Category Archives: Awards

The Good, The Bad and the Uncertain

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I’ve kept thinking it’s time to do an update blog, but the longer I leave it the harder it feels. I do know that at the end of 2025, I felt relieved – a difficult year. Surely 2026 will be better. But not so far, other than one or two bright moments.

One of those bright moments was a story of mine being awarded second place in Redbud Writing Project’s Coppice Prize. It’s an old story, re-reading it felt a little strange, but I was very pleased to have won of course. It will be published in an anthology later this year. Another nice piece of news is that another old story that was published in 2012 is going to be republished in Raven Chronicles Press anthology “How the Light Gets In”.

And the rest? Well, the co-housing project David and I have been involved in since 2018 has proved unworkable for us, for various reasons. I did an enormous amount of work for it, mostly admin and research, but there were almost weekly zoom meets, in person meets and a property was finally bought after an incredibly stressful buying process. But in the end we realised it was not for us. I have spent most of the year in a process of grief about this, our dream of living in community, with lots of trees and land… not to be. And there is the issue of our financial investment being returned, which will happen, but we don’t know when. Our plan ‘B’ – to buy something ourselves, relies on getting this investment back.

And then there is my health. Needless to say the stress of the above hasn’t helped. But two things happened: a serious flare up of my sciatica (I have a prolapsed disc in my spine, pinching a nerve down my left leg). It had been managed really well with medication and strengthening exercises, but I then hurt the other side of my back and when that cleared up, the sciatica became intolerable. We doubled the medication, but that had the effect of almost destroying my short term memory and impairing my cognitive function, so I am trying to reduce, but it’s hard. I am seeing a physiotherapist, and being diligent with the exercises, but there are days where I am in almost intolerable pain. I’m waiting for another MRI, but that could take many, many months.

As if that wasn’t enough, I had a period. I’m 64 and haven’t had one for over 15 years. I was fast tracked for a pelvic ultrasound, which showed thickening of the lining of the womb, by almost double. I’m now fast tracked for a hysteroscopy under full anaesthetic to have a closer look at what is happening and to take a biopsy, as there is some chance that there is cancer. I don’t really go to worst case scenarios, but to once again have to have unpleasant things done to my body feels, well, not good to say the least. The procedure is happening on the 23rd of August, a week before my birthday.

What else? Ronan. Of course this is a greater worry for me than my own health, as always. He’s still quite wobbly after his adverse reaction to Solensia (two shots, last one last October), but the blood tests done early this year now show hyperthyroidism. He is also early stage CKD (chronic kidney disease) but I’ve known about this for a couple of years. However lately he’s been drinking too much, and this could mean worsening of CKD or hyperthyroidism … or? Well he’s getting blood tests done this week, so I should know soon. Please send good vibes his way!

He hates the many heat waves that have occurred and are still occurring, and spends most of his time under ‘his’ chair in the bedroom. I am trying to take him out three times a day as it seems to be the one thing that helps his ataxia (lack of coordination in the hindquarters) which is what the Solensia caused. Please, please, do not give your cat this drug, nor your dog Librela, which is the equivalent. It was supposed to help with arthritis pain but instead made him more or less disabled. I will never forgive myself for not researching the drug more carefully: It stops Nerve Growth Factor in the brain, which does stop pain signals, but of course NGF is needed for multiple functions in the body. Having joined the various Facebook groups I now know horrifyingly more than I ever wanted about this drug. Ronan possibly got off lightly (did it cause his hyperthyroidism?), as there are many animals who died or suffered truly awful side-effects. A very similar drug, tanezumab, was created for humans, but was pulled due to the side-effects in the trials. These drugs actually cause joint damage. There are a number of vets and neurological vets campaigning against use of Librela and Solensia and doing studies to show the damage they do. It is truly awful to see Ronan struggle to do things he could do last year.

To keep myself sane I’m trying to get back to another edit of my comic novel, Seagull Pie – set in Donegal and based on my own experience as a young teenager there. I have two fantastic friends helping me on this, who are insistent it should, will, be published. I do hope so.

