John Bolland

Always challenging, this business of writing - of making sense of experience (or at least imposing sense on experience) through reframing into this narrative stuff.

A number of encouraging developments in recent weeks. In January, an excerpt from my novel in progress - Line of Sight - was published in Lallans Issue 71 and this week my short story, Scottsiche, one of the on-going Ceilidh cycle which I started during the Glen Canisp retreat in November 2007, has won 3rd prize in the annual Fish Short Story competition. I find it really encouraging to see my work in both Scots and English finding space.

Spring of this year has been spent incorporating editorial comment into The Dark Numbers which I now feel is a more mature, robust (and somewhat shorter) piece of work though I am still seeking actively seeking agent to promote the work. The highly successful Glen Canisp Retreat held in May 2008 enabled me to finalise a complete first draft of Bass, one of my two novel-length works in progress. Given the reletaive maturity of much of the underlying writing in Bass, which has evolved from a long 'short story' (19k words) to its current form, I feel fairly confident that a polished and seasoned draft will be available later this summer creating space for research to begin in earnest for my newest project - More Tales from the Vampire Coast - a rather dark (well very very very dark) exploration of childhood in Paisley. Think Angela's Ashes meets Nightmare on Elm Street! An excerpt from More Tales from the Vampire Coast recently appeared in the Glasgow University webzine From Glasgow to Saturn under the title A Chocolate Cowboy.

John Bolland, May 2008