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Air: Sylphs, Spirits and Swan Maidens
My latest publication! buy it here: I couldn’t make the launch, which although on line was at 2am in the morning, so I recorded a reading of the first page or so. Here it is. my creature of the air, is nothing like the cover image. I had something more like this in mind, but…
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Remembering Lilian Mohin
I’ve just read in yesterday’s Guardian Other Lives, that Lilian Mohin has died, age 81, although the online version is dated March, so lockdown and Covid-enlarged deathrate must have pushed her off the paper version initially. I don’t think she’d be pleased. We argued, the first time Lilian and I met, and for a while…
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Old Women in Books: on publishing your mother
Today is my mum’s birthday. Ghillian Potts is 84. Like me, she has written all her literate life, and still has a notebook full of poems written between the ages of about 7 and 12, (of variable quality!) To celebrate, my publishing company, Arachne Press, is publishing two of her books today. I crowd funded…
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The Dowry Blade, live and in the flesh
There is nothing to beat a pile of new books, except a pile of new books that you wrote yourself. And this is a big pile, of big books! The Dowry Blade is big! It weighs 620 grams. I hadn’t really thought through the amount of space a 400 page book printed in Royal format…
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Callout for pre publication reviewers
So, experimenting with new stuff, my forthcoming book, The Dowry Blade (February 2016) is on NetGalley, a review site for librarians, bookshop owners, book bloggers and professional reviewers. If that is YOU, you can download a review PDF here. It is UNPROOFED, ok, so no comments about typos!
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party March 31st
The final birthday post for March, and again no specific birthday so here is a late one: Margaret Webster March 15, 1905 – November 13, 1972 American born actor who became well known on stage in the UK before returning to the US as a highly successful Broadway stage director, noted for record breaking long…
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party March 30th
Birthdays seem to be scarce in this neck of the calendar, so here’s a bit of not quite history for you. Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Where thou diest there will I die,…
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party March 29th
No particular birthday today so let’s celebrate Louisa Lumsden CBE (1840-1935), the first prominent female figure at the University of St Andrews. Louisa was one of the original students of Girton College Cambridge. She taught classics there and later at Cheltenham. In 1877 she became Head of St Leonard’s school in St Andrews. In 1895…
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The Historical Birthday-Tea Party March 25th
Today’s birthday girl is Olive Schreiner, 24th March 1855 – 1920 South African author and prolific letter writer. Olive was a feminist, socialist, pacifist, vegetarian, rational dress advocate, anti-vivisectionist would-be doctor and thinker, you name it she had a position on it. She corresponded with everyone, from Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis to Emily Hobhouse…
Cherry Potts, Writer 