Previous blogs of mine on my physical situation:
Stopping the Fight
The Untellable Tale
My Late-Stage Lyme Treatment
My Late-Stage Lyme Diagnosis
The Art of Illness: Part Two
The Art of Illness
Finding Home
Doctor, Doctor
44 Weeks
Still Suffering
ROCKS AND FLOWERS
Feeling Normal
The Real Story
The Unendurable, Part Two
The Unendurable
IT’S NOT COVID
More Things I Don’t Want To Talk About
On Being Invisible

ECLIPSE

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My cnf flash ECLIPSE has been awarded Runner Up in the WOW! Women on Writing Creative Nonfiction Essay contest. Second time I’ve placed in their competitions in six months! The other was for a previously published piece, What Men Want. Have a look at that post to read about this lovely organisation. I will also have another interview up soon. 

I’m in the midst of my first COVID infection which has been awful, so this is a bright light for me at the moment, so grateful. 

Many thanks to everyone at WOW! Women on Writing. What fantastic work you do for women writers!

Image by A Owen from Pixabay

WHAT MEN WANT (again)

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I’m super happy that my cnf flash What Men Want is Runner Up in the WOW! Women on Writing Creative Nonfiction Essay contest. I didn’t discover this amazing group until recently. They not only run competitions, but courses and articles, and they also list a number of writing resources on their website. Unusually they accept work that has already been published, which means this piece of mine gets a new lease of life, but more importantly the lovely emails I’ve had back and forth with the organisers were a highlight of the recent months for me – much needed as I’ve been in quite a funk. The emails were supportive, encouraging, personal. Most competitions don’t engage to this level. AND, I have an interview! WOW! asked me questions about the piece, about my writing process, and about the book I was commissioned to write from Story Machine (slated for publication later this year). You can read the interview here. 

Many thanks to all at WOW! Women on Writing. What great work you do for women writers!

WEIRD WINS

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Out Of The Blue – a creative non-fiction flash piece of mine won first place in Discourse Literary Journal’s June competition with the theme of ‘Weird’, a very short piece describing some strange/disturbing things. I wrote it some years ago as part of a daily practice of writing I call ‘A Page a Day’ and then very recently edited it for sending out. I have another short piece coming out in a month, also written some time ago and then recently edited.

That these pieces were buried in a pile of “old” writing and now are being made public somewhat astonishes me, and reminds me how powerful and productive the Page a Day process can be, and how much I wish I had kept at it – each day, every day. Another thing that these publications prove to me is what I so often say – that editing work is MUCH easier the longer you leave the writing in a drawer.

I talk about the Page a Day process in the Story Machines blog here. While this blog was written for those with chronic illness, the practice works for anyone, at any stage of writing.

Over the years I’ve had many short pieces published from this practice, and while I think the meme below is both funny and mostly true, I do know that I feel better, if not happier, when I write, and particularly if what I write speaks to others. 

I promise myself I’ll start a new Page a Day practice, today, but of course I won’t. I’m writing this blog instead. But I’m still promising myself! 

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KARAOKE GIRL WINS

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So Karaoke Girl which I entered into a little competition where you record yourself reading a flash piece, won first place. Thank you everyone who helped make this happen! Funny little competition, but always nice to be ‘a winner’! To listen, go here (YouTube).

Photo on the YouTube version by Tony Wan on Unsplash

Grindstone Literary Ltd 2020 International Novel Prize

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I was wondering why my phone was bombarded with tweets yesterday, I didn’t check what they were at the time as I was having a conversation with my better half in a café, a rare treat, and I didn’t want to interrupt that. And then I got home, and…. well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I’d forgotten I’d entered this wonderful, fairly new competition. And then to see my name, and the name of my novel, presented like this, I couldn’t believe it. Just last week I’d finished a truly gruelling ten month editing slog getting Seagull Pie ready for submission to The Literary Consultancy for manuscript assessment and mentorship (part of my prize for winning The Bridport Prize First Novel Award) and then I came down with my expected physical crash, bedridden for nearly a week. Well, as you can imagine, this news perked me up quite considerably! There are some exceptional writers on the short and long list so I am truly honoured to have won. Catherine Cho was the judge, an agent at the prestigious Madeleine Milburn Agency.

This really does feel like an extraordinary end to an extraordinary year. In some ways I have been lucky, focussing on editing the novel has given me some respite from the pandemic. Some structure to my day. It’s not been easy, although I’ve so far managed to avoid COVID, my health has had many unpleasant twists and turns, but I was so glad I had this one thing calling me, every day, this story that means so much to me.

Thank you all at Grindstone Literary for your hard work in this competition, and to all those who have said such lovely things on hearing my news. 

