A busy Autumn...

I've got a busy Autumn in the works: I'm teaching, talking, and appearing all over the shop, it seems. This October marks the launch of the Liminal Residency Alton Towers book, and I'll also be appearing at Morecambe & Vice Crime Festival, talking about organising small festivals in the North of England. Most exciting of all, I'll be speaking to the legendary David Constantine, one of the country's greatest living short story writers, and introducing his new collection The Dressing-Up Box, at Halifax Square Chapel.

September 23rd. An Evening With David Constantine. Square Chapel, Halifax. £5.
An evening celebrating a new collection of stories by David Constantine, the author of the short story behind the Oscar-nominated film 45 YEARS, who has been hailed as one of the greatest writers of the short story form. David has previously been awarded the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award. Tickets here.

Sunday September 29th. A Festival Of Festivals, Morecambe & Vice, The Midland Hotel, 9.30 am.
"Festival organisers discuss what led them to partake in such insanity", it says here. Full programme for the M&V weekend here. 

Saturday October 5th. Alton Towers Liminal Resident Book Launch, North Stafford Hotel, Stoke.
Encompassing a waterpark, two hotels, an 'extraordinary' golf course, and a range of peripheral attractions, Alton Towers is the oldest theme park in the UK. This is the launch of the resulting 90-page book from our writing residency at Alton Towers, and features work by Julia Deakins, Claire Fuller, Gaynor Jones, Alison Powell, Eloise CC Shephard, and Krishan Coupland. Book tickets here.

Saturday October 26th. Write A Horror Story in An Hour at FRIGHTFEST, The Leeds Library, 2.00, £6.
I'll be teaching a mini-workshop as part of FRIGHTFEST, where you can use prompts to create your own scary story super-fast. FRIGHTFEST is a one-day minifestival of horror writing all taking part at The Leeds Library, which is the city's oldest and most haunted surviving subscription library, and there's also an event with Alison Littlewood & Lucie McKnight Hardy. More info & book here. 

Wednesday October 30th. RESIST! book launch with Gaia Holmes, Hyde Park Book Club, free.
After a long wait, I'm really pleased to see the launch of this book, part of Comma Press' acclaimed Protest series, which pairs authors with historians and activists who were actually there, to write stories about key moments in British protest. Come along to this FREE event to hear myself and Gaia Holmes talk about our respective stories.

On the whole, I think I might be doing one too many things, but never mind, I can always dose up on Lemsip.

Currently reading
The Arabian Nights
The Barbarous Coast Ross MacDonald

Obligatory end of year post, 2017

Writing is a funny business. You've got to be a bit odd to want to be an author in the first place: all those hours spent in a room by yourself, making stuff up, and rarely, if ever, getting paid for it. Those of us who choose to do it either have a bit of a personality defect, or an awful lot of things they want to say, or in my case, a bit of both.

Every writer has good years and crap years. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of crap and terrible years myself, but this year... this year has been ace.

Notes written for Guest, 2015

So here's a quick summary of my 2017, in pictures.

Comma Press Short Story Writing Course

I began the year teaching some wonderful students in a Comma Short Story Course at Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds.

Comma Short Story Writing course, Carriageworks

It was such a joy to teach these students and to think deeply about the short story craft. The students also produced an anthology. Tyto Alba: Short Stories by New Leeds Writers (which I edited) is now available as an e-book on Amazon, here.


Winning a Saboteur Award for Remembering Oluwale

It seems like ages ago now, but one of my hugest highlights of this year was the Saboteur Awards in May this year.

We won!

Putting the anthology Remembering Oluwale was one of my highlights of last year. The project was such a fulfilling one, one which took months of work, and although I was incredibly proud of the book, it was hard to know whether other people liked it too. Anyway, it turns out they did, and we won a Saboteur Award for it.

Here's a pic of me and Max Farrar from Remember Oluwale getting a bit giggly at the Awards bash after our win (sorry for picture quality; we'd all had a few boozes by that point.)

Max Farrar & SJ Bradley at Saboteur Awards, May 2017

However, there are always losses to temper the winnings, as I found out when I handed Max the big bottle of gin we'd won as part of the prize, and he went on a lengthy bar crawl, and left it in a pub.

We never did get to drink that gin.

On the other hand, I did get to keep the trophy.

This little fella lives on my writing desk.

Sadly, this was also the weekend in which the notebook in which I'd written most of the working notes for Guest was pickpocketed out of my bag on the Tube. Farewell, little red notebook, I will never forget you.

If you see the notebook on the right... I want it back!

