Beautiful … and ugly: My pact with Jared Noel

I made a pact with Dr Jared Noel, who died four years ago today. He would give me his story, and thereby establish the writing career I had always wanted, and I would continue to tell his story, whenever possible. His book, Message to My Girl, was published a year after his death. It wasn't …

Rock bottom: JK Rowling’s solid foundations

There are several quotes by writers that I come back to when the going gets tough. JK Rowling's speech at Harvard in 2008 has been a go-to many times over the past 10 years. What resonates? Her acknowledgement of the length of the tunnel; her stripping away of inessentials, what some would call 'failure'; her …

Release the Bats

If you fail at basketball, you fail at basketball. If you fail at literature you risk failing as a person, because your full matrix of being is at work in it — DBC Pierre, Release the Bats