the Story of Mum Twitter party giveaway, commented: “Delighted to win a copy. Shed tears reading it & laughed too.” She also added that “it has inspired me to start writing poetry again. A woman definitely to aspire to.”

I don’t think you can ask much more from a poetry collection can you?!

If you’d like to get inspired by Cathy or Angela’s poetry collections why not pop on over to The Mother’s Milk Bookshop and buy yourself a book or two – they’re NOW ON SALE! Every purchase made provides the buyer with one paid entry ‘fee’ to our Writing Prize…. I hope that that is inspiration enough to GET WRITING and GET ENTERING!

Latest news and dates for your diary

Things may seem quiet around here, but actually I’m busier than usual. I’ve been putting together not one, not two, not three but FOUR contracts (and unusually this isn’t for just 4 authors but 5. Hmm… intrigued? Hopefully you will be!). More about the contracts and authors another time, when everything has been signed, sealed and delivered.

In other news I’m putting together the first ever Mother’s Milk Books Writing Prize Anthology. It should, fingers-crossed, be out mid-September, and I’ve also been looking ahead to the start of the next Writing Prize (beginning 28th August, to coincide with Cathy & Angela’s upcoming poetry performance). I’ve been in discussion with the wonderful judges and putting together flyers and adverts. I’m delighted to be able to announce that Cathy Bryant is going to be the sole adjudicator of the poetry category and Milli Hill is going to be judging the prose category. Many thanks to Cathy and Milli for taking on these tasks.

So come on wonderful writers, I dare you to make their job good and challenging by sending in some fab poems and prose pieces on the theme “The Story of Us”. Intrigued…? Details will be online in another week or two.

The Mother’s Milk Books authors (and past and present judges Angela Topping and Cathy Bryant) are also extra, extra busy as they are going to be performing some of their poems from Letting Go and Look At All The Women at the 8th Day Café in Manchester on 28th August 7 – 9.30 p.m. Rosie Garland and Sarah Miller will be joining them to make it a really fab (& feminine) event.

If Manchester’s just that bit too far, why not buy Look At All The Women and see if, unlike the reviewer at WriteOutLoud, you can read it and avoid getting sunburnt! Lowdham’s The Bookcase is the latest independent bookshop to stock our growing list of books (along with The Melton Bookshop in Melton Mowbray and Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham) so if you’re local to Lowdham, or passing through, you can always buy a copy of one of our books there.

Lastly… the ever-enthusiastic and energetic Pippa at Story of Mum is hosting a Twitter Party Make Date on 13th August from 8.30 – 10 p.m. UK time. Party-goers will be sharing where their eyes have lingered and celebrating what they see (both the bad and the good) in their day-to-day lives. One lucky party guest will be winning themselves some neat goodies – a paperback copy of Look At All The Women being one of them.

Enjoy the rest of August, and when I come out from under my mountain (well, okay, small pile) of contracts I’ll be blogging more about the anthology and the Writing Prize. Yay!

Guest post: Cathy Bryant on ‘Heroines and Inspirations’

Welcome to the ‘Look At All The Women’ Carnival: Week 3 – ‘The Eclectic Others’

This post was written especially for inclusion in the three-week-long ‘Look At All The Women’ carnival, hosted by Mother’s Milk Books, to celebrate the launch of Cathy Bryant’s new book ‘Look At All The Women’. In this final week of the carnival our participants share their thoughts on the theme ‘The Eclectic Others’ (the third, and final, chapter in Cathy’s new poetry collection).

Please read to the end of the post for a full list of carnival participants.

***

When it came to the third section of my book, ‘The Eclectic Others’, my editor and I worked hard to choose the right balance. After all, there was no way we could include every possible take on a woman’s life, unless the book was to have infinite pages! So we fiddled and discussed and put things in and took them out again and scratched our heads and argued for our particular favourites, until we came up with a selection that, if not wholly representative, was at least as strong and varied as we could make it.

