Chorlton Book Festival stirs the suburbs

Manchester Literature Festival is apparently not the only book festival in town – our festival blogger Clare Conlon picks her highlights at this month's Chorlton Book Festival...

Less than a week after Guo Yue and Clare Farrow wrapped up the Manchester Literature Festival with their magical Children’s Bookshow bookend, the city isn’t ready to close its dustcovers just yet. Even The Guardian has picked up on the bookish buzz of the place with an article about Manchester’s Literary Renaissance by Manchester University lecturer and MLF trustee Jerome de Groot, which the city’s literati and Twitterati have been proudly disseminating (see The Manchizzle and The Art of Fiction blogs for starters). In it, Manchester is described as ‘one of Europe’s most creative and dynamic cities’, so it’s no surprise that even the sleepy suburbs are a hotbed of talent.



Yesterday, down in the south of the city, the fifth annual Chorlton Book Festival got off to a flying start with the local launch of Too Many Magpies, the new novel by Didsbury-based author Elizabeth Baines. When she’s not a prizewinning prose fiction and script writer, Baines likes to tread the boards, so she had her 20-strong audience hooked as she treated them to two excerpts from the haunting story set in an imperfect future heavily influenced by the local area. An acclaimed short story writer, she also read from one of her more light-hearted pieces – the tale of a writer getting a script mentored, it was well received by those gathered (many of whom were writers themselves) in the relaxing environs of Chorlton’s Lounge bar.

Baines’s fellow Salt author Robert Graham will be appearing at the Festival later in the week, reading from his latest collection of short stories, The Only Living Boy, in the cosy Lloyds Hotel. Heartwarming and quirky, Graham’s work draws inspiration from the people and places of Manchester, and one of the anthology’s stories, Fruit Or Vegetable, revisits the principal characters of his novel Holy Joe, which is largely set in Chorlton, where he lives. Graham also teaches at MMU Cheshire and is the author of a number of creative writing guides, including How To Write Fiction (And Think About It), and his workshops and readings are always well attended.

Not surprisingly, the lovely old Chorlton Library building is playing a big part in the festival, hosting a number of events over the 13 days (click here for the full programme). It will provide the backdrop next Tuesday as Manchester-based crime writer Bill Rogers reads from his thriller The Cleansing, which follows a killer clown who is haunting the city’s streets. Rogers may also have a few real-life local horror stories to reveal – having worked as a schools inspector in the Chorlton area, who knows what tales he has to tell!

As well as novelists, short story writers, poets, playwrights, historians and non-fiction authors, Chorlton Book Festival will this year include bloggers, so even the most modern forms of writing are explored. Didsbury-based writer and blogger Adrian Slatcher works for the Manchester Digital Development Agency, advising arts organisations on how best to use social media to improve their online presence. As part of the festival, he will be presenting a workshop on social media for writers, showing how the web can be exploited for writing, marketing and publishing purposes.

Also bringing the festival bang up to date is a poetry slam, compered by street poet and MLF's own Call Busker Mike Garry, whose latest work includes Mancunian Meander and features the unforgettable verse: Gorton girls / Know all the words / To songs by Chaka Khan. The best performance will win £50 and the contest (one of a number of events aimed at young people) is open to anyone aged 13 to 19.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clare Conlon is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. Her blog, Words & Fixtures, won Best New Blog in the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards.

Guo Yue Knows Why the Caged Bird Doesn't Sing

For the very final event of this year’s Manchester Literature Festival, we take over the Library Theatre for a double showing of the Children’s Bookshow, featuring the internationally acclaimed flautist Gue Yue and his writer wife Clare Farrow. Over the next hour the husband and wife team bring to life their collaboratively written book Little Leap Forward, which tells the story of Yue’s own childhood in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution.

Yue and Clare are positioned amongst corrugated metal sheets, the stark set for the theatre’s current production of The Good Soul of Szechuan, which conveniently helps conjure the narrow maze of alleys – hutongs – of 60’s Beijing. Yue’s leg is in plaster due to a recent footballing injury (he says he still feels like the eight year old Little Leap Forward inside, and he certainly has the exuberance of youth both on and off stage). Behind them there’s a screen showing old photos, interspersed with some of Helen Cann’s beautiful illustrations.

