RETREAT NEEDED IN JUNE & ULLAPOOL APPEARANCE

I had a whole post written about Cúirt - quite a personal one - but my computer acted the maggot and needed restarting, and I lost the post despite saving it in a document - wtf? I haven't the heart, energy, head-space or patience to re-write it. Let it suffice to say, I enjoyed the few events I attended. Highlight: Evie Wyld and Jenny Offill in conversation with the always-wonderful Sinéad Gleeson.

Sinéad, Evie, Jenny

I am coming to the end of writing novel #4. Nine months for a first draft on this one. (But I will NOT refer to it as a gestation or the book as a baby - that kind of talk is a pet hate. Giving birth and raising kids is WAY harder than writing books, in my experience.)

It feels good to be at this point - the part where I feel I can breathe again. I will now walk away from the novel for a few weeks then come back and try to make sense of it and knock it into a shape good enough to show my agent. I tried to get a spot in Annaghmakerrig to go over it but they are full. Sigh. Does anyone know of a place I could retreat to for a few days in June (not too expensive and in Ireland, north or south) to work on this?

The Ceilidh Place, Ullapool

Next week I go to Ullapool to read at their book festival - it's the setting, in the Scottish Highlands, for my last novel The Closet of Savage Mementos. I worked there in a gorgeous hotel called The Ceilidh Place twenty-three years ago and my novel is loosely based on that time. Another ex-Placer, Linda Cracknell, is also on the festival bill. The Stornoway Gazette has done a wee feature on the pair of us. The article is here.

Zoë Strachan will be chairing my event at the festival and I am reading her latest novel Ever Fallen in Love in advance - it is set north of Ullapool, coincidentally, and I am very much enjoying it. In another coincidence, it is published by Sandstone Press who will publish the UK version of Miss Emily in August. It's all good.