What’s it all about?

Join me as I blunder my way through the world of writing, reading books and discovering other people’s writing and podcasts along the way.

I started blogging in 2008 when I was about to turn thirty and still hoping to get a short story published, though I’d been writing for years with only the unbroadcast alternative ending to a BBC7 radio series to my name. I didn’t have broadband, and wrote each irregular missive about reading, writing, and observing the world offline to upload later.

Since then I’ve hurtled into my mid-forties and had more than fifty pieces of short fiction published online and in print, as well as essays and creative non-fiction. I have wi-fi these days and I even bought a smartphone at the end of 2021. Wow.

My twenty-nine-year-old self would not only be shocked at the mobile phone, but also at the free books I was sent for review over the next few years - some of them, thrillingly, direct from publishers! I wrote a couple of dozen reviews for The Bookbag, and I even had a book review column at the Luna Station Quarterly blog for a while, though I supplied my own reading material for that one.

Everything went up a notch when I resigned from my day-job in autumn 2016 and concentrated on enjoyable writing for a while before I turned my hand to job applications. I was selected for a fabulous insight day in Newcastle and got one-to-one novel feedback from a Penguin editor as part of WriteNow in 2017. Penguin! Every bit as exciting as the BBC, and it gave me a massive boost of confidence. Since then I’ve mainly had a part-time job so I could devote regular time to writing. In theory, at least.

I’ve written for and read at York Festival of Ideas, the Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe, and East Leeds FM’s Writing on Air festival, among other places, and I took over the running of a local writing group for a while. More recently I’ve had a dark comedy monologue turned into a marvellous short film and I was one of the winners of Script Yorkshire’s radio drama competition 2020. There’s something magical about seeing and hearing other people bring your words to life.

I was paid actual money to indulge myself at great length about the history and nature of Northumberland when I was commissioned by Hexham Book Festival 2022, and I was flabbergasted to be shortlisted for the Comedy Women in Print short story prize 2022/23.

Now I write, produce and perform the Yorkshire-set monologue sitcom Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays.

And I’m still trying to figure it all out.

Every new instalment of my rambling thoughts goes directly to your inbox every Sunday. The best bits of 2008-23 have also been pulled into the archive from that fresh-faced young aspiring writer’s blog.