Cyclone

Sarah is a novelist, short story writer and creative writing tutor. Author of Something Beginning With (ABCs of Love in the US), Tell Me Everything (both published by Bloomsbury in the UK and Ballantine in the US) and a collection of short stories, Leading the Dance (bluechrome). She also is the co-author, with Lynne Rees, of the experimental short fiction book, Messages, which led to the Your Messages November writing project — www.yourmessages.org. Sarah has two blogs, Sarah’s Writing Journal and A Quiet Sit Down. Her website is here — www.sarahsalway.com and Sarah is also editor-at-large for http://carrieanddanielle.com. Sarah will be taking part in Elizabeth Baines’ book tour Around the Edges of the World.

December 31st, 2008 | Tags: sarah salway | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

Caroline Smailes is a writer. In 2007 her first novel, In Search of Adam, was published by The Friday Project (an imprint of HarperCollins). Her latest novel, Black Boxes was published in September 2008. As well as writing, Caroline runs the BubbleCow Literary Consultancy, where she mentors new writers and edits manuscripts.

Caroline’s website can be found HERE and her blog can be found HERE. Caroline was one of the first fiction writers to be discovered by a cyber scout. Her blogging tends to be about books, about writing and often about Simon Cowell. Caroline joins Cyclone for Elizabeth Baines’ “Around the Edges of the World” Tour.

December 30th, 2008 | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

These are stories about power: children without it and adults vying to get or keep it. A small boy struggles with his parents’ divorce, a doctor fails to understand the limits of his medical power, a wronged wife finds a uniquely powerful way to wreak revenge. Sometimes satirical, sometimes innovative and lyrical, the stories home in on those moments when power can spill into powerlessness: the split-second when a self-satisfied teenager is held at knifepoint by muggers, the trip to the woods with the ‘poor kids’ which teaches a small girl she’s no better than them. They chart the opposite moments when people wrest back power: a daughter rebels against her violent father, a struggling writer decides to expose a con man arts worker, a little girl who wishes her lost father would come back finds she has magic powers.

But it’s a slippery thing, power, and these vivid, wry stories spring surprises: for nothing, in the end, is ever quite what it seems.

December 16th, 2008 | Tags: Around the Edges of the World, Balancing on the Edge of the World, Elizabeth Baines | Category: Virtual Book Tours | Comments (10)

Drew Gummerson is a writer. In 2002 his first novel, The Lodger, was published and was a finalist in the Lambda Awards. His latest novel, Me and Mickie James was published by Jonathan Cape in July 2008. He works for the police.

Drew Gummerson writes a weekly blog about writing and anything else that takes his fancy. He joins Cyclone with his take on Catherine Eisner’s new novel, Sister Morphine.

You can visit Drew’s website here.

December 10th, 2008 | Tags: Catherine Eisner, Drew Gummerson, Me and Mickie James, Sister Morphine | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

Todd Swift is a Core Tutor with The Poetry School, and Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University. His recent book of critical essays on Anglo-Quebec poetry, Language Acts, co-edited with Jason Camlot, was a finalist for the 2007 Gabrielle Roy Prize. (See Jacket Magazine.) He is the editor of many international poetry anthologies, including Poetry Nation, and 100 Poets Against The War; and the poetry editor of Nthposition, one of the UK’s leading places for poetry online. In 2005, he edited a special section on The Young Canadian Poets for New American Writing. His The Young British Poets section came out in the 2008 issue of The Manhattan Review, featuring Salt poets such as Isobel Dixon, Luke Kennard and Chris McCabe. As Oxfam Great Britain’s first Poet-in-residence, 2004-2008, he ran the Oxfam Poetry Series, and edited the CDs, Life Lines and Life Lines 2 - Poets for Oxfam. He has had four full collections of poems published by small modernist press (founded by Louis Dudek via Pound) DC Books in Montreal. A poem of his has been selected for The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008. Poems of his have appeared in The Guardian, Jacket, and Poetry Review. Seaway: New and Selected Poems is available now from Salmon Publishing, Ireland, 2008.

Eyewear is a blogzine chiefly edited by Todd Swift, but featuring weekly guest poets, and regular guest reviews. It focuses on poetry, politics, and popular culture, and often questions how these intertwine in the worlds of new media. It’s been running since summer 2004, with over 1,000 posts, and been several times quoted in The Guardian, and elsewhere.

Todd will be featuring Katy Evans-Bush on her virtual book tour A Conversation About Dreams …

December 3rd, 2008 | Tags: Eyewear, Todd Swift | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

You can find Kay’s blog at My blog is Writing Neuroses.

