Category: Uncategorized
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Beginnings
. 2014 was a strange year for my family. An underground kind of year for me, though one in which some writing matters crystallised. I’ve been braver in some ways, less brave in others. Marooned, for a while, by the vagaries of misfortune. If you’re in need of some writerly insight/shoring up (and who isn’t…
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Science Fiction Double Feature
I’ve been very happily reading a stream of wonderful science fiction lately. Hannu Rajaniemi’s Casual Angel, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword, and now William Gibson’s The Peripheral. I’m just at the beginning of The Peripheral and what strikes me most is how Gibson throws you in. You really have no idea, except in the broadest way,…
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The Humans
Matt Haig’s The Humans has a ludicrous premise and a close to laughable plot. But it is one of the most uplifting and beautiful books I have read recently. Perhaps it was because I was trapped at my daughter’s dancing competition which ran three hours overtime on a rainy Saturday night. There was nothing else…
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Writing in circles
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about writing it’s that when I start writing about a garden, I’m just playing for time. Not that I realise it in the moment, but later, yes, it’s because I’m stuck. Of course, a grand book about a garden may yet reveal itself. A heartbreaking story set in a…
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The smiling woman
“There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.” Anais…
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On being alone
I’ve just finished Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I wavered before buying, drawn by the praise of writers like Ruth Ozeki and Ursula Le Guin, made hesitant by the memories of the Jane Austen Book Club (which wasn’t for me) and by the subject matter itself. (Fair warning: read no further…
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Luna Station Quarterly
Issue 17 from Luna Station Quarterly has just come out. And it includes my story, A Day at the Beach. You can read the whole issue online for free, or download a copy here. Happy reading!
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Where I write
This is the piece I wrote for Mapping the Words. Take a look. There might be a writer just around the corner from you. The place I think of as my study is, in everyone else’s mind, the room where the best computer is kept and the place to turn on the WiFi. Our house…
DJ Daniels 