Ali Shaw's Blog, page 4

It’s usual at this time of year, when the rain hammers down and stirs the fields to deep muck, for thousands of festival-goers to descend on a certain spot in the West Country. It’s not happening this year, much to the despair of Wellington boot retailers, and its absence leaves, in my view, something missing from the English summertime. Glastonbury is a bit like Wimbledon. You might not attend it, follow it or watch it on the telly, but if it didn’t happen you’d still notice its absence.

The...

Enough now. There you have it. There are one hundred stories from almost forty years of my life contained in my collected stories. They contain half the damning truths I suspected at midnight, and half of the saving truths I re-found next noon. If anything is taught here, it is simply the charting of the life of someone who started out to somewhere—and went. I have not so much thought my way through life as done things and found what it was and who I was after the doing. Each tale was a way o...

Sunk deep in the night. As one sometimes sinks one’s head in meditation, thus utterly to be sunk in the night. All around people are asleep. It’s a harmless affectation, an innocent self-deception, to suppose that they are sleeping in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets; in reality they have gathered together as they once did of old, and again later, in a desert region, a camp in the open, a countless number of men, a ho...

W F Howes have just released an audio book version of The Man who Rained, read by actress Laurel Lefkow. I think she reads it beautifully, but I guess I’m biased.

The Man who Rained by Ali Shaw – audio book excerpt

Coinciding with this is a large-print edition of the novel. You can find all the details of both versions at W F Howes’ site.

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Time for our second Stop-Motion Film Night.  Roll up.  Settle down with the popcorn, the pick 'n' mix or the pack of cold beers.  Let the cinema curtains crank open in the dark.

The first Stop-Motion Film Night was a somewhat creepy affair, so for this second instalment I tried to find some light-hearted videos for your delectation.  For the most part, I failed.  Let's face it, antique toys and taxidermied beasts lurching into animated life are always going to tingle the spine.  But here's a s...

His body was as smooth as a weathered pebble on the sea shore.  He had very little complexion: he was not so much a white man as a grey one.  He had a flat pair of buttocks and skin as hairless as that of his head.He stood on the ridge between her viewpoint and the sun.  His tall body was an eclipse and the light was a corona behind it.  He spread his arms in a pose of dejected surrender.Then, very gradually, he began to dissolve.Like chalk washed into a blur by the rain, his outline began...

On Thursday 29th March I'm going to be appearing at the Abingdon Arts Festival, at an event presented by the Abingdon Writers group.

It's at 7.30 at Abingdon Libray, and tickets are £4.  All the info, as well as what's on at the rest of the festival, can be found here – http://www.abingdonartsfestival.org.uk/lit.html

Hope to see you there.

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She appeared to be a slight and graceful person, handsomely dressed; and her hair was arranged like that of a young girl of good family.  'O-jochu,' he exclaimed, approaching her, 'O-jochu, do not cry like that! … Tell me what the trouble is; and if there be any way to help you I shall be glad to help you.'  (He really meant what he said; for he was a very kind man.)  But she continued to weep – hiding her face from him with one of her long sleeves … Then that O-jochu turned around, and...

I love writing about landscapes.  I'm probably guilty of finding them far more interesting to write about, at times,  than human beings.  That's because I think so much of humanity is defined by the natural world we emerged from (and I include the weather as a part of that).  For so many thousands of years we depended so crucially on the land, on the fertile earth and the just-right ratio between sunshine and showers, that the behaviour of the landscape dictated the terms of our culture.  I b...

She opened her eyes.  The headlights shimmered across nests of boulders and trunks of stone on either side.  No grass, only slates splitting under the weight of the car, each time with a noise like a handclap.  Eyes closing, opening.  The clock moved on in leaps, not ticks.  Either side of the road were trees bent so close to the earth they were barely the height of the car, growing almost parallel to the shingly ground.  A wind whistled higher than the engine noise.'Awake again,' said...