Teaching for First Story 

During 2017, I was writer in residence at Leeds East Academy in Seacroft, Leeds. Teaching creative writing to the students there was one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. In September this year, they launched their anthology at Chapel FM in Leeds.

I'd watched these students go from being frightened little mice to being fierce lions, and it was an honour to watch them reading fearlessly in the beautiful upstairs space in Chapel FM.

First Story Students along with Peter from Chapel FM

Northern Short Story Festival

Can I say it? This year's festival was a belter. A full day of short story goodness for £20 (you can't even get a long-distance train ticket for that these days) with workshops from Zoe Lambert, Sarah Dobbs, AJ Ashworth, and the mighty mighty Jacob Ross, winner of the Jhalak Prize.

Jacob Ross at the Northern Short Story Festival 2017

What a treat it was to hear Leone Ross read from her newly-launched collection, Come Let Us Sing Anyway, in conversation with Peepal Tree Press editor Jeremy Poynting. Talk about having the crowd eat out of her hand!

Leone Ross & Jeremy Poynting @ Northern Short Story Festival '17. Photo: Izzy Brittle

As ever, our audience came from far and wide for this festival. We hosted our first ever Flash Fiction Slam (a huge success, by the way) at which the judges crowned Phil Olsen a very deserving winner. Here's a photo of judge & compere Jimmy Andrex whipping up the crowd.

Flash Fiction Slam, Northern Short Story Festival 2017. Credit: Izzy Brittle

Second novel, Guest, was launched
Phew, as if going to London, teaching for First Story, and organising a short story festival wasn't enough, this was also the year I launched my second novel, Guest.

Myself & editor Nathan Connolly at the launch of Guest.

A queue for signing! Guest launch, July 2017

It's always weird, after months or years working on a piece of fiction (Guest took about 2 and a half years to write), to see it finally come out into the world. You never quite know what people are going to think or how it's going to be received.

Photos: @carmymac and @carriebethx

Anyway, it turns out people quite liked it. The Morning Star called it "a tightly honed work of dirty realism with convincing characters and richly developed settings, Guest is an entertaining and life-affirming work with important things to say about protest, [and] resilience", and Disclaimer Magazine called it "a journey told in clear, well-chosen prose [...] [with] characters both naturalistic and recognisable." It made it into The Morning Star's Books of the Year.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to do a number of events to support the book, in Bradford, Leeds (twice), Bolton, Manchester, and even in London! Many thanks if you invited me somewhere or hosted me anywhere. This event in Housman's Bookstore in London was a particular highlight. Thanks to Kit Caless of Influx Press for playing host.

L-R Kit Caless, Abondance Matanda, SJ Bradley, Sam Berkson, Holly Pester @Housmans Bookshop, November '17

Guest is still available from Dead Ink Books.
Comma Press & Verse Matters publications 
I was really chuffed to have a number of short story publications this year. Comma Press invited me to contribute to their Conradology anthology, which is a collection of stories and essays responding to the work of Joseph Conrad. My story, Fractional Distillation, responds to the themes of colonialisation threaded throughout Conrad's work, particularly Heart of Darkness.

Conradology from Comma Press

You can purchase Conradology from the Comma Press website here, and why not treat yourself to one of the many other fine anthologies and collections they have, while you're there?

Verse Matters, ed. Helen Mort & Rachel Bower, from Valley Press

There's also the Verse Matters anthology, edited by Rachel Bowers and Helen Mort, which "harnesses the power of everyday stories, highlighting the strength and inspiration that comes from speaking out proudly in unsettled times." My story Weak Heart is in there, along with new writing from Malika Booker, Liz Berry and Hollie McNish, among others, and is available from the Valley Press website here.
 
Winning a K Blundell Trust Award 

To use a hackneyed aphorism, winning a K Blundell Trust award in December this year was the cherry on top of a particularly cakey year. On Thursday I arrived home from work to find a letter waiting from the Society of Authors. I never get exciting post like that, and I wasn't sure what it was.
Turns out it was a letter telling me that I've won a K Blundell Trust Award, to support me to research and write my third novel, The Everything Company.

Whut? AKA: my face when I opened the letter.