Bridport Prize Award for a First Novel 2019

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Judge Naomi Wood presenting the award

The Bridport Prize recently tweeted a link to a TV interview (see below) with me about my novel, Seagull Pie, winning The Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel. The tweet also said: “Dreams do come true.”

To win this prize, in such a prestigious competition, is a dream beyond my imaginings.

The whole process has been extraordinary: I actually forgot I’d entered the competition, and when, six months later I was told I’d made the longlist, I was stunned. To progress further I needed to send in an additional 10,000 words (my initial submission was 5000 words). By a stroke of luck, I had the words, I’d written them only a couple of months previously at the L’ATELIER writers retreat in France. But the words were very rough, entirely unedited. I had but a few days to send them in. I was in Brooklyn at the time, visiting friends. I worked frantically into the night. My friends barely set eyes on me.

I managed, but I knew the likelihood of being shortlisted with those rush-edited words was extremely slim.  Nevertheless, I ascertained the date when I’d be notified, as the next stage would require a further 15,000 words. Words I did not have. In just a couple of weeks I was due to attend the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Autobiography and Fiction with Electric Literature residency, a residency during which I was supposed to be working on a new project, a linked-flash novella, but thankfully the faculty did not mind me changing plans to work on Seagull Pie. In two weeks I worked harder than I ever have, and wrote 20,000 words. I had until the end of September to edit them, but given that another novel I recently finished went through over 50 drafts and took me nearly nine years to complete, this was all a very different writing experience for me.

I was positive I would remain on the long-list, and very happy to do so: there were 1,075 submissions for the award and twenty were long-listed.

I was absolutely stunned to be told I was shortlisted, and then, to win? I’m still reeling.

I feel I’ve had an affair with the Bridport Prize ever since the early days of my commitment to being ‘a writer’ (in my late 40’s). I’d thought of myself as a ‘novel writer’ most of my life (without writing more than a few pages of anything!). But, in 2007, after shelving a few chapters of an extremely questionable science fiction manuscript, I focussed on writing short stories. I entered a story into the Bridport Prize short story award in 2010. The story was a finalist, in the top 100 of 6000 entries. I was overjoyed, it seemed proof I could, actually, write. And then, just two years later, another story received a ‘Highly Commended’ award. I was over the moon. I went on to write other stories, and place in other competitions, but this commendation was a high point.

I stopped writing short stories and toiled for many years over a novel set in Sri Lanka. In 2015, I took a brief detour from this novel and began writing Seagull Pie. The story behind this work has been with me most of my life, and I knew one day I’d use it either in a memoir or a novel. In fact, in the mid 90s, when my sister-in-law and author Susan Swan heard about my time living in Donegal as a teenager, she said: “You absolutely must write this.” I kept putting it off, however, and two months after I finally began, my mother died. One of the main characters is based on her. I couldn’t continue. I went back to the other novel, finished it, and early this year signed up for the week-long retreat at L’ATELIER to re-enter the world of Seagull Pie.

I thought, “Now or never.”

That Seagull Pie has now won first place in the Bridport prize novel award category, is an incredible honour, especially for a story so very close to my heart. And my dream of becoming a novel writer? It looks like dreams do indeed come true. I know my mother would be so proud I won the award. I’m sad I didn’t get to see the smile on her face, I’m sad she didn’t get to see the smile on mine.

With judge, Euan Thornycroft from  A. M. Heath Literary Agents A. M. Heath Literary Agents

The powerhouses behind the award the prize are The Literary Consultancy, A. M. Heath Literary Agents and Tinder Press.The main judge this year was the wonderful Naomi Wood, author of The Godless Boys, Mrs. Hemingway and The Hiding Game. How could I not still be reeling?

I still have the second half to write, but it seems to me events are conspiring to make absolutely sure I don’t put it aside again. I’m extraordinarily grateful. Perhaps my mother is indeed watching over me, and giving the universe a nudge.

We All Need Good News…

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It’s been a challenging time for me recently, so it was lovely to receive two bits of good news this week. I was awarded a travel grant to help towards some of the costs of travelling to Crete for research on a new work this year, and I heard that a story of mine will be published in Hobart, a literary journal in the US (http://www.hobartpulp.com/).

(The image is a photograph of a photograph – of Chania port when I lived there in 1969.)