Clare reads poetic passages from the book and Yue elaborates on the story with fascinating details of his childhood, explaining how being very poor did not stop him and his enterprising friends from having fun: inventing games using apricot stones and making kites with their mothers’ message paper. I’m starting to reminisce about my Blue Peter days now, but I’m sensing a certain amount of panic from the younger members of the audience – is someone about to confiscate my Nintendo?

From an early age Yue wanted to be a musician and begged his mother for a violin, a cello, and finally, a more affordable bamboo flute; threatening to lie down in the deep snow until she relented. He now has a case full of flutes of varying sizes, some with jade tips, which he plays entrancingly, but it’s a tune on his first penny flute which gets the biggest cheer from the kids.

At one point Yue demonstrates how to catch a bird using a chopstick, a bowl, a piece of string and a very fast reaction. In the story, Little Leap Forward keeps his wild songbird, Little Cloud, in a small cage (a common practice in China until very recently) but despite his best efforts he can’t get it to sing to him. His friend Little Little, now living under the frightening new order imposed by Mao’s Red Guards, has a great empathy with the bird and asks, ‘Wouldn’t you rather be free, just for a day, than spend a lifetime in a cage?’ No prizes for guessing what happens next.

By the end of the session the theatre full of children and their handful of teachers are feeling entertained and educated in equal measure.

__

Cathy Bolton, Festival Director

Seeing War through a Child’s Eyes: Michelle Magorian

Fans of Michelle Magorian gather this evening in the cafe of the Imperial War Museum , in anticipation of hearing the author talk about her 1940’s–based children’s books. When the daytime visitors to this popular attraction have left the building, we are ushered up to the atmospheric exhibition area to take our seats. The next hour sees us enoying a dramatic performance, history lesson, and insight into the writing process of an award winning writer, all rolled into one.

If anyone was unaware that Magorian is an actress as well as author, this would become obvious as she read her first extract, from her book Back Home. She tells the story through the eyes of Rusty, a young girl returning to war-torn England after spending 5 years in the USA. Rusty responds to explanations of her new boarding school uniform including bloomers, girdles and flannel pyjamas in much the same way as one of Magorians modern young readers might – she is as unfamiliar with 1940’s Britain as they are.

We are then given a series of readings as Magorian explains that each of her novels has been triggered by someting in a previous one. For example, Back Home was inspired by a picture she found when conducting research for Goodnight Mister Tom of young children waving from the deck of a liner. She didn’t have time to conduct research at the time, but felt compelled to go back to it later and write a novel based on the experiences of these youngsters. Cuckoo in the Nest was then inspired by a director who told her the story of his own wartime experiences, and then A Spoonful of Jam continued the story of Elsie, a character from Cuckoo in the Nest! Magorian later divulges that her latest book will tell the story of a character in A Spoonful of Jam some years later and will represent a minor departure, given that it will be set in the 1950’s.

It is clear during the evening that Magorian has an incredibly lively mind, both from her explanations of how her stories continually trigger new tales which she has to come back to, and in her descriptions of how some of her characters “appear” in her mind. She tells us that her Costa Children’s Book Prize-winning novel Just Henry was triggered by a picture of a cinema which came into her head at 3am.

One might wonder then, how Magorian came up with the idea for her first novel Goodnight Mister Tom, with no previous novels to be inspired by? Again, Magorian explains the train of thought leading to this much loved classic. She was appearing in Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and was trying to find a catalyst for a series of short stories. The colours of the dreamcoat became her inspiration, and the first pair of colours she chose to write about were green and brown. Into her head popped a boy standing in a graveyard wearing a label – he became William Beech and the short story was about his first day as an evacuee. When the short stories were finished, she returned to William and Tom, the old man who takes him in, and conducted further research into the experiences of evacuees. The result was Goodnight Mister Tom.

There are many questions for the author at the end of her talk, reflecting the affection in which the audience hold her writing. She is quite sure that her background as an actress plays a key role in her ability to make her characters so authentic. She is used to getting into the head of a character and looking at the world through their eyes . She also shares with us that she has to take frequent breaks when writing unpleasant scenes because she finds them upsetting . It seems clear that her own response to her plots and characters demonstrate why she is able to make her audience believe in her characters and feel affected by their experiences, both good and bad.

