I wasn’t going to comment on the Clarke Award kerfuffle caused by Chris Priest’s blog post about the shortcomings of the shortlist and his attack on the committee – but everyone else seems to be getting stuck in, so here is my somewhat late (I’m having internet connection problems) take on the situation.
Since issue 58 of Focus is now off to the printer, I thought I’d put up this from issue 57 – the second in what appears to be an ongoing series of flash fiction pieces inspired by common writerly errors indentified by The Turkey City Lexicon. This is a slightly longer version than the one […]
Half term means I’ve not had much time to blog this week – but it does means I got to spend time with my daughter watching The Muppets, swimming and letting her thrash me at ten pin bowling (ahem!). Anyway, instead of something new, here’s something from Focus 56. I’ve been writing little pieces of […]
This week I have been reading the Penguin Classics edition of Sappho’s poetry (Stung With Love: Poems and Fragments). It is a wonderful little book full of extraordinary language. One thing that made me stop was this bit from Aaron Poochigian’s introduction The Spartan poet Alcman’s First and Third Panthenia (‘Maiden’s Songs’, seventh century BCE) […]
I’ve never avoided cracks in the pavements. I stroll with insouciance (but appropriate care, I’m not stupid) beneath ladders. I don’t check my horoscopes. I’ve never even sacrificed a small animal in the hope that its freshly spewed innards would provide some an insight into the future. I have never been superstitious. Never, that is, […]
My story, “Proper Little Soldier” was published a while ago by Ian Whates in his book Conflicts, which has recently been reviewed at the Pornokitsch website. This is what they said about my efforts… Martin McGrath’s “Proper Little Soldiers” follows a young woman and her friends as they prowl a post-invasion landscape, fleeing their alien […]
Since the new Focus is almost ready to go, I thought I’d put my editorial from issue 56 online (this is a slightly longer version than the one that appeared in the magazine)… I always seek out reviews of the stuff I get published. I know there are people who say they never look at […]
So I was flicking through the property pages of the local paper – I’m not one of those people who obsesses about clambering to the top of the property ladder but I do occasionally indulge in a daydream about owning a house with a swimming pool. I like swimming. Anyway, I stumbled across a full […]
I was born in a housing estate at the foot of a steep hill. The top of the hill is ringed with trees, ancient sessile oaks, wych elm and horse chestnut. The rooks owned the woods. These were big birds with heavy black beaks and bodies matt as coal dust but their hoods shone like […]
The Spitfire was a sleek metal thing with a space for a battery underneath that made the propeller spin. I had coveted it for months as it had sat in the window of Morrow’s toy shop – the tiny moulded plastic pilot alert, day and night, for Messherschmidts and Focke Wolfs that would never pounce.