I recorded the podcast this month in Den Bosch, in the Netherlands, while my daughter did some work experience at Antigif branding and design studio.

For the full interview with Dr. Anjana Khatwa, tune in to The Spark wherever you listen to podcasts.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

Here are the recommended reads for August.

Kindred by Octavia Butler (1979)Dana's 26th birthday celebration ends when she's ripped from 1976 California and thrust onto a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. Her mission: keep alive the white boy who will grow up to assault her ancestor—because without him, she'll never be born. Every trip back grows more dangerous. Dana feels the lash, wears the chains, endures the daily terror that defined millions of lives. She can't just read about slavery's horrors—she lives them, bleeds from them, nearly breaks under them.

The Past by Tessa Hadley (2015)Three sisters and a brother, complete with children, a new wife, and an ex-boyfriend’s son, descend on their grandparents’ dilapidated old home in the Somerset countryside for a final summer holiday. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past—their mother took them there to live when she left their father—but now, they may have to sell it. And beneath the idyllic pastoral surface lie tensions. As the family’s stories and silences intertwine over the course of three long, hot weeks, small disturbances build into familial crises, and a way of life—bourgeois, literate, ritualized, Anglican—winds down to its inevitable end.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (2019)I received this from the Big Green Bookshop’s Book Club.

1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives—their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes—emerge through a panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction.

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

If you’re in London on September 13th, come along to the Story Feast Lit Fest celebrating ESEA (East and South East Asian) stories and authors. It’s at SOAS University of London and tickets are free.

Mslexia’s 2025 Adult Novel Competition is open until September 22nd. Send the first 5,000 words and be ready to submit your finished manuscript if you get longlisted.

The Outland Publishing Fair, which represents a curated selection of self-published titles by Chinese and Sino-diasporic practitioners, was meant to be in September but it has been postponed. I’ve applied for a space at a shared table there. Look for @outlandpublishingfair on Instagram for the new date.

👣 My moseying

I did not win the Developing Your Creative Practice grant from the Arts Council. However, I’ll apply again in the next round.

My short story collection, Staring into the Sun, was a semifinalist in the Autumn House Press 2025 Nonfiction Prize!

Big news: I’ve signed the contract to publish Staring into the Sun with Ten16 Press in May 2026 (Asian American and Pacific Islanders month in the U.S.). The book links memoir and narrative nonfiction about my Chinese American family. Spanning 1895-2015, look out for a millionaire, a magician, and a model. Ten16 Press will publish the paperback and ebook. With the same release date, I will self-publish the audio book, narrating the four memoir chapters.

Kate Hammer

will narrate the historical creative nonfiction chapters and Anthony at Mercury Calling Audio will produce it. I started researching and writing this book in January 2017 and to finally have a publication deal is an enormous joy. Staring into the Sun celebrates and honors my ancestors.

If you can’t wait until next May to read the stories, subscribe for free on Substack to get them sent to your inbox every Saturday through the end of 2025. More info, links to each installment, and sign up are here. The free subscription is for Staring into the Sun serialization as well as The Spark monthly newsletter.

I’m still writing my novel and meeting with my writing group every three weeks.

📊 Tracked on Chill Subs

Short story collection submissions to small presses & awards⏱️ 4 pending🚫 11 rejected↩️ 3 withdrawn🥉 1 semi-finalist🎉 1 publication offer!🟰 20 total

Novel prize submissions of my work in progress⏱️ 2 pending🚫 2 rejected🟰 4 total

🎙️ Author interview with Dr. Anjana Khatwa

I met Dr. Anjana Khatwa at the Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers, founded by Natasha Carthew. The event was held on the stunning roof terrace of Hachette in London.

Dr. Anjana Khatwa is an award-winning earth scientist who has worked for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and the National Trust. Dr. Khatwa has contributed to and presented TV programmes for the BBC as well as ITV. She has been given the Geographical Award for public engagement by the Royal Geographical Society, the RH Worth Award by the Geological Society of London and the Halstead Medal from the Geologists' Association. In 2021, she received a National Diversity Award in recognition of her work to champion inclusion within earth science and natural heritage, and the same year was longlisted for the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing. She lives with her family in Dorset in a house filled with rocks and fossils collected from all over the world. The Whispers of Rock is her first book.

In The Whispers of Rock earth scientist Anjana Khatwa asks us to think again, and listen to their stories. Boldly alternating between modern science and ancient wisdom, Khatwa takes us on an exhilarating journey through deep time, from origins of the green pounamu that courses down New Zealand rivers to the wonder of the bluestone megaliths of Stonehenge, from the tuff-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, to Manhattan’s bedrock of schist. In unearthing those stories and more, Khatwa shows how rocks have always spoken to us, and we humans to them. She delicately intertwines Indigenous stories of Earth’s creation with our scientific understanding of its development, deftly showing how our lives are intimately connected to time’s ancient storytellers.

Through tales of planetary change, ancient wisdom, and contemporary creativity, The Whispers of Rock offers the hope of reconnection with Earth. With Khatwa as your guide, you won’t simply hear rocks speak; you, too, will feel the magic of deep time seep into your bones.

Anjana can be found on Instagram, Bluesky, and on her website, anjanakhatwa.com.

Photo credit: Rob Coombe.

Tune in to the The Spark podcast for the full interview.

📙 Where to find my writing

Staring into the Sun on Substack, weekly through the end of 2025.

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, The Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who.

You can listen to The Spark on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it would mean the world to me. And please share it with your reading and writing friends!

Music and mixing by [email protected].

Thanks for reading The Spark! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Share The Spark

I recorded the podcast this month in Den Bosch, in the Netherlands, while my daughter did some work experience at Antigif branding and design studio.

For the full interview with Dr. Anjana Khatwa, tune in to The Spark wherever you listen to podcasts.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

Here are the recommended reads for August.

