Birthday Blog

Tomorrow is my birthday, I’ll be 39. It seems to come around faster each year. I wonder if by the time I’m 69 it’ll be zooming by so fast that I’ll be re-issuing presents to their recipients like my Gran used to. Not really planning to do very much as I’m saving it all up [...]

Riding the Twatter Wave, Tadpole Inspired Art and PhD Progression

I joined Twitter last week, Thursday, as mentioned at the end of the last blog post. I had this idea that I wasn’t going to be micro-blogging every few minutes, like when I changed the TV channel or got a cup of tea. Well three days and 50 tweets later I realised how easy it [...]

I’m a Google common search term!

Searching my name on Google is a little hobby as some readers may already know from a previous post where I mentioned this. I recommend to anyone who has even the slightest web presence to try it out (unless you have an exceedingly common name in which case it’s likely to be tedious as you [...]

Local Author is quoted in Local Paper

I have been quoted in an article about libraries in my local paper. I was called by the journalist who’s done an article on me before so he obviously has my name on his ‘local author’ list.
I could have been really cool and pretended that I didn’t recognise him at all from the thousands of [...]

Random Allocations and Lesbian History Month

I was doing a pipl search for myself (yes I am that egotistical and perhaps paranoid as well) and saw a nice variety of references to me, not all from me, including the Guardian, Struggling Authors, Meet the Author and Queer Cymru (although the information they have about my current job is out of date [...]

Author’s Notes in Western Mail

This article appeared in the Western Mail magazine yesterday (07 February 2009). Soon after Silence was reviewed in the paper, I was invited to contribute to the Author’s Notes section and wrote this piece. Since then I hadn’t heard back so assumed it wasn’t going to be used. Luckily I have friends who read the [...]

Northern Rock reduce rate by 0.15% following Bank of England cut of 1.5%

Sent to BBC Have Your Say today.
Dear BBC
I received a letter this morning from Northern Rock as my mortgage lender. I have been waiting to see their reaction to the Bank of England base rate cut and this letter proposes a cut in response to this. Presumably other customers of the bank have also received [...]

Thoughts On Reviews and Freedom of Speech

This month I’ve had some marvellous reviews of my book. One appeared in Writer’s Beat Quarterly which was very glowing. “…Silence is a powerful novel precisely because it is not afraid – or ashamed – to look life square in the face and report what it sees… The style is fluid and one is quickly [...]

Watch Me on TV and Vote for My Book

Tonight the Hacio program that I’ve been talking about for months is going to be aired. It’s on S4C at 11.55pm, but if you are otherwise engaged or unable to receive the Welsh channel then you can view it on the Hacio site. Welsh version here, English here. The show itself is in Welsh and [...]

Last Chance to Listen

To my interview on BBC Radio Wales. As of tomorrow evening it’ll be wiped ready for the next show. I have finally managed to listen to it myself and noticed quite a few ‘ums’ which other people have not mentioned. But I do sound ‘relaxed and intelligent’ with ‘a pleasant radio voice’ so I’m pleased [...]