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This week I’m offering 25% off all full annual subscriptions to this page. This will unlock access to my full archive of writing, along with all future paid posts.. * One thing on my mind recently has been the huge number of hardbacks of my books Villager and Notebook which
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Even before I moved from Devon to the Peak District, I could already feel my accent rushing back, doing a happy jig in my larynx at the knowledge that it might soon be free again. I have no doubt that if I’d decided to stay in the Peak long
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I’ve had Covid for the last fortnight. “It’s only like flu or a really bad cold nowadays” I’ve been told but something I have noticed about flu or a really bad cold is that, while they can be known to root around and locate your physical and
My mum and dad’s cat Bridget (pictured above, more recently) has always been a bit of a wanderer. Never was her nomadic spirit more evident than in summer 2020, when (partly due to her clashes with George) she’d vanish for weeks on end. While she was away my
Subscribe now “Put your arms out and you’ll take off and fly right up over the sea,” said the old man who passed me on the lane yesterday as I walked towards the old Coffin Path and the cottage with the dead baby in the garden. The wind was
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After weeks of tantalising waiting, today I am hugely excited to be able to show you the cover art for my third novel, Everything Will Swallow You… The cover is the work of the enormously talented Joe McLaren: his fourth for me, so far. I think it perfectly encapsulates the
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I feel duty bound to inform you that my 2017 book 21st-Century Yokel is currently available to listen to for FREE on Audible, worldwide. If you’ve never tried one of my books, it’s not a bad place to start. Yokel was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize, which is
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1. Never expect anyone to read your book, even if you sent it to them for free. Do all you can to keep yourself in a non-presumptive state that will lead to a feeling of pleasant surprise if a fellow human reads your book. 2. Don’t let people whose
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Just Try And Fucking Stop Me
A few of you - but probably not loads - will have read this before but, while I put a few finishing touches to a new piece ready for Sunday, I wanted to post it again, in slightly spruced up form, for those who haven’t. It’s one of
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Grey Charm (January 1967) Margaret found her first grey hair when she was 19. By the time she was 25 the horned god of the wild earth had lavished her with a whole headful. She gave zero shits, embraced the situation unreservedly, used the money she had recently embezzled from
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I wrote this piece in December 2016, directly after the death of my 21 year-old cat The Bear. I’m not posting it as an email newsletter as I’m wary of flooding people’s inboxes with cat-related material - especially when I wrote this eulogy to George only a