Kindred by Octavia Butler (1979)Dana's 26th birthday celebration ends when she's ripped from 1976 California and thrust onto a Maryland slave plantation in 1815. Her mission: keep alive the white boy who will grow up to assault her ancestor—because without him, she'll never be born. Every trip back grows more dangerous. Dana feels the lash, wears the chains, endures the daily terror that defined millions of lives. She can't just read about slavery's horrors—she lives them, bleeds from them, nearly breaks under them.

The Past by Tessa Hadley (2015)Three sisters and a brother, complete with children, a new wife, and an ex-boyfriend’s son, descend on their grandparents’ dilapidated old home in the Somerset countryside for a final summer holiday. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past—their mother took them there to live when she left their father—but now, they may have to sell it. And beneath the idyllic pastoral surface lie tensions. As the family’s stories and silences intertwine over the course of three long, hot weeks, small disturbances build into familial crises, and a way of life—bourgeois, literate, ritualized, Anglican—winds down to its inevitable end.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (2019)I received this from the Big Green Bookshop’s Book Club.

1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives—their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes—emerge through a panorama of history, fairytale, romance and science fiction.

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

If you’re in London on September 13th, come along to the Story Feast Lit Fest celebrating ESEA (East and South East Asian) stories and authors. It’s at SOAS University of London and tickets are free.

Mslexia’s 2025 Adult Novel Competition is open until September 22nd. Send the first 5,000 words and be ready to submit your finished manuscript if you get longlisted.

The Outland Publishing Fair, which represents a curated selection of self-published titles by Chinese and Sino-diasporic practitioners, was meant to be in September but it has been postponed. I’ve applied for a space at a shared table there. Look for @outlandpublishingfair on Instagram for the new date.

👣 My moseying

I did not win the Developing Your Creative Practice grant from the Arts Council. However, I’ll apply again in the next round.

My short story collection, Staring into the Sun, was a semifinalist in the Autumn House Press 2025 Nonfiction Prize!

Big news: I’ve signed the contract to publish Staring into the Sun with Ten16 Press in May 2026 (Asian American and Pacific Islanders month in the U.S.). The book links memoir and narrative nonfiction about my Chinese American family. Spanning 1895-2015, look out for a millionaire, a magician, and a model. Ten16 Press will publish the paperback and ebook. With the same release date, I will self-publish the audio book, narrating the four memoir chapters.

Kate Hammer

will narrate the historical creative nonfiction chapters and Anthony at Mercury Calling Audio will produce it. I started researching and writing this book in January 2017 and to finally have a publication deal is an enormous joy. Staring into the Sun celebrates and honors my ancestors.

If you can’t wait until next May to read the stories, subscribe for free on Substack to get them sent to your inbox every Saturday through the end of 2025. More info, links to each installment, and sign up are here. The free subscription is for Staring into the Sun serialization as well as The Spark monthly newsletter.

I’m still writing my novel and meeting with my writing group every three weeks.

📊 Tracked on Chill Subs

Short story collection submissions to small presses & awards⏱️ 4 pending🚫 11 rejected↩️ 3 withdrawn🥉 1 semi-finalist🎉 1 publication offer!🟰 20 total

Novel prize submissions of my work in progress⏱️ 2 pending🚫 2 rejected🟰 4 total

🎙️ Author interview with Dr. Anjana Khatwa

I met Dr. Anjana Khatwa at the Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers, founded by Natasha Carthew. The event was held on the stunning roof terrace of Hachette in London.

Dr. Anjana Khatwa is an award-winning earth scientist who has worked for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and the National Trust. Dr. Khatwa has contributed to and presented TV programmes for the BBC as well as ITV. She has been given the Geographical Award for public engagement by the Royal Geographical Society, the RH Worth Award by the Geological Society of London and the Halstead Medal from the Geologists' Association. In 2021, she received a National Diversity Award in recognition of her work to champion inclusion within earth science and natural heritage, and the same year was longlisted for the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing. She lives with her family in Dorset in a house filled with rocks and fossils collected from all over the world. The Whispers of Rock is her first book.

In The Whispers of Rock earth scientist Anjana Khatwa asks us to think again, and listen to their stories. Boldly alternating between modern science and ancient wisdom, Khatwa takes us on an exhilarating journey through deep time, from origins of the green pounamu that courses down New Zealand rivers to the wonder of the bluestone megaliths of Stonehenge, from the tuff-hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, to Manhattan’s bedrock of schist. In unearthing those stories and more, Khatwa shows how rocks have always spoken to us, and we humans to them. She delicately intertwines Indigenous stories of Earth’s creation with our scientific understanding of its development, deftly showing how our lives are intimately connected to time’s ancient storytellers.

Through tales of planetary change, ancient wisdom, and contemporary creativity, The Whispers of Rock offers the hope of reconnection with Earth. With Khatwa as your guide, you won’t simply hear rocks speak; you, too, will feel the magic of deep time seep into your bones.

Anjana can be found on Instagram, Bluesky, and on her website, anjanakhatwa.com.

Photo credit: Rob Coombe.

Tune in to the The Spark podcast for the full interview.

📙 Where to find my writing

Staring into the Sun on Substack, weekly through the end of 2025.

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, The Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who.

You can listen to The Spark on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it would mean the world to me. And please share it with your reading and writing friends!

Music and mixing by [email protected].

Thanks for reading The Spark! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Share The Spark

For the full interview with Virginia Evans, tune in to The Spark wherever you listen to podcasts.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

Here are my pick ‘n’ mix recommendations for July.