A queue quickly forms at the end of the evening, with audience members keen to get their favourite books signed. Magorian should have a new book out next year - but which parts of previous stories will trigger ideas for new plots after that? What kind of scenes and characters will appear in Magorian’s mind at 3 in the morning? Or perhaps she will make a return to acting? Wherever her train of thought takes her in the future, it is sure to be gripping and engaging!
__


Kath Horwill was formerly Head of History at a large comprehensive. She writes the blog Parklover.

When it Changed: Science into Fiction

I associated the moment of ‘change’ with scientific breakthrough. It was surprising to learn that the title came from a favourite short story of Geoff Ryman’s. As chair of the panel and editor of the collection from Comma Press, he told the audience that not only was it the name of Joanna Russ’ story, but should be the title of every story. This synthesis of science and fiction was something mentioned by each of the panelists. The great imaginative leap required to shape both fiction and scientific research was the point of contact for each of the pairs.

The idea was a simple, but fantastic one; to team a writer with a scientist. Each pair collaborated on a story based as accurately as possible on current scientific thinking. The other people on the panel were: Steve Furber, ICL Professor of Computer Engineering. Adam Marek, a writer who has been nominated for the Frank O’Connor Award. Tim O’Brien, an astrophysicist working at Jodrell Bank. Patricia Duncker, a writer of fiction and Professor of English Literature at Manchester University. Liz Williams could not make the launch due to illness, but her short story was performed by Geoff Ryman.

Steve Furber was self-deprecating and humorous. He talked in an accessible way about his work with microprocessors, explaining that there are now more microprocessors than human beings on the planet. He is interested in artificial intelligence and is currently building a machine with one million microprocessors to attempt to recreate one percent of the function of the brain. This interest in intelligent machines and their similarity to the human brain is represented by his favourite film – 2001: A Space Odyssey. Steve explained that HAL had the right mixture of logic and emotional subtlety to be one of the most sinister fictional robots. He also told the audience that he felt the best science fiction left things unsaid. His concluding comments on the similarity between fiction and research summed up the points of contact between the collaborators. He said that both required ‘imaginative speculation, creativity and risk-taking’.

Geoff Ryman explained that Liz Williams was a writer who also had a PhD in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. Her story came about as a result of working with Tim Furber. He then began, quite unexpectedly, to perform the part of Wittgenstein in Liz’s story in a German accent.

The story was quite beautiful. Liz used mathematical and logical concepts to set the scene in an alternative Cambridge where Wittgenstein was living. The windows were perfectly proportioned, the light golden, the stones grey and ‘more like bone than stone’. This glorious symmetry hints at something sinister which becomes apparent. The other character in the story is an imagined Alan Turing. Wittgenstein becomes upset by the sight of an apple core in the room, which he does not remember eating. He talks of a mathematician named Alan whom he ‘recognised for what he was’. The eating of the apple is surely in reference to Turing’s scientific and symbolic death by eating poisoned fruit as a result of his persecution on account of his homosexuality. The opening of the story sets up a challenge to binaries – The characters both are and are not historical figures, Cambridge is both beautiful and a prison, The intelligent machine can be caught out by a ‘false note’ but it is not certain what this might be. There is a sense that in questioning the philosophy behind artificial intelligence, wider issues of discrimination and violation can be explored. In the last line of the section, nature had been inverted. The sky was black.

Tim O’Brien dates his interest in science to a fancy dress party when he was five or six. He had arrived wearing cardboard boxes covered in tin foil, dressed as either an astronaut or a robot. He worked with two writers: Patricia Duncker and Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Patricia and Tim spent some time together at Jodrell Bank where Tim works as an astrophysicist who, in his own words, ‘discovers galaxies all the time’. When Patricia was there they discovered one together. Patricia described the telescope as a kind of ‘unicorn’ which is surrounded by smaller telescopes, almost as though it has spawned. She said that she has spent many nights out on the Cheshire plain, watching the telescope move in time with the stars.
Patricia has written a narrative which blends religious experience with scientific accuracy. Both Patricia and Tim describe religion and science as a kind of ‘working through doubt’ as opposed to the certainty of faith. The religious vision which her young protagonist experiences at the end of the story takes elements of the ‘woman in the wilderness’ of Revelations and combines it with a scientifically accurate description of the life of a star.

