Archive - On fiction

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

I live on a hill, about a mile outside our town.

Dec 24, 2024 •

October 2024

Julian Is A Mermaid

and the two halves of a story

Oct 4, 2024 •

August 2024

'fiction is a temporal art form'

so stop procrastinating

Aug 16, 2024 •

June 2024

writing a novel isn't a linear thing

it's an 'iterative process'

Jun 19, 2024 •

March 2024

Brilliant beginnings I: Of Mice and Men

which is a thriller according to its blurb on my copy

Mar 8, 2024 •

February 2024

I'm not writing a novel

But I am writing a bit of one

Feb 9, 2024 •

October 2023

On the fearsome art of paragraphing

Sometimes I do this exercise in my class, where I take one of the books on our reading list and flip through it with eyes closed, landing my finger on a…

Oct 12, 2023 •

July 2023

On the pleasure of dread

My second novel Crookedwood began on some level, years ago, when I passed a signpost for a place called Crookedwood.

Jul 14, 2023 •

June 2023

Bad guys and slippery language in Rebecca

A lot has been written about the novel Rebecca, most of which, to be honest, I probably haven’t read.

Jun 30, 2023 •

If it's not plausible, it didn't happen

A few years ago, I attended a Poetry Ireland event at which the poet Don Patterson spoke.

Jun 23, 2023 •

Chekhov's long knives

never mind his gun for now

Jun 16, 2023 •

Initially, I thought I’d begin this post with a brief summary of the life of Edgar Allan Poe, who lived and died within the first half of the nineteenth…

Jun 9, 2023 •

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