Carys Bray's Blog, page 18

Real Books

My books arrived this week. It was a very exciting and strange moment.




The
French flaps are beautiful and cover is soft and smooth.

The children all want their own copy,
although Alice is the only one who has shown any interest in reading the stories. I watched as she opened her copy and I saw her face light up as she read the
dedication page.

'Oh thank you!' she said. 'I have always

First Review

The first review of Sweet Home was published online this morning at the Lancs Writing Hub. It's a really thoughtful and generous review.



This afternoon I really enjoyed Adam Marek's lovely piece in the Guardian. Having read several of the stories in The Stone Thrower this weekend, it was interesting to read Adam's thoughts about the collection. He reveals that the stories in The Stone Thrower

Launch stuff

I was in my local library this week with the children when one of the librarians said they have ordered my book. It was very exciting to think that I might pop to the library one day and actually see it sitting there on a shelf. While I was there I noticed a pile of brochures for the Sefton Celebrates Writing Festival. The festival begins on Bonfire Night and lasts for a week. My book launch

Booker announcement tomorrow

The winner of the Booker Prize will be announced tomorrow. My publisher, Salt is in the running with Alison Moore's haunting and disquieting debut, The Lighthouse. I would love to see Alison win, although I must confess that I haven't read the other books yet (that's what the Christmas holiday is for). 

It's an exciting time for independent publishers. In this New Statesman article, Six of the

Sefton Celebrates Writing Festival

My book is being launched during the Sefton Celebrates Writing Festival.

The full festival programme can be found here.

Details of my launch can be found here.

International Day of the Girl

Yesterday was International Day of the Girl.

This
New York Times piece by Nicholas D. Kristof reminds readers that, 'the
global struggle for gender equality is the paramount moral struggle
of this century, equivalent to the campaigns against slavery in the 19th
century and against totalitarianism in the 20th century.'

There are heart-breaking photographs of child brides at tooyoungtowed

Finished.

I signed off on the proofs of my book today. It was really nerve-wracking to let the stories go and concede that there won't (and can't) be any more edits or alterations. The stories are finished. Gulp. 

I also saw an image of the finished cover for the first time today. It's going to be beautiful, with French flaps. I can't wait to see it.

Some brilliant and very generous writers have made

Review of 'Under Covers'

Here's a very generous review of my story 'Under Covers' from Mel Ulm at the review blog, The Reading Life.

You can read 'Under Covers' at FemaleFirst.

A little bit of Autobiography ~ Motherhood

I think my recent autobiographical musings (here and here) have been laying the foundations for this post. To recap, in a recent interview Zoe Lambert said:

Of course, the relation of the self to writing is more complex than the insertion of autobiographical experiences or facts or the creation of characters of the same age and gender as the author.
I've been thinking about Zoe's comment,

A little bit of autobiography ~ Polygamy

I didn't find out about polygamy until I was about thirteen, and then it was inadvertently, during a lesson at church. People may find it hard to believe that a Mormon girl could be unaware of polygamy, but this was back in the days before the internet. I didn't have a Utah pioneer heritage replete with dozens of polygamous ancestors, and although I had heard people mention polygamy, it had