Tim’s mind-blowing prophecy that in a few years from now we will have evidence of a planet much like Earth, containing life forms is tempered by the fact that there is no way that humans can travel more than a little way from the planet. He reminded the audience that though scientists may be able to tell that there are life forms much like ourselves by testing the atmospheres, colours and temperatures here on Earth in laboratories, it is frustrating as we will never be able to advance any further in our knowledge.

This unknowing, was a subject of Geoff Ryman’s questions at the end, directed at Tim, Steve and Patricia. All three agreed that the amount we do not know is increasing all of the time, and that the term ‘dark matter’ is there to fill the void. Dark energy is said to account for 96% of what is on the earth. Patricia Duncker suggested the term ‘dark knowledge’ could be used to cover what we do not know.

Adam Marek’s story was called Without a Shout and blended two ideas which he learned from a professor at Liverpool University. He works in nanotechnology and is developing a suit which measures heart rate, blood pressure, temperature etc. He is also developing face cream which can repair damaged skin. Adam Marek imagined a world where these ‘intelligent’ products were used to protect middle-class school kids from terrorist attacks. In the story, suicide bombers attacked the school children on an increasingly larger scale when they were fitted with suits which repaired their bodies. The chaos and horror of being blown to bits and then rearranged by ‘intelligent’ clothing is nicely contrasted with the more normal fights they have with the poorer school down the road. An audience member mentioned that what works so well about the story is that it follows normal laws and logic. Technology changes some aspects of the children’s lives, but so many others are universal and remain the same. Adam said that he has long ‘danced on the edge of science fiction’ and enjoyed the process of basing a story on actual science.

Geoff Ryman closed the readings by performing the first part of his story You. His concept of ‘life blogs’ concertinaing out of one another and allowing the spectator to experience virtual lives, the lives of celebrities and even of those long dead was fascinating. As a comment on the way in which technology has changed communication, it was not straightforward . Rather there was wonder in the proliferation of aspects. There are some beautiful images in You– ‘red soil bare of plants’, ‘silhouettes of cliffs’ and ‘shadows long and cold’ show the expanse of this unknown world. Perhaps in this space, behind the shadows and the silhouettes, there is a place for dark knowledge.

___

Laura Joyce runs the Red Shoes Workshop in Manchester and has a blog at www.metafiction.wordpress.com.

Long Division: Atef Abu Saif and Bernard MacLaverty

Alice Guthrie opened the event, standing in for Atef Abu Saif who had been detained in Gaza, unable to cross a checkpoint. Alice, Atef’s translator, was visibly angry and upset at the situation, and her emotion came out when she read out his stories. Bernard MacLaverty, a short story writer originally from Belfast, was the other reader. Both Atef and Bernard shared points of similarity, writing stories against the backdrop of sectarian violence. Yet both were keen to point out that what they captured was the everyday, it just happened that their everyday was a little different to most of the audience.

Alice Guthrie described the video footage that we had of Atef Abu Saif as ‘miraculous’ due to the restrictions on electricity in Gaza. Though only one or two audience members could understand Arabic, there was something beautiful about his rhythm and flow. I was sad that it was such a short segment.

Alice Guthrie read two short stories that she had translated into English. An Exclusive Mourning and The Portrait Years. The atmosphere for both stories was subdued. There was some humour in An Exclusive Mourning. It is the story of a film crew who wanted to film the protagonist weeping at the funeral of ‘the next child to be killed’ in order that they have the exclusive footage. The humour is uncomfortable, laughing at the absurdity of the media who want to fake horror in order that people will believe it. As though what is happening is not quite enough. It is hard not to identify in some way with that voyeurism, that appetite for drama.

The Portrait Years was an elegy to Palestinians incarcerated by Israel. Alice Guthrie offered a gloss for those of us unfamiliar with the system and explained that the prisoners are never allowed any form of physical contact with visitors. The heroine of the story, a mother of one of the incarcerated boys, dies without ever having touched him. Her thoughts are consumed with holding him, cooking for him, talking to him when he is released. She dies before her dreams can be realised. Her husband says that ‘time had a sharp axe’, the fifteen years since his son had been taken had all disappeared. Again, in this story, Atef shows us the everyday horrors of living in Gaza without ever making overtly political references. He tells us about the ‘everyday’ in his world.

