Cherry Potts, Writer, Editor, creative writing tutor; Lesbian, cat-mother, would-be singer. Any of these can crop up here.

Early Music

Music I found early, and Early Music I found… My passion for words nearly got in the way of my interest in music, and I was almost oblivious to tunes until I introduced myself to a wide variety of music via the library I worked in when I was nineteen. I think I took music…

March 12, 2011
What’s folk got to do with it?

I was brought up on a diet of Beatles, Blues and Ballads. (I once had a cat who loved to be sung to, and the sadder the song the better: he was very partial to John Dowland, but his favourites were Bruton Town and Waly, Waly . Morph used to scream in terror on the way…

February 25, 2011
Misty moisty morning

At risk of sounding like a weekending townie, I love the Limpley Stoke Valley. I even love the name. My best girl, A, was born in Trowbridge and brought up in Bath and the surrounding area. Consequently I have native-by-proxy rights. Whenever A gets what she calls ‘roots problems’ we hie off to Bath or…

February 19, 2011
How do you do that?

At some point writers will always be asked ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ If I tried to answer that I would probably never finish, and consequently never write another story. This post is in response to a different question that I have been asked- about the details that end up in my stories…

February 6, 2011
Little White Lies

I tell lies all the time, mostly for my own entertainment. I will exaggerate the awfulness of the journey home, I had to wait hours ’n’ hours for a train… To tell the truth, I will retell conversations in which I appear much wittier than I was in reality. If I’m honest, if someone asks…

January 28, 2011
Stone Carving for Beginners

Sometimes talking to an expert isn’t enough, I have to try something out for myself. I started writing a novel about thirteenth century musicians and masons over ten years ago. I know what is going to happen in The Cold Time but I struggle with making it convincing. I’ve read a lot of books, I’ve…

January 16, 2011
London Particular

Sometimes I hate living in London, and sometimes I love it. In January rain it can feel as though it has turned its back and doesn’t want to know you, but it doesn’t take much to find a way through the cracks and into its secrets. We walked, A & I and three friends from…

January 7, 2011
The Imposter

Another Genealogy letter: My partner’s maternal Grandfather is a bit of an enigma: He vanished, apparently without trace, leaving his wife with three young children. The children suffered a great deal as a result, their mother took them back to live with her parents, but as the progeny of a broken home, they were shunned…

December 28, 2010
Wintermiddle

Wintermiddle is, as far as I know, an invention of Michael Rosen. His alternative to Father Christmas is Aunty Wintermiddle, a cheerful rainbow-wearing bringer of good times and merriment. When I was going through my ‘its all a patriarchal construct’ phase, I found Aunty very comforting. These days I’ll go with any celebration on offer…

December 21, 2010
Haunted by Fairy Tales

So I’m on a business trip in Germany, slightly reluctantly (too close to Christmas, weather turning bad) and I discover that Kassel, where I am at a meeting of a European Project is the home town of the Brothers Grimm. Drawing a veil over the journey which was definitely in the Epic rather than F-T…

December 19, 2010