Stoner by John Williams (1965)William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

Misspelled Paradise: A Year in a Reinvented Colombia by Bryanna Plog (2014)What does “Colombia” bring to mind? This South American country has sometimes been misrepresented, only known for cocaine, guerrilla groups, coffee, and Shakira’s hips. In 2011, Bryanna Plog spent a year in the country to find out what the headlines might be missing (headlines, that let’s face it, sometimes misspelled the country as “Columbia.”).As a volunteer middle school English teacher in an impoverished community outside of Cartagena, Colombia, Plog recounts with delightfully understated wit her year traveling Colombia’s cities, deserts, and rain forests (fairly successful ventures), her attempts to hold class on a regular schedule (less successful), and her quest to eat meals that didn’t include rice (a complete and utter failure).Through her teaching and traveling, Plog realizes Colombia is a place closer to a paradise than a country supposedly off-limits to travelers. Instead of having to survive encounters with drug cartels or avoiding kidnappings, Plog discovered her biggest problems included trying to get her students to pay attention in class, the country’s strangely undrinkable coffee, and the searing Caribbean heat.

Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and Homecoming by Ava Chin (2023)As the only child of a single mother in Queens, Ava Chin found her family’s origins to be shrouded in mystery. She had never met her father, and her grandparents’ stories didn’t match the history she read at school. Mott Street traces Chin’s quest to understand her Chinese American family’s story. Over decades of painstaking research, she finds not only her father but also the building that provided a refuge for them all.Breaking the silence surrounding her family’s past meant confronting the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first federal law to restrict immigration by race and nationality, barring Chinese immigrants from citizenship for six decades. Chin traces the story of the pioneering family members who emigrated from the Pearl River Delta, crossing an ocean to make their way in the American West of the mid-nineteenth century. She tells of their backbreaking work on the transcontinental railroad and of the brutal racism of frontier towns, then follows their paths to New York City.In New York’s Chinatown she discovers a single building on Mott Street where so many of her ancestors would live, begin families, and craft new identities. She follows the men and women who became merchants, “paper son” refugees, activists, and heads of the Chinese tong, piecing together how they bore and resisted the weight of the Exclusion laws. She soon realizes that exclusion is not simply a political condition but also a personal one.

If you’d like further inspiration, Backstory bookshop’s theme for July is books published in your birth year.

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

The lovely folks at Collaborist are still offering a review of 25 pages of your writing to give their intern Maddy more experience. Email them at [email protected].

Split Lip Press is open for submissions of novel and novella manuscripts until September 1st.

C&R Press is open for three categories of book awards—poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction—until September 16th.

👣 My moseying

Yesterday I had an hour-long call with Jason, Ben, and Maddy at Collaborist to review the first 25 pages of my work-in-progress novel. They had some really insightful points about having too many characters in the first scene, upping the tension and stakes in my second scene, and not writing to a word count…

…which is great advice—except that I’m aiming for 20,000 words by the end of July, in case I get long-listed for any of the prizes I submitted to in May. I’m almost at 9,000 words now and scribbling away on it.

I’m finalizing my contract to publish my short story collection, Staring into the Sun. The plan is to serialize it for free on Substack, then pull the online version before publication, which should be May 2026. And I’ll be narrating the four memoir chapters of the audio book, with another narrator covering the other five chapters. I’m super excited about all of this and can’t wait to tell you more.

Also near the end of July will be the news from the Arts Council about my application for the Developing Your Creative Practice grant. Fingers crossed!

📊 Tracked on Chill Subs

Short story collection submissions to small presses⏱️ 9 pending🚫 9 rejected (some of which were super lovely)🤫 1 secret something🎉 1 publication offer!🟰 20 total

Novel prize submissions of my work in progress⏱️ 3 pending

🎙️ Author interview with Virginia Evans

The S**t No One Tells You About Writing podcast (my daughter says that the only time I swear is when I mention the podcast) helps find comparative titles to authors’ works-in-progress. These comps, as they’re known, are included as references for genre, voice, tone, and setting (i.e. vibes!) in letters to prospective agents and publishers. When I asked for comps for my novel, Emily from East City Bookshop in Washington, D.C. suggested The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.

I promptly listened to the audiobook, which is masterfully narrated by a huge cast, and loved it.

Virginia Evans attended James Madison University for her bachelor’s in English literature. After starting a family, she went back to school for her master’s of philosophy in creative writing at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where she had the good fortune to study under Carlo Gébler, Eoin McNamee, Claire Keegan, Harry Clifton and Kevin Power. She now lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with her husband, Mark, two children, Jack and Mae, and her Red Labrador, Brigid.

In the interview, Virginia mentions Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr, and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller.

You can find Virginia at virginiaevansauthor.com and on Instagram as @virginia.l.evans.

Tune into the The Spark podcast for the full interview.

📙 Where to find my writing

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who.

You can listen to The Spark on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it would mean the world to me. And please share it with your reading and writing friends!

Music and mixing by [email protected].

Interview with Eleanor Anstruther

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

Dive into these literary explorations of familial relationships, mental health, community, and friendships. Plus some am-dram (amateur dramatics) and theater.

In Judgement of Others by

Eleanor Anstruther

(2025)The Midhurst Amateur Dramatic Society are putting on a production of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and Tessa has agreed to play a part. But when she suffers a psychotic episode, Ros, a C-list celebrity and new to the community, takes her place. In this darkly comic tale of psychosis in the Home Counties, the stage is set for a blistering examination of mental illness, how we treat it and why we don't. While Tessa is sectioned in a secure psychiatric hospital, the relationships in the community unravel, and by the time she's released, all that we thought we knew, and all of our judgements, are thrown into question.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (2023)In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (2025)Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

If you’d like further inspiration, Backstory bookshop’s theme for the month is “Books set in the future.”

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

Ann in my writing group recommended Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison. I’m enjoying this exploration of more organic, nature-inspired narrative structures compared to the typical narrative arc, three-act setup, or hero’s journey.

This month’s guest, Eleanor Anstruther, who champions all writers as independent artists, suggested joining ALLi: The Alliance of Independent Authors. My browser tab is open to sign up so I can get help reviewing my publishing contract (!!).