Poems we were both keen to keep in included those about some of my personal heroines – those inspirational women who have made a difference to the way I live my life.

One of those was shared with me by an English teacher called Mrs Lawton. Our set text for poetry was a volume called ‘English Poetry 1900-1975’, which contained the work of many wonderful poets – only two of them, however, being women. One was Stevie Smith. The other was Sylvia Plath. (As poet Ali Smith said, between those two you get most of human experience, but still!)

So imagine me at 14, being abused at home by my violent father (who was also headmaster of my school), depressed and suicidal, self-harming and lost, opening the book obediently and finding the nursery rhyme rhythms of a hellish experience not far from my own: Daddy. You can see the poem here. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178960

It knocked my socks off, and my shoes and mind too. For terms we had been dissecting poems to see why and how they were clever, and now a strange, dead, American woman had reached right inside me and spoken to me in the language of my sorrow and fear.

I loved her after that and read everything she wrote, including her diaries – and found her to be a complex person, often far sunnier and funnier than the myths would have us believe, full of life and charm and brilliance. On the 50th anniversary of her death I went with my O.H. to visit her grave in Heptonstall, and when I came home I sat and wrote the experience down – it was so vivid. It came out partly as prose and partly as a poem. You can see the prose result here: http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=34328
And here is the poem:


Yellow Roses on Snow
(written after visiting Sylvia Plath’s grave on the fiftieth anniversary of her death)

It’s a plain grave, though thickly meringued with snow;
dark granite monolith open to the sky. The church
is old and friendly, proud with bells pealing
in glorious cascades. There is a sense of celebration
as well as mourning in the tan stone streets,
some cobbled, with views of hills, hills, hills
all covered in snow. But such a small grave.

There are several of us, strangers, women in black
lighting candles and laying the sunshine roses
(her favourite flower, her mother said)
on the grave, and mourning the dead woman
we didn’t know.

Sudden sobs – it’s so cold, she’ll be cold,
she hated the cold. Sympathy. Chilled hands
try to warm mine. My red skirt, the blue candle
the only spots of colour save the roses,
buttery as an American sun, yellow as
a New England leaf when Autumn falls.

As if conjured, the same sun breaks out here
over the grave and us, drawing yellow and white
into a new gold. We feel relief
at the literal lightening. We had not wanted to leave
her alone, but the sun is there to warm her now.

Departing, we see knots and threads of folk
rag-rugging their way to her, heads bowed
against the bitter weather, though now the sun
is blazing, blazing on top of this blessed
hill village in Yorkshire.

Did I really think that it would be grim and dark?
That we would be given nothing here?
We were met by strength, connection
and a culmination. For us, this was pilgrimage.

***

There are tributes and examinations of other heroines of mine too – Sophie Scholl, who was shot at the tender age of 19 by the Nazis for disseminating anti-nazi information, and Colette, that redoubtable and sensual writer with a wicked smile and a gimlet eye. There’s also a poem about my favourite statue, which just happens to be of another strong woman, and one from the myths of ancient China. They have all opened doors for me, all helping to articulate my own escape and transformations.

Here’s the poem about Sophie Scholl. I think of her whenever someone gives all the reasons why they can’t stand up for what’s right.


The White Rose

How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?

– the last words of Sophie Scholl, member of The White Rose resistance group, before the Nazis executed her.

You didn’t say, one person can’t make a difference.
You didn’t say, there’s no point in trying.
You didn’t say, well, what can you do?
You didn’t say that the Nazis were too powerful,
and that it was too risky.
Instead you printed your leaflets, distributed them,
and talked, and called to action;
and so they killed you.
But you had lit fires of resistance
that a cold bullet couldn’t quench;
planted seeds for all of us
to follow, every new rose,
and the fires still burn
and the flowers still bloom
because you didn’t do the maths
(you were just nineteen, so young)
and play the odds but instead
taught us – me – how to make a difference;
how to live and how to die,
how to light flames and grow flowers.