It couldn't be real, I said to myself, as I looked around the kitchen for a hidden camera. (My kitchen, by the way, is where I open most of my post. I find it very well suited to the task, in case the post makes you suddenly need to make a calming cup of tea.) This must have been the tenth or twelvth or maybe twentieth award I've applied for over the course of the past five years or so, and I never win grants or awards, I said to myself, so surely this must be a mistake, or perhaps I am suffering from some kind of Grants or Awards Non-Winning Mirage, such as the type a thirsty man might suffer when crossing a desert.
So then I read the letter again, and then I rang my publisher Nathan, and talking to him convinced me that perhaps it wasn't a prank after all, that I really had won a Society of Authors Award, and later on it popped up on The Bookseller website, which means it must be true.
The Award will be of huge help to me, since it will allow me to take a bit of time away from my day job to concentrate on writing the next book, and honestly, I can't wait to get stuck in.

Another thing I want to say 
At the end of this very long blog post, what I want to say is that this year has been a real bowl of fancy chocolates for me; it's been truffle after truffle, maybe the odd praline or marzipan-coated treat, and not a single coffee-flavoured liquer among them (well, maybe one - that time when my notebook got pickpocketed on the Tube.)
I also want to say that not every year I've had as an author has been like this one. Some years have been real stinkers. I've had years when nobody wanted to publish anything I wrote, when I got rejection letter after rejection letter; years when supposedly reputable editors have tried to rip me off, I've had stretches lasting months and years where I've had nothing but rejection or often lengthy haunting silences and no rejection letters at all, and times when I've been invited to give readings and I've gone along and literally nobody's turned up.

There was a period of years when I've wondered why I bother continuing trying to write when a. nobody wants to read my writing, or b. nobody likes my stuff anyway apart from me, so maybe it's me that has the problem? or maybe c. the odds of success are so low and there are so many writers out there better than me, so why bother?

All of this makes it all the more sweeter when I've finally had a great year, a year like the one I've just had.

Anyway it turns out that if you keep going, keep on reading, writing, working, meeting deadlines, and being kind and supportive to other people, and accepting other people's help, eventually you might be lucky enough have a year like mine.

Merry Christmas, and God bless us, every one! 
Bradders' favourite books from this year
Know Your Place anthology, Dead Ink Books
Sealed, Naomi Booth
ThoughtX anthology, Comma Press
The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead (didn't come out this year, but I read it this year)
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
Hold Tight, Jeffrey Boakye, Influx Press
Come Let Us Sing Anyway, Leone Ross, Peepal Tree Press
The Dead Lake, Hamid Ismailov, Peirene Press

Comma Short Story Writing Course

From February to July 2017, I'll be teaching a Comma Short Story Writing Course at Carriageworks Theatre in Leeds. The course is six months long, and consists of six two-hour workshops on the craft of short story writing. 

Writing the course has brought me back to thinking about my own development as a short story writer. When I first started writing short stories, way back in about 2006, I had little to guide me. All I knew were the things I'd taught myself, and I didn't know many other writers - I certainly hadn't got many other writer friends at that time - and as I counted up the rejection slips for the stories I sent out, I often asked myself: where am I going wrong? 

It was a very hard time, because although I knew I had some good ideas, and a level of good craft, I didn't have anybody to ask. 

I've been thinking about this a lot as I wrote the Comma press course. Over the past 10 years of trying, failing, trying, failing, and finally trying, and succeeding, to be a short story writer, I've learned an awful lot. It wasn't until I first started reading Raymond Carver in around 2009, that things finally started to click into place. 

The first Carver story I read was Neigbors. (There's a free PDF of it here.) It's short, like so many of Carver's stories - only 8 pages long, and on the surface of it, it doesn't seem to be about very much. A man and his wife agree to water a neighbour's plant, and look after their cat, while the neighbours are away for the weekend. Simple, right? 

I read it, and found myself thinking: this story is simple... almost too simple. Nothing really happens! Where's all the drama? The exploding cars? The discovery of an affair? The slapped face, the knife in the back? Needless to say, and probably because I'd been reading so much of Roald Dahl's short fiction prior to this, I really didn't get the Carver love. 

But something about the story stayed with me. For days afterwards, I kept on thinking about it. It was in thinking about the story in the following weeks that I came to realise - the drama is there; it's hidden under a veneer of respectability. It's lurking there, quietly, hidden amongst Carver's incredibly well-constructed sentences. It happened to me after the fact of reading Carver's story, as so often does with brilliant literature - I was hooked after the fact. 

Can it really contain all the things I remember, I asked myself? So I read it again, and yes, it did. I was amazed that a story could have the power to make me continue thinking about it for days afterwards, and have further realisations. 