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably heard of

Jane Friedman

. This authority on all things publishing recently featured on the London Writers’ Salon podcast. I love her 30,000-foot view of the publishing industry: in these times of nervousness about AI, she reminds us of naysayers of the word processor (which would take away women’s typing jobs!!) and even the printing press itself. She considers AI as an intern: it can do legwork for you, but you need to check its output. If you want to know more about routes to publication, it’s worth perusing Jane’s super-useful Key Book Publishing Paths.

The Hope Prize is open for submissions, deadline October 31.

The lovely folks at Collaborist are offering a review of 25 pages of your writing to give their intern Maddy more experience. Email them at [email protected].

👣 My moseying

Some friends from my Bologna days in the 1990s got in touch and asked to write about my experiences. The article in vox@bo is followed by my flash fiction story, “His Bones.” More info and links are on my website.

I submitted the first 5,000 words of my work-in-progress novel to three prizes: the Bridport First Novel Award, the BPA (Blue Pencil Agency) First Novel Award, and the First Novel Prize. These deadlines at the end of May fueled me to write and edit the first three chapters of my book. Many thanks to the beta readers who gave feedback. The Bath Novel Award would require a full manuscript of longlisted entries, so I didn’t enter that one: I didn’t want to enter it hoping not to get longlisted since I don’t have that many words finished. The others require 10,000-15,000 more words by the end of July, which is feasible.

I’ve ordered four more copies of Tomorrow There Will Be Sun directly from Australia since the UK copies are sold out.

My Instagram account name was the16stories, the original title of my short story collection. Now I’m myself: @madelynpostman.

📊 Tracked on Chill Subs

Short story collection submissions to small presses⏱️ 12 pending🚫 6 rejected🎉 1 publication offer!🟰 19 total

Novel prize submissions of my work in progress⏱️ 3 pending

🎙️ Author interview with Eleanor Anstruther

I came across Eleanor Anstruther on The Write and Wrong Podcast and she’s also been a guest on the London Writer’s Salon podcast. She has published both traditionally and independently, in that unusual order, and is working on a kitemark for indie authors. Listen to the Patreon supporters’ full version of The Write and Wrong episode for more on that initiative.

Eleanor was born in London, educated at Westminster School and studied History of Art at Manchester University where she was distracted from finishing her degree by a trip to India. She was lost and found for the next twelve years, starting a commune and traveling the world before finally settling down to write. Her acclaimed debut novel, A Perfect Explanation, was long listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the 2019 Not The Booker Prize. Her memoir, A Memoir in 65 Postcards & the Recovery Diaries, first serialized on Substack, was published in 2024 and her latest novel, In Judgement of Others, came out in January 2025. On Substack she writes The Literary Obsessive where she champions independent artists and runs the interview series 8Q.

In the interview, she mentions The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim and In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes. Here’s Eleanor’s 8Q (eight questions) with Chris Best, co-founder and CEO of Substack.

Eleanor’s website is eleanoranstruther.com.

📙 Where to find my writing

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who.

You can listen to The Spark on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it would mean the world to me. And please share it with your reading and writing friends!

Featuring an interview with memoir, fiction, and nonfiction writer Tessa McWatt.

This May, add some great reads to your list, submit your debut manuscript for awards, and see if my novel is indeed writing itself. For the full interview with Tessa McWatt, tune in to The Spark wherever you listen to podcasts.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

One young adult book, a literary novel, and an upmarket tale of an ill-fated couple.

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

Check out Eleanor Anstruther on Substack. I came across her on the Write and Wrong podcast and love how she champions self/indie publishing. Great news: she’ll be my guest in June!

Top tip for reviewing your writing: pop it into Word if it’s not there already, go to the Review tab and then choose Read Aloud. Great for catching awkward phrases and repeated words.

If you’re writing your debut novel and can get together a 300-word synopsis and 5,000 words by the end of May, check out the Bridport, Bath, Blue Pencil Agency, and First Novel prizes.

👣 Updates on my moseying

I’ve been busy putting together an application for a grant. More news about that in July, be it yay!! or nay.

My writing group is going strong, with our third meeting this coming weekend. I haven’t spent much time writing since last month’s update. So far, I’ve written a synopsis of my novel and am about 3,000 words in, aiming to get my submission ready for the four contests mentioned above.

Short story collection submissions to small presses — tracked on Chill Subs 📊⏱️ 15 pending🚫 4 rejected🎉 1 accepted by a hybrid publisher—I’m waiting to see what happens with the others🟰 20 total

🎙️ Author interview with Tessa McWatt

Tessa McWatt's memoir, Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging, won the OCM Bocas Prize for NonFiction 2020 and was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Prize and the Governor-General's Award. A professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia, she is also the author of seven novels and two books for young people. Her fiction has been nominated for the Governor General's Award, the City of Toronto Book Awards, the OCM Bocas Prize and the Society of Authors' Volcano Prize. She is one of the winners of the Eccles British Library Award 2018 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is also a librettist, and she works on interdisciplinary projects and community-based life writing. Born in Guyana, she grew up in Canada, and now makes her home in London, England.

Here’s the Instagram account for her new book, The Snag.

Tune into the The Spark podcast for the full interview!

Photo by Bill Knight.

📙 Where to find my writing

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who.

You can listen to The Spark on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it would mean the world to me. And please share it with your reading and writing friends!

Featuring an interview with memoir and short story author An Ngo Lang.

This April, add some short story collections to your list, sign up to a free writing sprint, and discover what I’ve dived into. For the full interview with An Ngo Lang, tune in to The Spark wherever you listen to podcasts.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

Three short story collections to add to your “To Be Read” list.

You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead

A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

The London Writers’ Salon is holding a free 24-hour writing sprint from 7pm BST (11am PT, 2pm ET) on Friday 25 April to 7pm BST on Saturday 26 April. Join for as few or as many 1-hour sessions as you’d like, starting at the top of each hour. See you there?