***

Look At All The Women is now available to buy from The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (as a paperback and PDF) – we can ship books around the world!

and as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk.

It can also be ordered via your local bookshop.

If you’d like to know more about Mother’s Milk Books — our submission guidelines, who we are and what we do — please find more details on the submissions page.

Please take the time to read and comment on the following fab posts submitted by some wonderful women:

‘Heroines and Inspirations’— Cathy Bryant, guest posting at Mother’s Milk Books, shares two powerful, inspiring poems, and how they came into being.

‘Sensitivity’ — Marija Smits shares a poem, with an accompanying image, that gives a glimpse into the inner workings of a highly sensitive person.

Georgie St Clair shares her creative female heroines in her post ‘Creative Others: Mothers Who Have It All’

‘The Eclectic Others – Or What Would I Have Been Without You?’ — Kimberly Jamison posts to her blog The Book Word a thank you to the women of literature and history who have been in her life, shaped her life, saved her life and gave her a future.

‘Barbie speaks out’ — Ana Salote at Colouring Outside the Lines shares a platform with feminist icon, Barbie.

‘Her Village’ — An older (much older than most) first time mother, Ellie Stoneley from Mush Brained Ramblings firmly believes in the old African adage that it takes a village to raise a child. To that end she has surrounded her daughter with the love, mischief and inspiration of an extremely eclectic bunch of villagers.

Survivor writes about the inspiring life of La Malinche and her place in Mexican history at Surviving Mexico: Adventures and Disasters.

Sophelia writes about the importance of her community as a family at Sophelia’s Adventures in Japan.

Guest post: Cathy Bryant on ‘Moments with Mothers and (Imaginary Daughters)’

This post was written especially for inclusion in the three-week-long ‘Look At All The Women’ carnival, hosted by Mother’s Milk Books, to celebrate the launch of Cathy Bryant’s new book ‘Look At All The Women’. This week our participants share their thoughts on the theme ‘The Mothers’ (the second chapter in Cathy’s poetry collection).

Please read to the end of the post for a full list of carnival participants.

***

I learned about loving mothers from Facebook friends. They miss their children when they go to school; they help with projects; they care and love and argue and resolve. They hold their children in tender arms. They get through their children’s adolescence somehow, and nurture the emerging adult as carefully as one might help a struggling newborn butterfly out of the last husk of its chrysalis. This was all news to me – joyful, wonderful news. I am so glad that people feel that kind of love. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.

As you might have guessed, I’m a bit jealous really. I don’t have any contact with my mother, nor do I desire any. I won’t go into the whole morass of that here. Neither am I a mother myself (except of books – oh, the births are difficult, but they are so beautiful and you love them so much when they arrive)!

Facebook showed me a world of love and caring and kindness and yes, problems and imperfections, but all against that amazing background of loving motherhood.

Mothers, I take my hat off to you. I do have an imaginary daughter. We watch films together and take walks together (I’m not disabled when I’m with her). She changes her name every so often. This first poem was inspired by her:

Skimming Moments

Mummy, where do ripples come from?

From the stone pushing the water, darling.

And where do the ripples go when they stop?
And where did I come from?

You remember then that because of the most
extraordinary concatenation of circumstances
you looked up and he looked up and your hearts
gave a lurch and somewhere a butterfly flapped
its wings like a beating heart and that’s
how typhoons start and children get born.

You squeeze your daughter’s hand and wonder
how to explain chance, love, biology, mathematics,
loss. You smile helplessly, sadly at her
and she laughs back and dances.

