Paul Whybrow
Full Member
One of the joys of reading is getting lost in another world, in someone else's life. The same applies to writing stories, where we transport ourselves, and the reader, to unexpected places and unpredictable situations.
I have four books on the go, at the moment. I'm enjoying Helen Cadbury's second crime novel, Bones in the Nest, which is set in York, and I'm absolutely blown-away by Don Winslow's latest, The Force. The mean streets of New York have never been better portrayed.
For variety, I'm laughing at the cartoons of Posy Simmonds, whose Literary Life brilliantly skewers the neuroses of writers, bookshop owners, publishers and literary agents. 100 Prized Poems: twenty-five years of the Forward Books is an anthology of the best poems published by them. The verses have taken me all over the world, and from births to love affairs to death beds.
Writing-wise, I'm still in competition mode. I've polished a 3,000-word short story, set in Cornwall in 1968 when a branch railway is shut down, as told by a steam locomotive driver. I also revisited a short horror story, set in modern times but featuring a cursed man stricken by an immortal witch. I'm partway through writing another short story, in the first person of a demon who's reading out a charge sheet to a doomed soul before casting him into Hades.
It helps to be schizophrenic!
Where in the world are you?
And, who are you pretending to be at the moment?
I have four books on the go, at the moment. I'm enjoying Helen Cadbury's second crime novel, Bones in the Nest, which is set in York, and I'm absolutely blown-away by Don Winslow's latest, The Force. The mean streets of New York have never been better portrayed.
For variety, I'm laughing at the cartoons of Posy Simmonds, whose Literary Life brilliantly skewers the neuroses of writers, bookshop owners, publishers and literary agents. 100 Prized Poems: twenty-five years of the Forward Books is an anthology of the best poems published by them. The verses have taken me all over the world, and from births to love affairs to death beds.
Writing-wise, I'm still in competition mode. I've polished a 3,000-word short story, set in Cornwall in 1968 when a branch railway is shut down, as told by a steam locomotive driver. I also revisited a short horror story, set in modern times but featuring a cursed man stricken by an immortal witch. I'm partway through writing another short story, in the first person of a demon who's reading out a charge sheet to a doomed soul before casting him into Hades.
It helps to be schizophrenic!
Where in the world are you?
And, who are you pretending to be at the moment?