I heard Sanam Mahloudji, whose debut novel is The Persians, say on The Write and Wrong Podcast that writers should aim for 100 rejections per year. I love that reframing, in the “every no is one step closer to a yes” mindset. Or: “You’ve got to be in it to win it”!

Last autumn, Jessica Payne wrote “A How-To Guide: from Pantser to Plantser” on The Payneful Truth About Being a Writer. I’m finding it to be a very helpful reference.

👣 Updates on my moseying

In past episodes, I had mentioned my plans to write a nonfiction sustainability handbook for small businesses. This is now on the back burner because…

…I’ve started working on my novel! The inspiration is from a short story I wrote about a year and a half ago during a short story course at City Lit. I used Jessica Payne’s guide and hopped back and forth between Story Genius by Lisa Cron and Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody. I now have a logline, the synopsis, and a chapter outline. My aim is to have 25 chapters of about 3,500 words each and breaking it down into little chunks like this seems to make it “easy” (??) to write. (I think I’m going to end up eating these words.) I’m more than 1,500 words in!

I recently caught up with a friend from high school who, like me, spent a lot of time in Bologna. She did a creative writing MA at the University of East Anglia and I wanted to ask her about it. One thing led to the next and we’ve now formed a writing group together with a friend of hers and a fellow writer from the City Lit short story course. We’re all working on book-length manuscripts: fiction and memoir.

Short story collection submissions to small presses — tracked on Chill Subs 📊⏱️ 14 pending🚫 3 rejected🟰 17 total

Story submissions — tracked on Chill Subs 📊🏆 6 accepted🙅‍♀️ 7 withdrawn (accepted elsewhere)🚫 58 rejected🟰 71 total

🎙️ Author interview with An Ngo Lang

An Ngo Lang was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and fled with her family in 1975, resettling in Kansas and now living in Australia. She is a writer, actor, and model. Her writing appears in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, Leatherneck, The VVA Veteran, Kill Your Darlings, diaCritics, and more. To find out more about An, please visit her website anngolang.com. She is also on Instagram and Facebook.

Tune into the The Spark podcast for the full interview!

📙 Where to find my writing

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who!

You can listen to The Spark on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it would mean the world to me. And if you know other writers and readers, please share it!

Featured author: Holly Gramazio

This month I recorded under a duvet (best for sound quality) in Birmingham. I was up there to speak about ESG Expectations at FAB, the Festival of Accounting and Bookkeeping, on as part of my work at Grain Sustainability. Carbon accounting goes hand-in-hand with financial accounting. I’ve also been refining a keynote speech on sustainability which incorporates storytelling.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

March’s theme, thanks to Backstory London, is “New Beginnings.”

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker

Remainder by Tom McCarthy—sent to me through the Big Green Bookshop Book Club subscription

The Promised Land by Mary Antin

Share The Spark

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

The free, online Writer’s Workout conference, March 17-23

How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth

Lists on Bluesky, like the small presses I’m submitting to, and Tania Hershman’s hybrid writing starter pack

The inaugural Alternative Book Fair in London was held on March 5-8. Check out all the independent presses listed!

👣 Updates on my moseying

CanvasRebel’s mission is to create a space for artists, creatives and entrepreneurs to be able to learn from their peers through the magic and power of storytelling. My own life, writing, and sustainability work resonate with that mission, and I’m excited to be featured there. “Meet Madelyn Postman”

Learning from Becca Syme’s Better-Faster Academy about CliftonStrengths

More learning from Becca, on her QuitCast for Writers podcast, about #JOMO: the Joy Of Missing Out

Short story collection submissions to small presses — tracked on Chill Subs 📊⏱️ 10 pending🚫 3 rejected🟰 13 total

Queries to literary agents — tracked on QueryTracker 📊🤷‍♀️ 7 closed after no response to query letter🚫 2 rejections after reading query letter😭 2 rejections after reading full manuscript🟰 11 total

Story submissions — tracked on Chill Subs 📊🏆 6 accepted⏱️ 1 pending🙅‍♀️ 7 withdrawn (accepted elsewhere)🚫 57 rejected🟰 71 total

🎙️ Author interview with Holly Gramazio

Holly is a writer, game designer, and curator from Adelaide, living in Walthamstow in London. Her debut novel The Husbands is a comedy about a woman whose attic starts creating an infinite supply of husbands. It just came out in paperback.

She founded, and for five years directed, the experimental games festival Now Play This, and wrote the script for the award-winning video game Dicey Dungeons. She’s interested in rules, play, cities, gardens, games that get people acting creatively, stories that buy into a ridiculous premise and then really commit to it, and art that gets people interacting with their surroundings in new ways.

Listen to Holly on The Spark wherever you listen to podcasts (here’s a link to all platforms). Her reading recommendations are Living with Birds by Len Howard, The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay, and Memento Mori by Eunice Hong.

Holly can be found at hollygramazio.net, on Bluesky and Instagram, and you can sign up to her newsletter.

📙 Where to find my writing

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who!

You can listen to The Spark on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. Please take a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it would mean a the world to me. And if you know other writers and readers, please share it!

Featured author: Jason Buchholz

I’m excited about The Spark this month. Like last month, the spoken, podcast version is mostly improvised rather than simply reading out my written newsletter as I was doing previously. This time, I happen to be recording in the Austrian Alps—well, under a duvet in the Alps so I can keep the high sound quality ; )

It’s also the first month that our author interview is a recording of the author themself. Following a recommendation from a podcast listener, the interview will be at the end instead of the beginning. So sit (or drive, or walk) tight.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

Last year, the bookshop Backstory London had a reading challenge card to fill with books, like young adult, under 200 pages, and a book in translation. A friend and I called it Backstory Bingo. This year, the bookshop is suggesting one theme per month. January was “stories set in winter.” February is “one-word titles.” I’m not promising to follow Backstory’s theme every month, but I have some good ones this month.

