Words on a Page

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration claimed that tax breaks for corporations and the nation’s highest earners would spur economic growth and allow wealth to ‘ trickle-down ’ to those on the lower end of the economic scale. It was a lie, of course. Money doesn’t trickle down. It pools at the feet of the already wealthy. Reaganomics only led to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer at a faster rate than before. For anyone who graduated from high school, went to university, got married, and generally came of age in the United States in the 1980s, Cris Mazza’s short story collection  Trickle-Down Timeline  brings that decade into sharp focus again.  ‘For ten or twenty years after leaving home,’ the narrator of ‘What If’   tells us, ‘there’s little nostalgia about where you came from.’ As young adults, loose upon the wider world, the hometowns we moved away from – some of us as soon as we possibly could – held little attraction. The same can be sa...

ThePortsmouth Authors Collective includes authors from all genres of fiction and non-fiction books, including a number of Science Fiction/Fantasy authors. This week, I am pleased to be interviewing the first of these SSF authors, Wendy Metcalfe, a prolific short story writer, and the author of the novels Panthera: Death Song and Panthera: Death Spiral . Author’s Bio: Wendy Metcalfe is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Portsmouth, and is Chairwoman of Havant and District Writers' Circle. She regularly performs her work with spoken word group T'Articulation, and is a regular panellist at science fiction conventions. ~ Loree: Thanks for joining me, Wendy. We’ve known each other for quite a few years, now, but there’s so I’m glad to have the opportunity to find out more about you and your writing—so thanks for agreeing to the interview. I’m interested in how people first came to writing, and I believe you used ...

  In the second of my interviews with members of the  Portsmouth Authors Collective   I talk to the filmmaker and horror writer Rob Ulitski. Author Bio: Rob writes visceral, concept-driven horror stories, anchored by complex characters and offbeat narratives. Having trained in filmmaking, and working as a director and producer on everything from music videos to shorts to feature-length anthology films, Rob’s official writing journey started in 2020. When not writing, he can be found watching cheesy 90’s films, baking cakes and haunting local bookstores. ~ Loree: I’ve only met you once—at the launch of Fleshed Out , your collection of body horror short stories (congratulations, by the way)—so perhaps you can tell us a bit more about yourself. Where are you from, what kind of dog do you have…that sort of thing. Oh yeah—and you also make films. Tell us about that, too. Rob: Thank you so much! I’m from Portsmouth, studied at the University for the Creative Arts in Fa...

When historical research is used to recreate the past on the page, it can offer us a view into a vanished world. It can educate us about facts while entertaining us with narrative. When historical research is used creatively, by exploring what is not known as well as what is, it can offer powerful insights not only into the past but also into our contemporary world. As a PhD student engaged in the creative use of research into the history of the American West I came eagerly to Jim Goar’s  The Louisiana Purchase (sadly now out of print).  In the Author’s Note at the front of the book Goar sets the context for what follows: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the United States acquired that portion of the continent, south of British-held territories, which at its widest point extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Commonly known as the Louisiana Purchase , this vast area of some 820,000 square miles was largely unexplored. In 1804, American Presid...

  There is something about the open spaces of the American West that tugs at the wanderers among us. Whether we've explored it first-hand or paid only brief visits via the cinema screen, the western landscape – in places devoid of human habitation, with a harsh and rugged beauty – intrigues our vagabond spirits and draws us in. The eight stories in Diane Simmons'  Little America  are set amid this vast and unknowable backdrop and populated by a cast of rootless wanderers, some trying to escape their pasts, others searching for a future somewhere beyond the ever receding horizon.  In the title story, we join Hank and Lorraine, a pair of small-time fraudsters moving from one town to the next. With them is Hank's young daughter, Billie, from whose perspective the story is told. As we travel beside her, we see that the story is not so much about Billie's relationships with the adults in the car, but instead about the unknown territory of her own identity: “Billie…...

  After my interview with Fairlight Books author, Douglas Bruton , discussing his latest publication, Blue Postcards , and his approach to writing, he turned the tables on me and posed some questions of his own. Here, we continue our discussing about reading, writing, and my literary novella, MissingWords , which will be published on 5 th August. ~ Douglas:   I tried writing in my teens and then again at university – nothing I wrote was worth the ink. It was not until I got a computer (aged thirty) that I found a way to write that worked. When did you know you could write and that it was something you wanted to do? Loree:   I remember dreaming up stories a lot when I was a kid. I’m an only child, and spent a lot of time entertaining myself. I know that I wanted to be a writer long before I ever wrote anything down on paper. In that way, I think I was very typical of a lot of the students I’ve worked with who want to write, but don’t yet have the tools to do so. I...