A.E. Shaw's Blog, page 4

Now on BBC Radio 4 it’s Time For…The Archers!

Celebrating this marvellously sunny weekend by sitting on the settee listening to The Archers. Nothing like Sundays with Ambridge. I’ve listened to The Archers all my life, and somewhere around the age of 8 I realised that this wasn’t quite usual, when I tried to discuss something about whatever Jennifer was up to with a schoolmate and realised that no-one knew a) who Jennifer was, b) what the show was, or, really, c) what Radio 4 was. So that was that, and thus began a long and delightful re...

Woman: Why Does It Always Feel Like I’m Being One Wrong?

I follow and am friends with a lot of very wise and interesting women, most of whom have lengthy and strong opinions on many of the issues that crop up, both on and offline, which tax, penalise and threaten women around the world in various ways. I concede that a lot of my understanding of many of these issues comes from their commentary, from secondhand understanding of these issues, and from reading heightened and removed discussion and debate of them.

This is partly because I don’t spend a...

A Pocketful of String: 11 Short & Shorter Stories by Me

So, I’ve concocted a small book of short and shorter stories. You can buy it for the cost of a mildly overpriced coffee on Amazon, see links at the end of this self-promotion!

It contains:

- The spectre of Death

- What happens when the Luck Child returns

- Fond memories and grim futures

- How not to turn 25

- A terrible warning about rabbits

- What happens to your heart

- An overtly sentimental dining room table

- A failed love spell

- A haunted photobooth

- A very surprising breakfast

- The apocalypse,...

Getting Reviewed: Other People’s Feelings

Greetings from sunny, sunny Stockholm! Like a proper writer, I’m hiding from the great yellow beast in the kitchen, typing and drinking tea.

Well, I worked out how to get people to review my book. I went to a couple of GoodReads groups I’d been in and signed up for a couple of RaR programmes. I’ve sent out about fifteen copies, and had a good handful of reviews back so far.

This has been a solid learning experience. Here are some things I’ve learnt.

1. Somehow, despite the lack of anything that...

It’s my birthday: my novel is free to celebrate!

I’m 31 years old today!

To celebrate, my twisty-turny dystopian YA novel The Pulse is FREE to download from Amazon UK and Amazon US (and on all the regional Amazons, too!) so do, please, download, share the link and either forget about it completely, or enjoy it!

I’ve had a wonderful year. Being 30 was much better than I’d imagined. I thought my thirties would be all grown-up and scary, but actually, I’ve been surprisingly childlike and daft, and also, also, much braver than in years. I’ve pu...

Short Story: Vanity Wins

A daft and creepy little story I wrote after a visit to a particularly desolate and miserable shopping centre. Not reworked, just posted for sharing’s sake!

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Vanity Wins

By A. E. Shaw

I position myself just so, there, should be the right angle to make my cheekbones look kind, rather than overpronounced, and I put my shoulders back, and chest forwards, and I know I don’t have to worry about my hair, or anything, no.

I do my very, very best smile.

My teeth look great, considering. I mean...

So I Wrote A Book…Now What?

Well, it turns out that there are only so many ways (see half a dozen of my previous posts) you can tell the people you already know that you wrote a book, and there’s only so long you can maintain an anxious level of hoping that they’ll have the time/inclination/finances to buy/read/tell you they’ve read it.

So what next?

I honestly thought that the moment I threw at Amazon, I’d be turning my back on the site with a wry first-timer smile of relief on my face, before immediately diving headlon...

Five Things I Didn’t Expect Of Self-Publishing: 1 Month In

I approached self-publishing on Amazon with a great deal of naivety and a minimum amount of research. This is largely because I had hoped to score a ‘proper’ publishing deal in the first instance, convinced that my book was fantastic. Fantastic it may be, but tbh, I can’t tell you why, and if I, the person who not only knows every damn word of the book but the person who made up every word of that book, cannot explain to you why it’s great, I certainly couldn’t expect anyone else to do it. A...

Short Story: Tick-Tack

Last year, I had a spate of writing short, silly things. I’ve no shame in sharing them, apparently…

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Tick-tack tick-tack tick-tack.

Jack whirls around and scans the pavement, thinking he’s dropped something plastic. He just heard it, didn’t he? Bouncing along behind him. But there’s nothing on any of the wide, flat flagstones behind him, only fledgling moss in the cracks between them, and scattering dust of the day making the wave-shape of the winds that drift acr...

Home. There’s no place like it, y’know.

This afternoon, I was lying on my back under a tree in Richmond Park, watching absolutely no clouds cross the sky, thinking how when you dig your heels into mud elsewhere in the world, it’s nothing like the mud in Richmond Park, or down by Canbury Gardens, or in the rec I learnt to kick a football and ride a bike in. Mud’s a wonderfully specific substance, and if you grew up as poorly-travelled as I did, you can get really rather sentimental about the stuff.

There are so many things I though...