I’m delighted to be able to announce that TTA Press will be publishing my novella Spin. This is a brand new work – you might remember me mentioning it towards the end of last year – and I’m really excited about it, because after all the usual messing around I have to contend with when I’m getting started (I think there are three different beginnings for this one, all of them still in files on my hard drive) I was pleased with the way it turned out and this story remains very important to me.
Spin is a highly personal reimagining of a Greek myth. It’s a story I began work on shortly after returning from a visit to the place where my father now lives, a small village in the Peloponnese not far from where Patrick Leigh Fermor and Bruce Chatwin once both had their homes. The Mani is a stunning and unique place, rich in mythology and with a proud historical tradition of independence from the Greek mainland. What I wanted from Spin most of all was to convey a sense of that fierceness of spirit and its embodiment in the landscape, its dry earth, its heat, its continually evolving potential for story.
As you’ll see from Ben Baldwin‘s marvellous cover art it also contains spiders.
I’m sure I’ll be saying more about Spin in due course, with an update on the publication schedule as it’s made available. In advance of that, TTA Press are currently running a special limited time subscription on their new line of novellas, whereby you can pre-order the first five titles for just £25 post free to anywhere in the world. As well as Spin, the titles so far announced are Eyepennies by Mike O’Driscoll and Cold Turkey by Carole Johnstone. Titles four and five to be revealed shortly! You can read more about the TTA novellas project here.
