Author events, publications and a holiday: yes, it’s another life update

It’s strange having things to update people on, but here I am!

It’s been a busy few months – the last module of my course finished in May, and now I’m working on my dissertation (a portfolio, basically) for submission in September. The MA has gone so, so quickly! Although it also feels like decades since starting the course online in 2020. I’ve already had some really useful feedback on the novel from my dissertation supervisor, although there’s still plenty of time for panicking/threatening to start all over again over the summer.

Events events events

The anthology that my fantasy story ‘The Shape of a Girl’ is in, Into the Wilds, was finally launched last week! It’s weird to remember that I wrote the first draft of this story in the first lockdown, before I even started my MA. My friend Jan wrote a beautiful, in-depth review of Into the Wilds and my story on her blog (which almost made me cry, I’m not going to lie), if you fancy having a read. I promise that no money was exchanged for the review!

Anyway, I took part in the Into the Wilds launch event at Waterstones Bradford for Bradford Literature Festival, along with the founders of Fox & Windmill and two other lovely contributors to the anthology.

A pre-event view from the balcony in Waterstones Bradford.

I was absolutely terrified, especially when we were told that almost 80 tickets had been sold! But the event went swimmingly, and I read a bit of my story and answered questions in what I hope was a vaguely literate manner. I even signed books like a proper author (so glad I practiced my author signature beforehand), and spoke to some south Asian writers afterwards who were inspired by the event to start or keep going with their writing – which is probably the best thing to come out of getting my story published, especially when I think about all the times I’ve come away from literary events feeling inspired!

I’m doing two more events for the anthology in Halifax and Huddersfield later this month – details are on my Events page (yes, I have an events page now!!!).

Me, Samina Bakhsh and Amaleena Damlé on stage.

Other new publications

My retelling of a Hindu myth, ‘Tulsi’, is now up on Tasavvur for your reading pleasure. Tasavvur is a relatively new platform for SFF stories by writers from a south Asian background, and I was absolutely delighted to be published with them! I also got a lovely review of my story on Tor.com, which pretty much made my week.

Another story that’s made its way online is a flash piece I wrote for National Flash Fiction Day, ‘The Eleventh Union’, which is available to read on The Write-In. I had great fun researching historical events for the prompt I chose (prompt 8) and the story itself slipped out quite easily (although the story/event it’s based on isn’t fun – sorry about that). I even read the story aloud at a local spoken word night the day before the Into the Wilds launch as a sort of test run. It should’ve made me more confident for Bradford, but I think I was equally nervous at both events…

Cover of Demos Rising from Fly on the Wall Press.

Then there’s another flash piece that’s going to be published in an anthology from the brilliant Fly on the Wall Press. FoTW is a Manchester-based small publisher that’s been doing great things for a while, and I’m so pleased to have a story in its upcoming Demos Rising anthology. The book is out in October and can be pre-ordered now if you so wish. If you do, you’ll be supporting both an amazing press AND Amnesty International, so please consider it! While you’re there, I really really recommend checking out some other FoTW books – I’ve read and loved Mancunian Ways, Fauna, Snapshots of the Apocalypse and Of Myths and Mothers, among others.

Other writing stuff

I’m doing #100DaysofWriting for the second time to spur me on with my dissertation. If you want to follow my progress (and maybe take part yourself…?) I’m posting updates on Instagram Stories.

The novel is going quite slowly at the moment, mainly because I’m refining a handful of chapters for my dissertation. I’m still relatively early on in the second draft. It’s hard to say when it might be totally finished – I think there may be at least one or two more drafts. It does feel like I’m still working out the plot and characters; I’m looking forward to getting all of that sorted so I can concentrate on polishing everything up for querying. But who knows how long that might take? I won’t have the motivation of an MA after September, and I’ll still be in a full-time job, so I’ve got to be really on it in terms of keeping myself going. Maybe I’ll start another #100Days after finishing the current run?!

Other bits

I had a big birthday in May! T’husband and I went to Scotland for a lovely week away to celebrate. We had a few days in Wigtown, where we bought many books between us. I would highly recommend a bookish break to Wigtown – there are LOADS of bookshops selling new and second-hand books, and it just so happens to be in a great location by the sea, too.

Word.

