MY new book of short stories, Girl with a Meat Axe, is my third book of stories, so maybe it’s time to ask myself why I write such stuff and what it says about me.
Why do I write at all? First, I write because I’m not much good at anything else. When I became a newspaperman (I spent some time on the Telegraph & Argus) it was a great discipline having to keep to the facts - and always having to decide where the truth lay.
So why write fiction?
The biggest reason could be that I’m an only child. I had the usual schoolfriends, but my closest companion was always my imagination. I acted out little plays in the back garden, taking all the parts and trying to give them different voices.
Different voices! There’s a clue. Writing fiction is good for the same reason reading fiction is good - you get to escape from yourself into the lives of other people. You get to see the world through different eyes.
So whose eyes did I choose this time? I chose characters who are all going through a crisis in their lives. And I try to paint them with sympathy and humour. If I make readers cry occasionally, I like to think I make them laugh as well.
In the title story, Annie fears her husband has been unfaithful so she gets herself a meat axe to bring him back into line. But should he really be scared?
In Writing to the Ripper, newly divorced Louise becomes pen friend to an imprisoned serial killer and asks him to marry her.
In Afterlife, sexually liberated Gillian makes a pass at Miles, a man she’s known and liked for many years. But she chooses to do it on the day of his wife’s funeral.
In Brick Wall at the End of the Lane, disturbed Dorothy, who has a habit of throwing bricks through people’s windows, comes to believe her doctor is sending her secret love messages in crossword clues.
But I wouldn’t want you to think all my weird characters are women. Absolutely not.
There’s the two bravados in Charlie and Me, who’ve been friends since schooldays, and have suddenly fallen out badly over a woman. Will they come to blows over two pints of lager?
There’s my venture into science fiction, Don’t Go Blaming the Horses, about a futuristic truck driver stranded on a rogue planet which ignores the laws of science. As I think we all should, from time to time.
Then there’s film critic Mark in The Arc of the Story, who tries to win back his estranged wife by imitating the behaviour of Anthony Quinn in The Guns of Navarone. I’m not telling you how.
Now, I used to be a film critic myself. And I was Writer in Residence during Bradford’s City of Film Year when I went into schools to offer my movie insights to the city’s pupils.
But no, the story mentioned above is not autobiographical. It’s something people often ask me: Do I ever write about myself? After all, it’s a famous principle: Write about what you know. And my answer is: Yes, I do - but in a roundabout way.
It’s all about inessentials. If I’m writing about a serial killer, he will probably live in a house like my own semi-detached with its three bedrooms and birch trees in the garden. But that’s where the similarity ends.
Except there is one story in the book which is very much about me. Sunday Afternoon Again features a nine-year-old working-class boy who lives with his mum and dad and maternal grandma in a council house. His dad is a good dad, except that every Sunday morning he dresses in his best suit and clean shirt, brushes his shoes to a shine, Brylcreems his hair, pulls the hairs out of his nose, and goes off to the pub with his mates.
And when he gets back late, the Sunday dinner is spoiled and there is always an almighty row between him and the grandma. And this makes the boy dreadfully unhappy.
There. That’s my secret autobiographical bit revealed.
The final reason I write is because I’m a terrible show-off. I love to be praised by other writers. And it’s great to have poet Ian McMillan say about the book: “If you want slices of life, here they are. And if you want life resliced, chopped, diced, marinated, cooked or served raw, here it is in these varied tales.”
And novelist Michael Stewart says: “Witty, inventive, and ingenious. Girl With a Meat Axe is full of life and ideas.”
It’s moments like that which make it all worthwhile!
* Girl with a Meat Axe will be published by Armley Press on October 2. Order online from Amazon
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