Words on a Page

As a matter of record, here is a list of my goals for 2010:  writing an average of 7000 words per month, complete 1st draft of novel; attend University of Chichester’s Research in Progress conference, 15 May, and present paper ‘Voices of the American West: Striving for Authenticity’; attend University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Studies in Literature Annual Postgraduate Symposium, 21 May, and present paper ‘Identity in Western American Literature’; make a research presentation at the Postgraduate Forum at Uni of Chichester; gather critical sources; complete outline of dissertation; review Sherman Alexie’s next book, Fire with Fire , due out in autumn; submit paper to Western American Literature journal; apply for research travel grant from British Association for American Studies in autumn.

It's been a full year since I started down the PhD road and at times it doesn't feel like I've gotten very far at all. To be honest, I've only been officially on the MPhil/PhD programme since mid-October. The preceding ten months were spent on University of Chichester's Probationer's Scheme, a sort of feeder road leading to the PhD highway, filling out applications, applying for funding, applying for more funding, building my 'writing profile', attending conferences and doing preliminary research into my subject. Lordy, I've filled out a lot of forms this year... Here's a list of what I've actually done this past year: completed a 7,000-word Literature Review of fiction, historical texts and theoretical works pertaining to my research; finalised my research proposal; applied for funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (a three-month long process which was highly stressful yet ultimately unsuccessful); attended three confe...

Have just received an email from the good folks at Moonlight Mesa to say that 'The Difference Between Cowboys and Clowns' was named as one of four runners-up in their 1st annual Cowboy Up Short Story Contest, just missing out on a piece of the prize money... The story came out of the 1st round of the 2009 NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge in which competitors are assigned a genre and subject and given one week to come up with a 2500-word story. I was horrified to receive the genre of 'Romantic Comedy' and the story remains the one and only example of this genre in my portfolio. Shockingly, it's proved quite successful, as it was also a finalist in the NYC Challenge. Perhaps I should give up my pretensions of writing 'literary fiction'? NYC Midnight run a number of competitions throughout the year, and their SS Challenge is a good way for writers to step out of their comfort zone and attempt something entirely different. Here's a link for more inform...

My romantic rodeo romp 'The Difference Between Cowboys and Clowns' has just been named as a Semi-Finalist in Moonlight Mesa's short story contest: http://www.moonlightmesaassociates.com/ .

For the purposes of this review I have divided my research into four main categories: historical data surrounding the Lewis and Clark expedition and the life of William Clark’s Nez Perce son, Tzi-Kal-Tza; personal identity in the writing of Native American authors; the use of landscape in literature of the American West; and the acquisition of authority. Historical Data Since its completion in September 1806, numerous books have been written about the explorations of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery , almost all of them based on the diaries of the two Captains and four of their enlisted men. Sergeants Charles Floyd, Patrick Gass and John Ordway, along with Private Joseph Whitehouse all kept journals during the expedition’s two-and-a-half years. The first complete record of the expedition to reach the public was the journal of Sergeant Patrick Gass, published in 1807. As Gass was relatively uneducated and his literary skills limited, his work was heavily edited for publication ...

Real and Perceived Risks I think there is always going to be an element of ‘riskiness’ in historical fiction simply because we are taking material considered to be ‘factual’ and reshaping it to fit our purposes. Readers knowledgeable about the historical details I include in my novel are bound to be critical if those details are not presented accurately, and readers more engaged with the fiction will be critical if the plot reads like an academic treatise. But historical fiction is fiction at the end of the day, albeit a form which demands authenticity. The key, then, is to be meticulous in my research. Perhaps the greatest challenge I face, however, is one which is self-imposed. At the centre of my novel is an historical personage about whom very little is known – Halahtookit, the Nez Perce son of the explorer William Clark – and my original aim was to present one strand of the narrative from his point of view. Many fiction writers would rejoice at such a find – an intriguing ‘charact...

A big 'thank you' to Ian Kampel at the Synergise.com for publishind my article on cycling across the United States. You can access the artlcle here .