I’ve scuttled back under my duvet for this week’s pebble inspection.

I take another run at a piece I discussed back in episode two, following feedback and some fairly substantial rewrites.

I wonder whether diorama is the right word, I take time to appreciate noise-cancelling headphones and the physics of helium balloons, all while a one-hundred-foot-tall skeleton haunts the streets and skies of London and I start seeing double.

Books mentioned:

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius By Dave Eggers

Grief Is A Thing With Feathers By Max Porter

The Year Of Magical Thinking By Joan Didion

New episode every Friday.

www.jamesgraywriter.co.uk

Breaking out from under the duvet, this time recording in a French kitchen at the foot of Mont Blanc.

A different format this week, the Pebble Inspector Podcast looks back at the last few months of reading during the Creative Writing & Literature Studies Master’s course at Lancaster University.

Over an hour and a quarter of me reeling off 40 titles with no notes or plan but what I remember of them. I also completely forgot to mention two entire books but I’m on holiday so I’m not rerecording (listed below).

Works cited:

The Tent Margret Atwood

The Heart In Winter Kevin Barry

The Years Annie Ernaux

The Truth About Babies Ian Sansom

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers

Short Cuts & Will You Please Be Quiet? Raymond Carver

Selected Poems Thomas Kinsella 

Grief Is A Thing With Feathers

Ant Colony Michael Deforge

A Shock Keith Ridgeway

Salt Slow Julia Armfield

West: A Journey Through the Landscapes of Loss Jim Perrin

A New Path To The Waterfall Raymond Carver 

In Another Country David Constantine 

The Third Policeman Flann O’Brien

The Power Naomi Alderman

The Testaments Margret Atwood

Go Tell It On The Mountain James Baldwin

Essex Serpent Sarah Perry

A Maggot John Fowles

Paradise Toni Morrison

Gilead Marilynne Robinson

Hey Nostradamus Douglas Coupland

Home Fire Kamilla Shamsie 

Fen Daisy Johnson

Constellations: Reflections From Life Sinead Gleeson

Topographia Hibernica Blindboy Boatclub

Rock As Gloss Mark Goodwin

The Emigrants W.G. Sebald

Selected Poems Paul Celan 

Paris: A Poem Hope Mirrlees

The Waves Virginia Woolf

Endgame Samuel Beckett

Intimations Zadie Smith

The Periodic Table Primo Levi

Dance Move Wendy Erskine

Possession A. S. Byatt

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men David Foster Wallace

The Dangers Of Smoking In Bed Mariana Enriquez

Poetries In English

Not mentioned but also read:

The Gospel Of Órla Eoughan Walls

The Dalkey Archive Flann O’Brien

New episode every Friday.

www.jamesgraywriter.co.uk

Back under the duvet for another episode of the Pebble Inspector Podcast. This week I take a look at an early draft of a piece all about being born, if not in a barn, then pretty close. Expect giant unkillable turkeys, lambs in need of a Panadol and a never ending winter.

The book mentioned is Constellations: Reflections From Life by Sinéad Gleeson

New episode every Friday.

www.jamesgraywriter.co.uk

I once again risk heat stroke by sitting under a duvet during a heatwave to record this week’s episode.

This week we look at a second piece of writing as part of my dissertation, its an encyclopedia of sorts, all about growing up and becoming an adult and the 90’s and Nintendos and Cantona and cancer and psychology and castles.

I also talk about the following books:

- Four Stars: A Life In Review by Joel Golby

- A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

- The Truth About Babies: From A - Z (I get this wrong in the ‘cast but we roll) by Ian Sansom (I get that bit right)

- The Years by Annie Ernaux

New episode every Friday.

www.jamesgraywriter.co.uk

In this episode we have a first look at this week’s work in progress.

Plus: A hundred foot tall inflatable skeleton, the death of Princess Diana and a few mummy-issues. I try to work out if my story is going anywhere and if so, where. I nearly die of heat exhaustion under a duvet during recording and have to finish the rest in my pants.

Book mentioned: Grief Is A Thing With Feathers by Max Porter

www.jamesgraywriter.co.uk

A debrief on who I am and what to expect from The Pebble Inspector Podcast. Some extracts of my work, what I've been reading recently and what's coming next.

New episode every Friday.

www.jamesgraywriter.co.uk