STOPS	DATE	BLOG
1	28 Oct	Keeper of the Snails "What fascinates me about science I think is the “solving the puzzle” aspect, that the universe has hidden secrets and we, humans, are trying to crack some code, to work it out.".... Read more.
2	5 Nov	Literary Minded: Angela Meyer "I write and read short stories because I love what can be done in such a small space, be it 50 words or 5000 words, a magic that can be created that does not suit any other form. Short stories, because of their nature, can be surreal, irreal, can ask the reader to suspend disbelief and because they don’t take up days, weeks or months of your time, you are willing, you let yourself go into this new world..." Read more.
3	9 Nov	Vanessa Gebbie’s News "I do love Magical Realism and I would like to see some of my stories as falling under this heading. I think that the name, Magical Realism, is already thrilling – you are taking something which we might call “real” and add a dash of magic, something otherworldly. For me, this is why I read – I want to be lifted out of the everyday, out of the world I know, and be shown something new, something other. ..." Read more.
4	18 Nov	Sue Guiney: Me and Others "In a way, the fiction writer's “What if...?” that he or she asks himself is similar to the Talmudic rabbis, who discussed and pondered every possible permutation that occurred to them, every possible behaviour or situation that someone might come up against, in order to formulate a Jewish answer – or more than one!" Read more.
5	26 Nov	Tim Jones: Books in the Trees " Well, strictly speaking, interstitial fiction only exists if you believe in the genre boundaries in the first place. But since we haven't reached a genre-less state yet, I will answer your question. When I wrote the stories in The White Road, I had no thought of genre, of where they might “fit”. Plaits is a story where a woman talks to her knees; in The White Road the main character sets up a cafe in Antarctica; the protagonist of Rainstiffness is temporarily paralyzed every time it rains; the main character of Self Raising makes “scientific” cakes. I don't know where this places my stories!.." Read more.
6	2 Dec	Eric Forbes’ Book Addict’s Guide to Good Books "Ali Smith and Lorrie Moore are enormous influences; their short stories show me the possibilities of the form, that stories don’t have to be mini-novels, that they can be magical and otherworldly, can play with language. Alice Munro’s stories always inspire me, her language is unfussy, not pretty, not frilly, yet her stories slam into you and leave you reeling." Read more.
7	10 Dec	Eco-libris "Why can't we come up with a green alternative, one that looks and feels like paper, but can be manufactured without cutting down trees, and doesn't involve electricity, batteries, spare parts, noxious chemicals?" Read more.
8	16 Dec	Kelly Spitzer "Side effects. By-products. Are often more interesting. Get rid of the main attraction, take a peek to the side, what’s happening in the margins, out of the spotlight. "Read more.
9	23 Dec	Kanlaon "Your stories are filled with emblems. They lend your stories a surreal quality. When did you first start realizing the power of the image, and what kind of freedom does it give you, to write stories clustered around images? To be honest, I hadn’t thought about this until you mentioned it. I don’t plot my stories, I hear a voice in my head, a first line, and I just follow it and see where it goes. I don’t sit and think, well, this is my central image and I will weave a story around this. " Read more.
10	29 Dec	Thoughts from Botswana "Describe your writing process. Do you wait for your muse to pitch up or do you do the 9-5? Ah, well! Neither, actually. I tried the 9-5 for a few days and then discovered that it doesn't work for a short story writer. Novelists need to put in the time, they have a lot of words to get down, and many redrafts to go through. But it doesn't help me to structure my writing like that"  ...." Read more.
11	6 Jan	Debi Alper I have to say that I do have a yearning to be born at a time when I could be part of a writers’ group like the Bloomsbury group or any group who got together on a regular basis to thrash out ideas and inspire each other. And not just artists but scientists too. I remember visiting the Kafka museum in Prague a few years ago and being jealous of his particular set of intellectual buddies (I don't think there were any women). Read more.