The next thing I did was to take a book of Carver's entire published works out of the library. This book included the story So Much Water So Close to Home (originally published in Carver's collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love). This story, like so many of his other works, is incredibly short - just 7 pages - and yet it has everything. Drama - deceit - betrayal - an unbelievable sense of having the rug pulled out from under you; fully realised characters, a marriage and relationships that all seem completely real and believable - little wonder that Carver is considered one of the masters of modern realism. If you haven't read the story, I won't spoil it for you - I just recommend that you go and read it for yourself. 

Carver was my first introduction to absolute mastery in short story writing. What he could do in just a few short pages has never since been equalled by any other writer, in my opinion. 

In my Comma Short Story Writing Class we will discuss and learn from one of Carver's short stories; and in the following months we will discover, discuss and learn other short story writers too -- including several modern day writers. Each month the course will cover topics like structure, creation of tension, creating character, and editing and endings. 

Every month there will be writing exercises - I will be asking every participant to write a short piece in every single workshop, so there will be plenty of time for writing itself, too. 

Numbers on the course are limited - which will allow every participant the chance to have at least some of their work read and critiqued. At the end of the course, following our final class - which will be a session on Editing & Endings - all participants will have the opportunity to have their stories published in an e-Book by Comma. Two reduced fee places are available for writers who are single parents or in receipt of benefits - email Becky at Comma Press to book one of these places (address at the bottom of this link) 

You can book onto the course through the Carriageworks website or by calling their Box Office on (0113) 376 0318. 

Look forward to seeing some of you there!

Currently reading

Foreigners Caryl Phillips

Homeland Cory Doctorow 

Some new fiction online....

I've been away on holiday (see pictured), so that was good, and I'm also really pleased to have had two stories published online recently.

You can read "The Gordon Trask" online at Disclaimer mag, here.

You can read "Maps of Imaginary Towns" online at Litro magazine, here.

In other news, I'll be teaching a short story writing course, through Comma Press, in Leeds in the New Year. More news on that soon.

Currently reading

Uprooted Naomi Novik 

Publishing the Underground launch

Last week, I was at Manchester's Anthony Burgess Foundation, at Dead Ink's new website launch. Their new initiative, Publishing The Underground, connects readers and authors by running on a subscription & membership model. You can become a Dead Ink member by pre-ordering one of the great books coming out this year, or by buying a Dead Ink tote bag or t-shirt. It's a pretty sweet way of running a modern publishing company, and you get to have a hardback book, from one of their exciting new authors, for £12 as well. What's not to like?

Here's the speech I gave at the launch.

"Many thanks to Nathan for inviting me to speak tonight.

My novel, Brick Mother, was published by Dead Ink Books last year as part of New Voices 2014. It has been described as 'a kitchen sink thriller', 'thought provoking and terrifying, a thrilling page turner' and 'one of the best novels ever written about work.' It was accepted for publication in June 2013, and was published a year later.

After being published, it was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Not the Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the Gladstone Writers in Residence Award. It was also, for one very exciting day, a number-one bestseller in the Amazon Literary Thriller subgenre.

Having my book published has allowed me to go 'out on the road' as a real author. I've been to book festivals, literary festivals, been a featured writer at live lit nights, and appeared at book groups where my novel has been discussed. I should stress that none of this would have been possible without Dead Ink.

My experience publishing with Dead Ink made a big difference to me. I didn't go to University to learn to write. A writer like me, completely self-taught, and without any access to editors or creative writing tutors, doesn't have any expert help to improve their work. Publishing with Dead Ink gave me the chance to work closely with Nathan, an experienced editor, who helped me improve my book. And in the run-up to the novel's publication, I also got to work closely with the graphic designer who made the book's cover, to say how I wanted the book to look. Many writers don't get the chance to be so intimately involved in a book's development, at every stage of the process, from start to finish. The experience was a very meaningful one, and one which may not have been possible with a larger publisher. 

So - why are publishers like Dead Ink important?

Tonight, you've heard three great new authors [Lochlan Bloom, Harry Gallon, and Wes Brown] read excerpts of their work. Well, big publishers take fewer and fewer risks all the time. You are not going to see a big publisher take a punt on new, great writers like these.

Independent publishing is important, because it dares to publish work nobody else dares to back. Work that is daring - work that breaks new ground. Work that is weird, and unconventional, and sometimes defiantly uncommercial. Independent presses blaze a trail that others later follow, and give authors that important first step in developing their work and getting it out into the world.

So, I hope you'll support this important work, and this new way of working for Dead Ink, by pre-ordering the books and becoming a Dead Ink member at tonight's event."

Currently reading

The Year of the Flood Margaret Attwood