I hear trumpets, angels descending, agents banging on my door!  I sent the 'final' rewrite of the new novel to my writing partner in Nigeria, for him to scrutinise for errors, omissions, typos etc.  He has sent it back with some excellent comments that mean.... a new rewrite! It's taken five years so far. What's another year between friends? 

Poetry

Suddenly I am being inspired by poets.  Their positive energy and keenness to experiment with language, to bring new ways of seeing and feeling the world is rubbiing off on me.  I have even written a few poems myself recently. And a poem s about to be published in a long-awaited poetry anthology by Peepal Tree Press. 

Reading

I love reading.  Perhaps, fatally, I love reading more than I love writing, if that's possible. I have just read Faiz Ahmed Faiz's O City of Lights.  And I am ploughing through a collection of Modernist Poets. It is heavy going.  I guess the point of poetry is that it is not meant to be as easy as prose.  But the modernists are really tough on the mind!  Faiz is delightful, though I can feel how much I am missing since it is all translated from Urdu/Punjabi.

Blog

I have a draft blog that is in development at wordpress.  I will post a link to it here once I've raised the money to pay the blog designer lol.  So far the blog has covered musings on subjects as diverse as car parks and fashion shows...

Storytelling

I have had some really interesting times with new stroytellers from around the world (or who are going around the world!).  Go to the 'contact' page for enquiries about my availability as a storyteller.   Youtube has one or two videos of stories I worked on with a small team, relating to the subject of Manchester's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.  The main site for the subject is  www.revealinghistories.org.uk    

Photos

Here are some storytelling photos/videos loaded on 'Flickr' (by Joseph-thanks Joseph!) , 'Boxnet' and 'Google Video'.