James' Weblog

What a busy day. Lecturing in the morning at Nottingham, then up the M1 to Leeds for the second part of my working day and then across to Manchester in the evening for the magazine launch of the latest issue of Transmission. The Transmission article is 2,000 words on Nottingham’s finest, Nicola Monaghan, and her debut novel ‘The Killing Jar’ and it’s relation to the underclass thesis. Transmission are one of those rare commodities, a non-London publication, and supporting them is vital. Naturally, anything which requires principles comes down to free labour but what can you do if you want to build a literary culture outside of the dreaded capital? Hopefully I will be uploading the article soon.

May has been the busiest month of my life so far and so I haven’t had any time to waste writing this blog. I have a story called ‘Norris Nugent’ coming out in Carmillion at some point (it has been accepted, just a case of fitting it in at some point) and have another, ‘DJing for Dogs‘ coming out in the next issue of Stimulus. This story was originally in ‘This is all I Know’ but I dropped it after the millionth edit which saw the narrative path curve in yet another direction.

Talking of which, I have been occupied for the last two months getting another edit of ‘This is all I know’ to Route. Having missed the spring publication slot (more details will follow depending upon outcome) I am back in those ugly murky waters of publishing where everything is on, then it’s off, then on. I can’t really say any more out of respect for Route, but fingers crossed vigilance will pay off. One thing I will say to any writers out there is that your work will constantly require compromises of sorts. It is a Faustian pact which we all face. Do you change the structure or narrative within a book to guarantee publication or do you retain your original principles? There is probably some ground in the middle, but ultimately something which can only ever be decided by the author.

Anyway there’s more info on my latest stories here.