I popped my ballet cherry last night. Having never seen any live ballet (except years ago when a student danced beautifully en pointe in an English lesson as part of a presentation), I didn’t really know what to expect. Added to that, I was totally ignorant of the story, too. But, do you know what? […]
Anyone who’s read The Second Chance Tea Shop will know that I set the novel in very familiar surroundings. The village of Little Somerby might be fictional, but it’s very much grounded in reality. The Strawberry Line, part of the railway track that was shut in the 1960s by Dr Beeching, runs alongside Little Somerby in […]
So. Those of you who know me well must have known this was coming. And those of you who don’t know me well but are regular readers of this blog might have guessed as well! I currently have a mild obsession with this film, after having watched it for the first time on Friday night. […]
As usual, I watched a film and thought about it a lot. I liked both John Wick 1 and 2, and not just because Keanu Reeves is extraordinarily good to watch, and still criminally underrated. There was a scene in the first film that got me thinking, and a short piece of fanfiction was the […]
Since I started writing the Little Somerby books, I’ve not really managed to write to music, although music is definitely an influence. I have it on when I drive, and since that’s when I often do my plotting (while keeping my eyes firmly on the road, of course!), often, songs come onto the radio or […]
~In a novel you have to resist the urge to tell everything.~ ~Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real? ~ J.K. Rowling Before I started writing the Little Somerby series of books, I never used to understand what JK Rowling meant […]
One of the things that continually surprises me with this writing malarkey is the way that certain characters reveal their inner intentions and desires to me at the oddest moments. I’ve been putting together the random bits of book 2 ready to make more sense of it over the coming weeks, but yet again I’ve […]
I was reminded of Stigmata this week, when my subconscious gave me a rather nice dream about the wonderfully charismatic Gabriel Byrne. I’ve always loved watching him onscreen, and for a long time, Stigmata was on my radar. The tale of a scientific priest, a lost gospel and a party girl who starts to exhibit the signs […]
I was looking through one of my Youtube channels last night, and I realised I hadn’t thought about some of the texts that consumed me as a vidder for a very long time. To explain, what basically used to happen was that I’d watch something, a film or a TV show, and then, if it […]
One of the joys of having my own characters and universe to play with is that I keep thinking of ‘scenes between the scenes’ from the novels. Much like DVD extras and missing scenes from films, these are the moments that I haven’t actually committed to paper in the novel, but that I visualise now […]
Fay Keenan 