* Orbital by Samantha Harvey

* Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide by Juliet Patterson

* Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

* The Great Beta Reader Match Up. Looking for beta readers? Submit your info and 3,000 words of your writing to Bianca Marais, founder of The S**t No One Tells You About Writing podcast, by March 2nd. The cost is $25. Almost two years on, I still have two amazing, active beta readers from the match up!

* The Writers’ Workout Conference, March 17th-23rd. “This free, virtual conference is designed to help you make the most of your time with short videos from presenters around the world.”

* On Writing by Stephen King. Entertaining and useful.

👣 Updates on my moseying

I took part in the Mslexia Agent Extravaganza earlier in February but there weren’t any agent bites or feedback on my pitch. I don’t think that seeking agent representation is the right way for me to go right now. I am continuing to submit my short story collection, Staring into the Sun, directly to small presses.

My next project will be a nonfiction book, the SME Sustainability Handbook, which ties in with my consulting business, Grain Sustainability. I’ll probably self-publish it.

Short story collection submissions to small presses — tracked on Chill Subs 📊⏱️ 7 pending🚫 2 rejected🟰 9 total

Queries to literary agents — tracked on QueryTracker 📊⏱️ 7 waiting for replies on query letter🚫 2 rejections after reading query letter😭 2 rejections after reading full manuscript🟰 11 total

Story submissions — tracked on Chill Subs 📊🏆 6 accepted⏱️ 2 pending🙅‍♀️ 7 withdrawn (accepted elsewhere)🚫 55 rejected🟰 70 total

🎙️ Author interview with Jason Buchholz

I first came across Jason Buchholz when I read his debut novel, A Paper Son, while researching my family history. Once I had a complete draft of my book manuscript, I realized that he and his colleague Ben LeRoy offer manuscript assessments as part of their offering at Collaborist. Jason’s feedback gave me confidence and encouraged me to stick with my project. It’s a pleasure to feature Jason as the first interview on The Spark with the author speaking. Here he is!

Jason can be found at jasonbuchholz.com, at Collaborist.org, and on Instagram as @jasondbuchholz.

📙 Where to find my writing

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.Buy in US | Buy in UK

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.Buy in US | Buy in UK

Find out more about me and my writing, including press coverage, on my website: madelynpostman.com.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who!

If you enjoy The Spark, please share, rate, and review it on your favorite podcast platform. On Substack, you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. I don’t think I actually have any reviews yet, so I’d really appreciate your review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Thanks for reading The Spark! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Trying something new this month: a bit of improvising! Most of the content is in the audio version only, with the full author interview and some links below. My submission stats are exclusive for newsletter readers this month (only because I forgot to read them out 🙃). Please let me know your thoughts on this new, improvised format.

📖 Author interview with Wiz Wharton

Wiz Wharton was born in London of Chinese-European heritage and is a prize-winning graduate of the National Film and Television School (NFTS). Her debut novel Ghost Girl, Banana was published in 2023 and deals with issues of identity, belonging and familial secrets. It was longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2024 and shortlisted for the Diverse Book Awards 2024. Adaptation rights have been optioned with Wharton on board as screenwriter and executive producer. In 2023 the Scottish Government Expo Fund named her as one of the 40 Authors Predicted to Set the Literary World Alight. She lives in the Scottish Highlands.

What inspires you?A lot of the obvious stuff, I suppose, like books and art and music, but across the whole spectrum of what I personally regard as creatively successful. I hate the phrase “teachable moment” but I’m often inspired as much by things I don’t particularly enjoy because it’s interesting to consider how I would have done them differently. Whatever the medium, or person, I’m hugely inspired by authenticity in all things because it speaks of fearlessness which is a state I’m constantly trying to get to, both in my writing and in life.

For me, writing is a way of evolving or making sense of the world so I’m obviously inspired by past experiences and past relationships although not in an autofiction way. Rather, it’s the feelings behind those stories that I like to explore. Finding the universal in the specific.

Do you have a writing routine?I’m lucky enough to write full-time now, although when I had an additional job it did oblige me to be more disciplined about the creative stuff so it’s been a learning curve! I always start the day with coffee and admin—writing or replying to emails, following up on invitations or filling out tax spreadsheets—all the things that keep the business side running. Before I was published, I didn’t really think much about this aspect, but it’s become something that solidifies writing as a job to me. Then I’ll turn off the internet and put my phone into do not disturb mode and sit down to whatever I’m working on, whether it’s my current book or a script. I’ll usually read back the previous day’s work and mark any new thoughts I’ve had without editing the pages themselves. I always leave the manuscript at a point where I can immediately dive into the writing itself when I return. Sometimes I’ll have left notes in the margin about what I’m trying to achieve in terms of plot or what a character wants in a scene. Sometimes I’ll have left mid-sentence! I learned this trick a few years ago and it definitely works for me.

People often think writing is just about getting words on the page, but I probably only spend about five or six hours a day on this, ending up at around 3pm, and some days I don’t write at all. The advice to write every day is more of an ideal than a reality for lots of people and like most rules about writing (which when you’re beginning are easy to regard as sacrosanct) it really has no bearing on whether or not you’ll be published. Incredible novels have come out of all sorts of situations.

Unless I’m on a particularly tight deadline, when my usual routine tends to go out of the window, I’ll spend the rest of the day doing things that revolve around writing, so reading and researching or watching films or TV. This feeds the analytic side of my brain and I always do it with a notebook in hand. I also advocate naps. It’s amazing what your mind comes up with when you’re not whipping it into submission!

The other thing I build into my routine is lots of walks with our dog, Wilson. The change of scene and the physical effect of being outdoors does wonders if I’m feeling stuck or need to think about the project in its entirety and what I’m trying to do with it.

