Interview & great short story blog post

I am very honoured to have been interviewed by Andrew Philip, author of the excellent The Ambulance Box poetry collection, over on his blog today. He asked some great questions, even about my poetry - which is woeful and frankly almost non-existent! but I did use the word "sestina". Thanks for having me, Andy!

And also on the blogs, I really enjoyed Alison Wells' recent post, Growing Up To Be A Short Story Writer where she charts what she sees are the stages in the career of a short story writer:

Baby stage: Before I really began writing short stories I didn’t really know what they were. In fact I had a vague idea of what it was to be a writer at  all.  I probably hadn’t read very many. On the other hand I would have had the archetypal Problem-Conflict-Resolution structure imprinted on me from a household full of books and my love of reading. But I didn’t know if I really wanted to write short stories at all.

I really enjoyed this post, very thought-provoking in terms of our evolution as writers. Do we get stuck in one stage or are we moving smoothly through them all? I am still pondering that one. Read the full post here.