Monday, February 16, 2009

Alice Has A Framed Photograph By Her Bed

Following disturbing revelations about Douglas Bruton's working habits I no longer feel comfortable including his work in Greyling Bay.

For more information read this post on Vanessa Gebbie's blog, and this post on my main blog, How Publishing Really Works.

I apolgise for any difficulties this might cause in reading the rest of the work here.



About The Contributors

7 comments:

Sally Zigmond said...

Lovely piece, Douglas. Very well observed and structured. Quiet and yet tragic.

But I'm beginning to think (and I am as guilty as anyone else)that Greyling Bay's water supply could so with a dash of Prozac.

Douglas Bruton said...

Glad you liked the piece, Sally. I saw Greyling and wrote this before I saw the call for cheery... but look out for Darius Bredwyn the teacher... coming soon I think... he's always laughing... I promise.

And Alice will have her moments if we follow her.

It's always a bit grimmer when the skies are grey and winter not yet done with us or with Greyling. But the nights are getting lighter and the days longer... sunny days soon be here.

Best

D

Anonymous said...

Nicely, D... intriguing possibilites with young Alice...smacks of tragedy and tears at midnight.

glad you are enjoying this project so muuch, and will pop in from time to time to read.

hello to Sally Z too. Blast from the past... hope all is well, Sally. Congrats on the novel(s!)

Douglas Bruton said...

Thanks for popping by V. You are always so supportive. I really appreciate that.

As I said to Sally Z, I will endeavour to lighten one of my next Greyling pieces, to inject a spring-born cheeriness somehow.

Best always

D

Jane Smith said...

Douglas, this is a lovely piece and I'm really grateful you sent it to me. It's so subtle. You clever thing.

I like Darius too (I'm lucky enough to have had an advance read!). He did cheer me up when I read him. But he's got nothing on Nicola Morgan's forthcoming piece (I know, it would help if I could remember when I've scheduled it but I can't: you'll just have to wait and see), which changes the atmosphere in GB entirely.

Vanessa, how nice to see you here! I hope you'll contribute something, as well as visiting to read.

Vanessa Gebbie said...

This is a terrific thing to do. I love collaborations, and have worked with the lovely Douglas B on a few bits and bobs over the last year... the longest is a complete novel based on letters - I love th surprises, the way the characters just take off and do things responding to the other write(s)without your conscious input, sometimes, it seems!

Lots of good luck. I have so much on, I wont be writing, but will follow from afar with great interest.

best to all the writers

V

Douglas Bruton said...

Thanks for your comment Jane. Glad that the piece found a home here. If I was to write this again, there wouldn't be any Alice-tears at the end... instead her thoughts would turn on a boy she once knew who wrote his name on the back of a photograph in case she ever forgot.

I am really looking forward to Nicola's piece. One of my favourite reads of last year was her book that dealt with synaesthesia... fabulous.

And V calls me 'lovely'... that's lovely too.

And what V said about collaborations... I echo that. As she says, she and I wrote a flash ping-pong novel of more than 70,000 words last year... and the product is amazing, and the process was incredible... it was as if we came to inhabit our invented characters... or they were in us. They seemed to grow from each other and so were greater than the sum of the parts. Look out for 'The Kafka's Aunt Letters' sometime in the future.

D