My worst writing momentThe dreaded book two syndrome. With my debut I’d had considerable time to write without expectation and Ghost Girl, Banana was in pretty good shape by the time I even thought about submitting to agents. A second book is another prospect entirely because by then you’re already on the publishing carousel with all the other commitments that entails and I definitely felt the pressure. It’s not simply the dread of showing a really bad first draft to someone whose opinion you respect, it’s that debuts also tend to set out your stall as a writer, meaning that readers have expectations of you too. It took me a good year and four failed attempts at a second manuscript before I came to the realization that I—as my first audience—should actually be enjoying what I was writing, without becoming bogged down in whether it would sell or do well. Getting out of my own way was the key to finally landing on the right idea—the one that means something to me and that I would want to read. I definitely panicked myself into thinking I would never write another book, but it’s been a valuable lesson in trusting my gut.

My best writing momentThe best moments (plural) are undoubtedly getting to meet readers. The prize lists are wonderful but they’ll never beat the experience of talking to someone who thinks of your characters as real people and who have invested such time and emotion into their stories. So many have written to me saying that they felt seen by Ghost Girl, Banana and will remember it for a long time to come and that’s the kind of legacy that makes it all worthwhile. That particular novel is very much about coming to terms with being “other” and even growing to a place of empowerment with that knowledge, and from a personal perspective, readers have helped me in that journey too, not only validating me as a writer but as an individual.

What are you reading right now?Dear Dickhead by Virginie Despentes, which I am loving. I tend to gravitate towards books with similar themes to whatever I’m working on at any given moment and Despentes has a lot to say about feminism and sexuality and generational differences which speaks very strongly to what I’m trying to achieve in this second book. I haven’t read an epistolary novel since Where’d You Go, Bernadette and it’s a form I really enjoy when it’s done well, as this is! One of the reasons I’m loving it so much is because Despentes really nails the pathos-through-humor trick. To convey a sense of human fragility without recourse to sentiment or victimhood is very hard to pull off creatively and I’m in awe of her skill.

Book recommendationApart from the Despentes, I’ve read so many good things in the last twelve months, it would be hard to choose just one. I’d happily press into anyone’s hands Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan, or Trespasses by Louise Kennedy.

Where can we find you?I’ve more or less given up on social media, especially since Twitter got taken over by Musk, but I’ve retained my handle @Chomsky1. Maybe I’ll take the mothballs off it if it ever returns to its golden years. I’m slightly more active on Instagram @wizwharton although I have a love-hate relationship with social media, to be honest. It can be both a balm and a time-suck. Just write already!

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

* Returning Home with Glory: Chinese Villagers around the Pacific, 1849 to 1949 by Michael Williams

* Sour Heart: Stories by Jenny Zhang

* A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

* Backstory London’s monthly reading challenge

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

* The Writers’ Workout Fiction Potluck contest, “About an Egg.” I’m the judge! Up to 5,000 words, due February 20th.

* Mslexia Agent Extravaganza, February 3rd & 4th.

* Reedsy lists, e.g. Best Short Story Book Publishing Companies in UK and Best Short Fiction Independent Publishers in 2025.

👣 Updates on my moseying

I’m now submitting my short story collection, Staring into the Sun, directly to small presses. My next project will be a nonfiction book, the SME Sustainability Handbook, which ties in with my consulting business, Grain Sustainability. I’ll probably self-publish it.

Short story collection submissions to small presses — tracked on Chill Subs 📊⏱️ 1 pending🚫 1 rejected🟰 2 total

Queries to literary agents — tracked on QueryTracker 📊⏱️ 7 waiting for replies on query letter🕰️ 1 waiting for reply on full manuscript🚫 2 rejections after reading query letter😭 1 rejection after reading full manuscript🟰 11 total

Story submissions — tracked on Chill Subs 📊🏆 7 accepted⏱️ 3 pending🙅‍♀️ 7 withdrawn (accepted elsewhere)🚫 52 rejected🟰 69 total

📙 Where to find my writing

"Things My Dad Told Me" in Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the Hope Prize anthology published by Simon & Schuster Australia.

“Gold Mountain Diggers” in Issue 10 of Livina Press.

“His Bones” in Transformations, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology.

US and UK printed books plus ebook links are all available on my website.

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who!

If you enjoy The Spark, please share it, rate, and review on your favorite podcast platform or go to Substack where you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to the newsletter. I don’t think I actually have any reviews yet, so I’d really appreciate your contribution on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Thanks for reading The Spark! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This month brings an interview with a thriller author, a tip on moving to bluer skies, and a recommended novel about a daredevil pilot flying in blue skies.

📖 Author interview with Alex Pavesi

Alex Pavesi lives just outside of London, in Surrey, England, where he writes full time. He previously worked as a software engineer and before that obtained a Ph.D. in Mathematics. He enjoys puzzles, long walks, and recreational lock picking. His debut novel, Eight Detectives, published in 2020, was translated into more than twenty languages and was picked by the Sunday Times and the New York Times as one of their books of the year.

What inspires you?I write the books that I'd like to read: namely, thrillers that move in truly unpredictable directions and do things with the story that you don't expect. My biggest influence is probably the group of authors, active in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, who are often described as "postmodern". Paul Auster, John Fowles, Jeanette Winterson, etc. I am really excited by the idea of finding different ways to tell stories.

Do you have a writing routine?As I get further into my career, I spend more and more time planning my books. I don't have a routine for planning. It involves long walks, visits to coffee shops, and reading other books. But it's fairly chaotic. When it comes to actually putting words on the page, I try to treat it like a 9-to-5 and be at my desk for as much of that time as possible. I wrote my first book in coffee shops before work, for ninety minutes each morning. But I don't think that was sustainable long-term.

