Tricia Sullivan's Blog, page 2

Kelley Eskridge: a recommendation

I love being on the Clarke shortlist—in the run-up to the award I have always appreciated that more readers are looking at my work, and this means a lot (even if the new readers don’t end up liking the book!) So while I’m in this more-visible place, I want to take the opportunity to say one important thing about Occupy Me, and that is Kelley Eskridge.

Kelley is a highly accomplished novelist, screenwriter and writing teacher. She is also the first reader for her wife Nicola Griffith, and from...

Guest of honour speech, Stranimondi

I don’t normally write speeches in advance for events, but I was glad I got something on paper for Stranimondi 2016because as it turns out, every word I said had to be translated into Italian on the spot by the superbChiara Reali (thank you, Chiara). I had a wonderful experience at the con and I thank everyone for the warm and generous reception.

This speech is loosely based on a blog post that I never published called ‘Cry Me a River’–as ever, I wear my heart on my sleeve. Maybe it will inte...

Precedent and learning Martian

I received my BSc(Hons) from the Open University today.

This was possible for me because of precedent in my family.

I’m the youngest of five children. I have two older sisters. One of them turned down a scholarship to Princeton to get married. She worked as an accountant to support her husband through his MBA, then when her younger son was a toddler she went for a gruelling five-year degree in Pharmacy, full-time. I watched this unfold with my jaw on the floor. My other sister put herself thr...

All flowers in time bend towards the sun

Mahvesh Murad very kindly invited me to be a part of Midnight in Karachilast week. I was a little nervous going in, and from my recollection I babbled discursively.This is why I prefer writing to talking!

In the interview Mahvesh asked whether I had a playlist for the book, and I told her how one specific song contains the entire emotional realm in which Occupy Me was put together. It’s not a long piece of music, but for me it opens up vaulting internal spaces.

This is a book that was written...

Talk for writers this Saturday at Waterstones Banbury

I’ll be at Waterstones in Banbury this Saturday 30 January at 2 pm.

I’m going to talk about writing, offering some of the perspective I’ve acquired over the twenty years I’ve been working professionally, and taking questions. I’ll talk a little about Occupy Me and the methods I used to put it together, but mainly I want to be useful to the audience and I think a lot of the people who come to these talks are working on their own writing, so that’s going to be my focus.

If you’re in the area, p...

Knees up for the tea ladies

Back around 1994 when I was living in New Jersey and working as a teacher, A Glorious Accident came on TV. It was a roundtable discussion about the meaning of life, the Universe, and everything, featuring a number of the great thinkers of the time: scientists of one kind or another. And what a lineup—Stephen Jay Gould, Freeman Dyson, Oliver Sacks! Also Daniel Dennett, George Page, and Stephen Toulmin. Rupert Sheldrake was in there too, annoying the others with his mobile pigeon unit and morph...

What I stole and who from

Occupy Me didn’t have a title for a long time. I just called it ‘Pearl’ after the character name given me by my mate Kaz when she heard what I wanted to do with the angel trope. At the timeI was just beginning to study mathsat a very basic level to prepare for physics. Some years before, while nursing my first baby in the middle of the night, I had read Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe. By ‘read’ I mean that I had looked at all the pages and picked up the occasional, probably-misguided id...

The Fuckless State

For those among our species who are perennially anxious, self-aware, eager-to-please, and disenfranchised in one way or another, writing can be like an assault course we have to run daily. We are both addicted to it and beat up by it. Imagineus, pens clamped in our teeth, cold sweat glistening in our palms, noise-cancelling headphones not quite working against the distant hum of the Internet like a carcinogenic high-voltage line strung acrossthe middle of a nature reserve. See us clamber and...

Funds for Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

On Friday I was shocked to learn that writer Rochita Loenen-Ruiz had lost her husband and the father of her children. Rochita and I have been friends since meeting online in 2010 or 2011, and she is a person very dear to me and I writer whom I respect and admire enormously.

Rochita has not had an easy time in the years I’ve known her, and I keep hoping that something good will happen for her, to allow her to really spread her wings as a writer and as an activist. She has a great and selfless...

Impetus, impetooses, impetooseses

I’ve just been whingeing to a friend how I can’t be bothered to finish a short story because I’m without impetus. This isn’t like being up a creek without a paddle. I got paddles. It’s more like being in a big, still lake with no sign of shore in any direction. I mean, I could pick a direction and start paddling and hope for the best, but tbh a nap seems more attractive at this moment.

Where this story is concerned, I’ve at least worked out why I drag my heels. (1) I can see no market for it,...