To finish the section with Atef Abu Said, there was a pre-recorded interview with between him and Alice Guthrie. He referred several times to miracles. He mentioned the miracle of leaving Gaza, the miracle of having enough electricity to record the interview. He said that ‘nothing is regular, it is hard to reply to emails, to have paper to write, to find a loaf of bread. Things happen in bursts or do not happen at all. He said that in Gaza people ‘feel disconnected, unplugged’. He does not wait for miracles but tries to ‘pursue life, to feed his children, to write articles, to publish in journals, to write fiction and prepare for classes’.

He talked a little about the crossover and connection between himself and Bernard MacLaverty; that they both wrote from conflict areas. He said that national feelings and heroic values can adversely affect people’s lives. Atef said that he did not wish to be a politician in his writing but rather to be ‘as vivid as life on the street is’. Bernard Mac Laverty later echoed this sentiment when he said that he wrote from a position of anger, but that anger must be sculpted into something more than simple sloganeering if it is to have any intrinsic artistic value.

Bernard MacLaverty read out his short story A Belfast Memory. The story was set in Belfast during the narrator’s childhood. At the very end of the story he tells you that he is looking back fifty years or more.

The details are carefully chosen and you can see the ‘serious Hugo’ who is ‘trying to grow a beard’ and Tom Lennon ‘the human ashtray’ who tilts his head to the ceiling so that you can only see the whites of his eyes and dislodges ash on to his waistcoat. The importance of the narrator’s father is established early on and the image of paint from his brush dispersing through a jar of water is beautiful. It is only at the end, when the main action is apparently over, that you hear again about the father. Perhaps in reference to the Kipling story as well as the Bible, the end hinges on the goodness of the boy’s father and really it feels as though it is he, and not the facsimile of his work, which is valued ‘above rubies’.

Though the reading had already run over by five minutes, Bernard opened the floor up for questions and it was wonderful to hear him turn round fairly mundane queries about writing habits in order to conjure the peculiar magic of his storytelling methods. He made it sound like a kind of archaeological dig – reaching within himself for ideas and associations and coming up with something original ‘out of the dereliction ‘of his mind. I would have liked for him to have continued for a little longer but there was no time left. Though there was a lot to be said for the contrast between the two writers and the way in which they complemented each other, it might have been even better to have them individually. There was so much material that they could easily have filled two rooms and two hours.
___


Laura Joyce runs the Red Shoes Workshop in Manchester and has a blog at www.metafiction.wordpress.com.

Six by Six

Six by Six is a collaborative project between MMU Cheshire’s creative writing and Stockport University’s illustration courses. The result is a self-published zine modestly held together by a staple.

Collaboration between author and illustrator is no new thing, but it's not so often that two schools within a university cross over and work together, let alone two separate universities. No doubt both illustrator and author were slightly apprehensive about the venture; The illustrator coming face to face with their first client, visions of a demanding author unwilling to give the illustrator creative freedom, and wanting complete control. The writers fearing to place their babies into the arms of a wayward illustrator who will perceive things incorrectly or take the visuals too far. But the collaborations worked and that is why I find myself here, in the grand setting of Manchester’s Town Hall. It was my first visit and I was immediately filled with awe and emotion which I had never previously felt for a building. The architecture set my expectations high.

A glass of wine grounded my emotions and I sat before a slideshow projection of the illustrations featured within the zine. It was a shame to see that the room was not full, a small gathering of mostly students. Fortunately, like most student events, there was free wine to relax everyone into the evening. I felt like climbing to the tip of the Town Hall’s clock and calling “Come on Manchester, show your support! These kids are your creative future.” But I didn’t drink enough wine to do that.

Both authors and illustrators approached the microphone to speak about their work, for a lot of them this seemed to be their first experience of public speaking. It is always a daunting task but, despite the odd hunched over figure reading into their chests, the majority spoke confidently and clearly. I was seduced by the voice of one particular young man who read about war, his tone was soothing and spaced, if his career in fiction did not take off I am sure he will make his million reading audio books!

Each author read a short extract of their work and were asked questions regarding their approach to writing and their feelings towards collaboration.The illustrators fit the stereotype: They gave modest responses to questions posed to them by the creative writing course leader (who acted confidently as host for the evening). I was interested to see the variety of collage and vectorised illustrations skillfully accomplished with the aid of a computer and Adobe Creative Suite. Yet I was slightly disappointed by the lack of hand rendered illustration given the rising trend in hand made craft, and fragile drawings. However this does not dampen their talent and ability as illustrators.