***

This second poem was inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175772

I’ve always had issues with it – it seems to be more about repression than emotional maturity, and I wouldn’t want to use it as advice for a child. So I wrote my own version:

When

When you know the time to be strong
and when to give way to your feelings;
when you will stand up for yourself
as others blame you unfairly, yet
still be tolerant of different views;
when you can meet triumph and disaster
and know to celebrate one and mourn the other,
because otherwise you’d be a ridiculous
unfeeling rock and your life pointless;
when you know better than to risk all
your life’s winnings on a single bet;
when you know that your will is one
of many, all deserving equal respect;
when you can listen in and to crowds, and not
lose the common touch when with royalty;
when you allow people close enough to hurt
you and know your vulnerability, know you;
when you truly love the planet and those in it,
despite the hatred and mocking laughter,
then you will have truly grown up –
and then, you’ll be a Woman, my daughter.

***

Look At All The Women is now available to buy from:

The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (as a paperback and PDF) – we can ship books around the world!

and as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk.

It can also be ordered via your local bookshop.

If you’d like to get involved in the ‘Look At All The Women’ carnival please find more details about it here.

Please take the time to read and comment on the following fab posts submitted by some wonderful women:

‘Moments with Mothers and (Imaginary) Daughters’ — Cathy Bryant, guest posting at Mother’s Milk Books, shares more poetry from Look At All The Women — her own version of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ and a poem inspired by her imaginary daughter.

‘The Cold Cup of Tea’Marija Smits shares some poetry that gives a glimpse into the everyday life of a mother.

‘Creative Mothers: You Need to Stop!’Georgie St Clair, shares an important reminder, that all mothers need to dedicate time and space to be creative.

‘The Mothers – Or Promises to My Future Child’ — Kimberly Jamison posts to her blog The Book Word what she has learnt from her own mother, and writes an open letter to her future child.

‘Bonobos are my Heroines’: Ana Salote at Colouring Outside the Lines puts the nature back into nurture.

‘Baby Body Shame: it’s Time to Push Back’ — Stephanie from Beautiful Misbehaviour wants to challenge society’s treatment of the post-birth body.

Helen at Young Middle Age talks about finding strength from thinking about all the other mothers, during hard times.

Guest post: Cathy Bryant on ‘Fantasy, love and oddity’

Welcome to the ‘Look At All The Women’ Carnival: Week 1 – ‘The Lovers’

This post was written especially for inclusion in the three-week-long ‘Look At All The Women’ carnival, hosted by Mother’s Milk Books, to celebrate the launch of Cathy Bryant’s new book ‘Look At All The Women’. This week our participants share their thoughts on the theme ‘The Lovers’ (the first chapter in Cathy’s poetry collection).

Please read to the end of the post for a full list of carnival participants.

***

I’m delighted to be taking part in the Mother’s Milk Books Blog Carnival that is taking place to celebrate the launch of my new book, Look at All the Women. This first week of the Carnival is dedicated to the theme ‘The Lovers’, so here are two poems from that particular section of my new book. The first is very Me, I think – elements of fantasy, love and oddity, with my ever-present love for the sea. Who would have thought that Bridlington in December could be so beautiful?

Brid, December

Bold gemini moon full on
and the waves fly up to meet it.
The sea stirs; every last creature
swims or wriggles up to drink
the light, taste the moon’s essence.

A streetlamp bravely does its best.
Oi! Look at me! Regard! I shine too!
It gets in the way, spoiling photos.
Vampires and tourists slink off in disgust.

Lovers ignore it. The moon, the sea,
each other – there’s nothing else
but warm, clean-sheeted beds.
Light is light, isn’t it?

No. You could skim the silver
from the waves with one hand,
and make your face holy with it,
immortal.

***

The second poem is addressed to the poet William Carlos Williams and is a response to his poem ‘This is Just to Say’: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245576. I love his poetry and I can see how important it is – but I wouldn’t have wanted to live next door to him. You wouldn’t be able to put the bins out without him staring in wonder, lost in the moment due to the colour of your nail varnish or petunias. So I wrote this tongue-in-cheek reply:

Dear William

It’s not just the plums.
You are so plainly
a selfish man

living in the moment,
the personal moment
all for yourself.