Writing’s biggest secret is…I'm a great proponent of time as a tool for writers. If you're not fully convinced by an idea, give it more time. Don't rush. The brain uses time in ways that are hard to understand. You could struggle for months to think of the ending for a story, then one day it will just come to you. You have to see this as one of the tools in your toolbox...though of course it can be hard to reconcile with deadlines and publishing schedules. I don't have a solution to that unfortunately.

My worst writing momentI scrapped several earlier versions of my second novel and started from scratch. Each time was more painful than the last. This is why I now spend more time planning.

My best writing momentMy first book was written out of order (anyone that reads it will probably understand why), but the opening chapter was written first and I've always been really happy with it. I knew as soon as I'd finished it that it would eventually grow into an entire novel.

What are you reading right now?I've just adopted a pair of kittens and have been struggling to concentrate on novels. So instead I've been working my way through the complete short stories of J.G. Ballard.

Book recommendationI always recommend the novels of Alison Moore, who publishes with a small independent press and so doesn't get the publicity a lot of lesser authors get. Her latest, The Retreat, might be my favourite. It's about a socially awkward woman struggling to fit in with her peers at an artists' retreat on a remote island. The sense of discomfort is sublime.

Where can we find you?I'm on Twitter/X as @pavesi_alex and on Bluesky as @AlexPavesi. My website is alexpavesi.com.

📚 Recommendations for ravenous readers

I was intrigued by the complex, interwoven structure of Alex Pavesi’s Ink Ribbon Red. Six friends gather every year—but this year is different. Anatol, the host, asks his friends to write short stories about murdering each other according to his “motive, murder, death” requirements. As a reader, it’s initially unclear which stories are the actual novel and which are the tales written by Anatol and his friends. Near the end, I was worrying, “What if I don’t understand anything?” but thankfully all was revealed, and I even patted myself on my back for noticing a few of the clues.

You’ve probably heard a few times by now about The Hope Prize anthology, Tomorrow There Will Be Sun. Though it’s a little cheeky of me to include my own writing as a recommendation, my story is only one of twenty in this hope-infused book. Australia’s former Prime Minister Julia Gillard says, “Tomorrow There Will Be Sun is more than just a book, it is hope in your hands.” From a young gay couple in Nigeria to a mother escaping an abusive partner, all the stories emerge from darkness into the light. All royalties go to Australia’s mental health charity Beyond Blue.

Maggie Shipstead’s historical and contemporary fiction novel Great Circle is a tour de force. Marian Graves is a daredevil pilot determined to complete a great circle: to circumnavigate the globe by flying over the North and South Poles. She sets off in the 1950s. Decades later, in the 2010s, actor Hadley Baxter plays Marian in a biopic. We follow Marian’s entire life story, even from before her birth. By the end of this 672-page book (I had to buy two extra 10-hour packs on Spotify Premium to get through it!), I was so invested in the characters that it felt like my heart was being torn out every time something happened to them.

✏️ Resources for wonderful writers

Have you noticed the X-odus? (And please may I claim credit for that coinage?) The writing community has pulled up its tent stakes and moved over to Bluesky en masse. Maybe some non-writers too, considering that 1 million people signed up in 24 hours. The Chrome extension Sky Follower Bridge is a super-easy way to check who you’re following on Twitter/X and follow them all on Bluesky with the click of a button. I’m running it every couple of weeks and every time there are more and more people flying over to where the sky is blue.

Particularly for short story and poetry writers, there are competitions all over the world you can enter. They’re useful for providing you with a deadline, getting published, and raising your profile. Short Story Comps on both Bluesky and X is a great place to find competitions—they tend to retweet/re-X/re-sky (??) calls for submissions. Chill Subs is also a fab source for many things including contest listings, though their Writing Contests section is getting a revamp at the moment, so there are fewer listings than usual. And check my Instagram on December 22nd for a fun announcement!

The Writer’s Routine podcast is where you can discover that everyone is different and there is no one “right” way to write. Host Dan Simpson starts each interview by asking what the writer sees around them at that moment, in their writing space. Of course he enquires about their routine as well, and then he picks up on writers’ responses to further explore their work and approaches. The weekly episodes cover a wonderful range of genres, from crime to fantasy, young adult to nonfiction. Fun fact: it’s where I first heard of Alex Pavesi.

👣 Updates on my moseying

It’s another month of writing updates! December saw in the publication of Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, together with a launch in Melbourne. I regretted the lack of teleportation technology to whisk me over there. The publicity team at Simon & Schuster Australia have been hard at work: the day before the launch, The Conversation Hour on ABC Radio Melbourne asked “How do we find hope?” and right toward the end of the hour, I had the opportunity to talk about my shortlisted short story and even mention my work in sustainability.

I came across Jason Buchholz, author of A Paper Son, when I was researching the Chinese side of my family. It turned out that he offered manuscript assessments through Collaborist, which he runs with publisher Ben LeRoy, so Jason provided the very first evaluation of my short story collection manuscript. Now, almost two years later, the duo kindly invited me as a guest on their podcast, Collaborcast. It was an honor and a pleasure to discuss my writing at length, responding to their thoughtful questions.

Check out my reading of “His Bones” at the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize anthology launch back in October! Transformations is available on Amazon US and Amazon UK.

I haven’t been writing much for the past six weeks or so, and over the winter break I’m looking forward to playing around with more tweaks to my short story collection while continuing to submit to agents. I also plan to work on two new short stories as well as my first full novel.

Queries to literary agents — tracked on QueryTracker 📊⏱️ 7 waiting for replies on query letter🕰️ 1 waiting for reply on full manuscript🚫 2 rejections after reading query letter😭 1 rejection after reading full manuscript🟰 11 total

Writing submissions — tracked on Chill Subs 📊🏆 7 accepted⏱️ 6 pending🙅‍♀️ 7 withdrawn (accepted elsewhere)🚫 48 rejected🟰 68 total

Most book links go to my Bookshop.org page, where sales are win-win-win, benefiting the authors, local bookstores, and my own writing—unlike using A-you-know-who!

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