The event was slightly clumsily put together but this can be put down to the inexperience of the organisers. Illustrations flickered on the white sheet-like screens, not quite appropriate to the fiction being read. The microphone popped and cackled as it was placed in and out of the stand. But it all added to the charm of the evening, along with these fresh-faced and nervous beings about to embark on their careers as a creative. All in all the students showed great potential.

As I entered the stairwell I was once again struck with awe. Vast arches, intricate design detail that becomes lost and found. The architecture seemed to represent endless possiblities, not only for these students, but for all of Manchester’s creative students. All of whom will one day go on to form their own part of the beatutiful and complex architecture of Manchester’s creative industry. Another thing for our city to be proud of.


_____

Mandi Goodier is a graphic designer and artist bookmaker.
www.stickittothemand.blogspot.com
www.mandgoodier.co.uk

Rainy City Stories: Writing About Place

A creative writing workshop with David Gaffney

It would be appropriate to begin by writing about the place, but I feel this may mislead you. The weather was dull and wet, appropriate as it was a Rainy City Stories event, the venue itself, Friends Meeting House, was a little bland, white walls, brown carpet, a cluster of tables formed into one large one. None of this reflects the mood of the event. Torn-out pages from a Manchester road atlas lay scattered across the table for no other purpose than to add a bit of ambiance. Pretty soon we were all sat around the cluster of tables and people became the walls, people from a multitude of backgrounds - journalists, screen writers, wannabe novelists, academic writers, self publishers.

Writer David Gaffney, largely associated with the ‘flash fiction’ genre, sat at the head of the table with a check list of points for this flash course in writing about place. Our first exercise was to write down three things we noticed on our journey to the Friends Meeting House, and share our observations. A variety of things were mentioned: big issue sellers, filmy street pavements, the old disused Odeon, the hat shop opposite Albert Square. Most were somehow personal to the person; the places associated with memories or with things that interested them. We learned that in order to write convincingly about place we need to separate ourselves from the environment and put a character in our place. What would they see on that same journey?

Gaffney then proceeded to tell us an anecdote regarding a lady who sadly lost her sight. She asked her husband to describe the streets, what was happening on them, what could he see? He began “Well there’s a sign over there 10 to 1 on United vs Liverpool game. That pub has an offer, two main courses for a fiver,” and so on. She stopped him and said, “Now start again, only this time tell me what I would see.”

Gaffney spoke comprehensively on the subject, mentioning how other authors approached writing about place. How authors such as Ballard and Will Self would use psychogeography and algorithmic walking. He also showed a few examples of how not to write about place. Much to my personal pleasure one example was taken from Dan Brown’s The De Vinci Code . We discussed a passage and decided it was too heavy in information, it didn't tell us anything about the story or how the protagonist was seeing the surrounding section of Paris. Gaffney then informed us that it was what is known as a ‘research dump.’ It doesn’t really have a place in the text, but it does show that the author has researched.

Another ‘how not to...’ came from Bill Bryson. We all scowled when Gaffney spoke of how he dismissed our beloved city in print. His point was that everyone perceives things differently, so when writing about place try to explore the place yourself, do not rely on the words and opinions of a (unreliable and very very incredibly wrong) travel writer.

Our final task was to write a few sentences about a character and their mood within a place. Gaffney handed us a list of variables which we then selected and swapped with our neighbours. I was handed this combination of variables: a 20-year-old girl, who is an art student, situated in a snowy church yard, feeling happy. I had it easy, I was a 20-year-old art student not so long ago. Others found themselves writing about divorced 40-year-old taxi drivers in an art gallery or an unhappily married man on a Sunday afternoon in Eccles. We shared our flash fictions. It was great to see that in the space of ten minutes everyone had managed to conjure up a glimpse of a story and the beginnings of a character.

If you want to know how to write, well, I am afraid nobody can answer that. If you want to know how to write about place, David Gaffney can take you halfway there. There are no rules, but there are devices, tools and methods that can help you. The best way to write about place is to experience the place yourself and view it through another's eyes. That, and this little equation I wrote down: Story + Character + Place = Whole.

Now I am off to write a short fiction which I will the submit to rainycitystories.com

___

Mandi Goodier is a graphic designer and artist bookmaker.
www.stickittothemand.blogspot.com
www.mandgoodier.co.uk