The divorce papers
are in the post.
This feels so sweet
and deliciously cold.

***

Happy loving everyone, and see you next week!
Cathy x

Look At All The Women, by Cathy Bryant

Look At All The Women is now available to buy from:

The Mother’s Milk Bookshop (as a paperback and PDF) – we can ship books around the world!

and as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk.

It can also be ordered via your local bookshop.

If you’d like to know more about the ‘Look At All The Women’ carnival please find more details about it here.

Please take the time to read and comment on the following fab posts submitted by some wonderful women:

‘Fantasy, love and oddity.’ — Cathy Bryant, guest posting at Mother’s Milk Books, shares two of her favourite poems about lovers from her second collection of poetry, Look At All The Women.

‘The Walnut Hearts’Marija Smits shares some ‘nutty’ poetry about love and reflects on the role good communication has on a harmonious relationship.

Georgie St Clair shares her feelings on why we should indulge our passions as lovers in her lighthearted post — ‘Creative Lovers: Not Tonight Darling’.

‘The Lovers – Or What I Don’t Know About Love’ — Kimberly Jamison posts to her blog The Book Word what she has learnt about love from story books, people watching and her own life and wonders if she actually knows anything at all.

‘Explicit v Implicit’ — Ana Salote at Colouring Outside the Lines considers literature’s role in teaching children about relationships.

Carnival time! And images still needed…

We’re getting ever closer to the publication of Cathy’s new book (eek!) and I really want to release it with a noisy, multi-coloured send-off, so if you think you can help me do that, please do get involved!

If you’re a writer, artist or blogger who’d like to showcase your own creativity, why not take part in our blogging carnival? All the details can be found here:

https://mothersmilkbooks.com/carnival-2/

Also…

We’ve had some lovely images of mothers, daughters and babies breastfeeding sent in for the YouTube video but we still need more images of women. If you think you’ve got an image that may well fit Cathy’s great poem ‘Look At All The Women’, please do email me them. My email address is: [email protected]

Thanks for considering getting involved; I will look forward to seeing more of your wonderful creations!

Dear glorious women, we need your images!

I’m (obviously) very excited about publishing Cathy Bryant’s new book Look At All The Women and want as many people as possible to read her accessible – yet thought-provoking – poetry, so with that in mind I’m going to be producing a YouTube video called ‘Look At All The Women’. Cathy’s already provided me with the sound – her reading of the glorious poem ‘Look At All The Women’ – but now I need some glorious images of women to accompany the poem. So if you have a good quality and high-resolution image that would fit with ANY of the themes of the poem, please do email: teika [at] mothersmilkbooks.com with the image as a jpeg. I would welcome either photographs or artwork but please only send me images for which you own the copyright to and have permission to use. Every kind person who sends me a suitable image that ends up in the video will get a goodie: a free e-version of Cathy’s book (a PDF) when it is released on 28th May, as well as mine and Cathy’s eternal thanks! (Deadline for submission of images is Tuesday 20th May.)

I’m also *fingers-crossed* going to be organizing a blog carnival in the run-up to the release of the book so do stay tuned if you want to be involved with sharing even more glorious womanly creativity! (And p.s. Cathy’s book is now available for pre-order from The Mother’s Milk Bookshop – you get £2 off the RRP of £8.99 if you order before 28th May).

Look At All The Women

Look at that woman breastfeeding in public!
I think it’s absolutely disgusting

the way people give her a hard time.

Look at that lass in a minidress!
Whore! Slag! Bitch! Slut!

are just some of the things she’ll be called
by prejudiced strangers.

Look at that grandmother!
A lot of support is needed

from her for all her friends and relatives,
but she still finds time to lead a vibrant, balanced life.

Look at that campaigner!
She should get to the kitchen,

have a glass of wine and put her feet up,
later on, after standing up for us all.

Look at that woman writer!
It’ll be all flowers, dresses and chocolates

at her many literary award ceremonies.

