A new short story this week, and accidentally the longest short story I’ve written so far. Me and Mam at the End of the World is a dark comedy about family, love and the space between the important moments of life.
When the world ends, what happens if you’ve only got your mother for company? The story is wry, voice driven, funny and heart breaking. It’s a genre blending, surreal voice driven adventure through an apocalypse like no other.
It comes in at just under 4,000 words, and it’s already been submitted for publication elsewhere. Me and Mam at the End of the World will hopefully be available to read in the coming months.
Boudoir, the short from my last update, has been submitted for the Bournemouth Writing Prize. It’s a long process, with the final result being announced in January, but it’ll be a lot of fun to see how it does.
Positive feedback continues to come in for Nepo Baby, my novel. From the middle of August, I’ll be focussing on prepping that for submission. And after that, on actually handling submissions.
And finally, the next novel continues to come along slowly but surely. It’s not going at quite the speed Nepo Baby did – it’s a harder write, emotionally and technically. But the work is good and the pace is worth it. There’s a sense of location to it that’s very different to my previous work. I think people are going to enjoy it.
Writing stories like Me and Mam at the End of the World has been great. Getting in and out of a character or a set of characters is such a tight space is an enjoyable challenge.