In the five years she has been writing, Kay Sexton’s fiction has been chosen for over forty anthologies. This year she was commissioned to write a short story that was broadcast on British national radio, has been a finalist in the Willesden Herald fiction contest judged by Zadie Smith, and the Glimmertrain Family Matters contest and won the Fort William Contest, and she has a story shortlisted for The Asham Award. She teaches short writing courses in Brighton.

Kay is taking part in Charles Lambert’s book tour, Something Rich & Strange.

December 3rd, 2008 | Tags: Kay Sexton, Virtual Book Tours | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

In one of the best debut collections for ages, Katy Evans-Bush rises to the challenge of finding words for our times, meeting them in the nurseries of children or the battlefields of Iraq. Her work is various, educated and promiscuously open to experience: a Bishoppy moose makes an unepiscopal escape into TV’s Northern Exposure as its name morphs through Muldoonian games; Catullus is translated into rougharse while the title-poem takes the pulse of modern death. She makes good use of her joint passport into British and American poetry, which now often seem to share a whole language of faux amis, in a book which is stylish and funny, cultured and humane. This is contemporary poetry for grown-ups.

On Katy’s book tour, A Conversation About Dreams discover:

• In Me and the Dead Katy Evans-Bush writes about life and art, death and love, from both sides of the Atlantic.
• “Like a post-sisterhood Millay” she casts a cool eye on the vagaries of modern life – its laissez-faire sexual politics, its pretensions and its little ironic betrayals – and parses out with wry humour the ways in which we occupy our emotional surroundings.
• Katy Evans-Bush was born in New York City and moved to London at the age of nineteen. She lives in Stoke Newington with her three children, and writes the literary blog Baroque in Hackney.
• This is her first full collection.

December 2nd, 2008 | Tags: A conversation about dreams, Katy Evans-Bush, virtual book tour | Category: Virtual Book Tours | Comments (11)

Cyclone asked dovegreyreader to introduce her blog and her reading life …

http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/

I am a Gt Ormond Street trained paediatric nurse by training and until recently had worked as a health visitor in rural Devon for thirty years. Books have always formed a huge part of my life and I started dovegreyreader scribbles in March 2006 to explore whether there was an audience of like-minded readers out there … there is, and last time I checked they came from over ninety countries across the world. I’m also fortunate enough to live in splendid isolation with my family in rural Devon and occasionally I share a slice of country life and my other passions, quilting and sock-knitting, but mostly it’s books, books and more books. I love to share thoughts on my reading, subjectively and emotionally, how a book has fired my imagination, how a book has made me feel, what has it made me think about, what does it make me want to read next, why would I press this book on you if we met in the street?

Whilst working in the NHS, where using my imagination landed me in deep water, I had to be clinical and objective, now at dovegreyreader scribbles I can be a flouncy bouncy book Tigger on a daily basis.

I don’t and won’t do excoriating criticism; the blog is about reading for pleasure and sharing my love of good books. If I’ve loved a book you’ll know about it because this is all about sharing that bookaholic passion for reading that so many of us have. I read widely across the genres and will never write about a book that hasn’t touched me or made a resounding impact of some description and if I write about it I’ve read it, cover to cover . Comments are the oxygen of dgr scribbles and I love to hear other people’s thoughts and feedback either in comments or by email.

If you’ve got this far, congratulations and thank you for reading so why not take a trip to beautiful Devon via dgr scribbles where you’ll find some great reading ideas, woolly socks, warm quilts plus there’s always a cup of virtual tea in the virtual pot!

dovergreyreader will be covering Charles Lambert’s The Scent of Cinnamon in January 2009.

November 30th, 2008 | Tags: dovegreyreader | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment

Elizabeth Baines is a writer of prose fiction and plays. Her blog elizabethbaines.blogspot subtitled ‘How to be a writer without ending up sozzled, behind bars or insane‘ is a diary of her writing life — her thoughts about the writing process and the writing life, with occasional comment on the books she reads and reports of the literary events she attends. She also writes the literary commentary blog Fictionbitch.

Elizabeth’s collection of short stories, Balancing on the Edge of the World, is published by Salt and she is currently working on a new collection of short stories, one of which appears in the first issue of Horizon, another having come third in the Raymond Carver Competition 2008.

November 29th, 2008 | Tags: Elizabeth Baines, Fictionbitch | Category: Blog profiles | Leave a comment