Look at that sister!
She’s arguing with her siblings again

which, done with affection and a willingness
to compromise, is a really useful life skill.

Look at that stay-at-home mother!
She doesn’t work, of course

apart from 24 hours a day, seven days a week
doing one of the most important jobs there is.

Look at that woman scientist!
She’s outside her natural environment

analysing soil samples from the planet Mars.

Look at me!
Ill and unable to work again

but still making people laugh, and still giving
the best hugs in Manchester.

Look at that cleaner!
The lowest of the low

will sneer at her, as she makes our lives pleasanter
for a pittance.

Look at that daughter!
Disappointing, really

that she still has so much sexism to face.

Look at that lesbian!
You can tell what she needs

— equality, and recognition of
her voice that enriches us all.

Look at that schoolgirl!
They shouldn’t be educated

differently from boys.

Look at all the women!
What a waste of time

life would be without them.



CATHY BRYANT


Lots of news!

I have lots of lovely news to share right now, and I’m really excited about where Mother’s Milk Books is going!

It gives me great pleasure to announce that the next book we’re going to publish is a poetry collection entitled Look At All The Women by Cathy Bryant. I’ve long been a fan of Cathy’s poetry so I’m really pleased that I get to be the publisher who produces her second book of poetry. Cathy is also an accomplished performance poet, and also happens to be a lovely (and very funny) lady so it’s been great to work with her on this collection.

One of my favourite areas of book production is cover design. I can’t quite reveal the cover of Look At All The Women, but I can say that I’ve been working with an amazing mama-artist who has created something simply stunning. We’ll be revealing the final design very soon!

Reviews for Musings and Mothering and Letting Go, by Angela Topping, keep on coming in with Saffia Farr, editor of Juno, recently writing:

“Letting Go is a wonderful anthology of poems reflecting on family life through the generations. They are funny, perceptive and sad. ‘Last Gifts’, about a mother dying, is desperately poignant, with strong emotions portrayed through simple words and phrases. Reading this book reminded me, again, to treasure and enjoy my family as they are now.”

Musings on Mothering continues to get glowing reviews (with 8 out of 10 reviews being ‘5 starred’ on Amazon.co.uk). Lucy Pearce from Dreaming Aloud also recently reviewed the book saying:

“This book is a celebration of motherhood, attachment parenting and breastfeeding. An impressive collection of writing, poetry and art on the theme of motherhood. The talent of the contributors was humbling, and much of the poetry and art truly breathtaking, each expressing in their own unique way the ineffable nature of motherhood. Sensitive, reflective and beautifully compiled – it brought me to tears many times.”

You can read her full review here (which also includes reviews of lots of other wonderful books on mothering).

I also had Diane Wiessinger, co-author of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, contact me recently to say some very complimentary things about Musings on Mothering (which makes me grin from ear to ear since Diane is one of my favourite writers, and of course The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding is one of my favourite books!).

It’s incredibly heartening to be getting these fab reviews, so I hope they encourage you to stop over at a certain store… (that’s The Mother’s Milk Bookshop, by the way (!) where these books are currently on offer) or to visit any one of our fab stockists.

In addition to all this loveliness I’ve been interviewed twice in the past month: over at WriteWords (which is chock-full of useful resources and encouraging words for writers – if you’re an aspiring writer go check them out!) and: Beautiful Misbehaviour. I was delighted to have been asked by Stephanie Arsoska of Beautiful Misbehaviour to take part in her series of interviews on ‘creativity and motherhood’ (other interviewees have been author Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Holly McNish –  so I’m in good company!) and you can read the full interview here.

I’ve been inundated with many great submissions so far (the fairy tale book is almost full now – although there’s still time to submit a short story if you think you have something suitable) and I really hope to be able to make 2014 the year that I publish more than one book! It’s all very exciting, and if you want to be a part of it, do keep tuning in to the blog or say hello on Facebook or Twitter. Thank you again for all your support.