Then we went north to Arran, which was absolutely gorgeous. I even went up a big hill and didn’t complain (that much) about it!

Arran.

At home, we’re in the throes of a downstairs renovation that began with our kitchen being ripped out in April. We’ve got new units and tiles in, and t’husband is laying a new floor at the moment. Then the living room is going to be refloored, repainted and refurnished, including extra bookshelves! It feels like we’ve been living in a state of chaos for ages now, but I know it’ll be worth it in the end. In the meantime, I’m grateful to be able to work upstairs and escape to a local cafe for writing at the weekends. I’ve discovered that cafe writing is really helping with the second draft of the novel; I wrote nearly all of the first draft on the sofa, in the mornings before work, but that doesn’t seem to work as well with this draft. It seems that a change of scene (and excellent coffee/chai) is really important to me!

Well, that was a rather big update. The last few months have been such a whirlwind. I keep saying to my friends that it feels like everything on the writing front has been happening to someone else – I have to keep pinching myself because it feels so unreal; undeserved, almost. But I know that there will be rougher periods to balance things out, so I’ve just got to be grateful until I hit the bad patch that’s no doubt going to come in the week before my dissertation deadline…

My new bathroom

I bought my little terraced house nearly five years ago, but doing up the bathroom wasn’t my priority then – the main task was to get the hundreds of layers of wallpaper, paint and woodchip (woodchip!) off the walls of the main bedroom.

Because I hate hard work, that particular job took quite a while to get round to and even longer to complete, but it got done. Then my attention turned to the bathroom with its weird avocado-pistachio-yellowy-brownish suite and half-tiled walls. The upper half of the walls were lined with wallpaper, which is of course the perfect thing to use in a room that’s perpetually full of moisture.

The old bathroom. What colour *was* it?

There was no extractor fan, so the wallpaper ended up spotted with condensation mould which the previous owners had simply painted over. I tried to do the same, but lost the will to keep repeating the exercise quite quickly. Something needed to be done.

Over the summer, my husband and I had a brief debate about the merits of a gradual renovation to minimise disruption versus getting everything done at once so we’d have more disruption, but over a much shorter period of time. And, trust me, we needed to get EVERYTHING done – replastering, extractor fan installed, new tiles all over the floor and walls, new suite put in, pipes shifted, and electrical work.

We both agreed that we just wanted to get it over with after spending so long with a crap bathroom, so after expending a lot of time and energy trying to find someone who would be willing to give us a quote (seriously, a couple of people either didn’t turn up as arranged or came round but then never sent a quote. We actually want to give you our money! What’s wrong with you?!), we got the project booked in for a period of around 10 days in October.

It wasn’t a pretty 10 days, let me tell you. It was a bit scary coming home from work on the first day and seeing the bathroom completely gutted of everything except the loo – which we had to put up with only being usable when the workmen weren’t there, and only then with a ‘manual’ flush, shall we say. We could only wash at the kitchen sink, although I could at least use the showers at work. Thank goodness for dry shampoo.

When the tiles started going in a few days later, I was relieved. I could finally see everything start to take shape! Once the suite was in, I was practically ecstatic. We’d definitely chosen wisely (well, mainly my husband, because I’m crap at choosing things that go together) – we wanted a look that would suit the high ceilings of the house, so we went with a Victorian-style white suite with a high-level toilet, charcoal and white pattened floor tiles, and huge white gloss tiles for the walls.

I can’t tell you how brilliant it was when the workmen finally left and we could clean up all the dust and set about buying the little bits we needed for the bathroom. We got some new grey storage units from Argos and a little round teal table from Zara Home that I love but my husband thinks is ‘a bit weird’. The teal is there to add a splash of colour to what is otherwise a pretty monochrome room, and I think it works well.

I love my showers, but it was so, so wonderful to have my first bubble bath in the new bathroom. I could finally relax in a lovely, fragrant, foam-laden haven without having to stare at specks of mould on the wall! I could even have the ‘big light’ off for more subdued lighting as we now have an illuminated mirror! Which also heats up to keep steam off it!

We’re now around 6 weeks on from the renovation, and I’m still delighted with the new bathroom. It was an expensive, messy and stressful time, but so totally worth it for what we have now. Here’s to lots more perfect bubble baths over the winter!