Right, can Christmas please be over now. Ready to get back to normal.

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas for the win…

Happy Christmas Eve! This picture shows Poirot looking miserable, not because of the outcome of a case, but because he hasn't yet listened to The #SwingingChristies annual Christmas special!!!!? 🎄💃 Don't be like Poirot - not in this way, anyway. Vite! ➡️ 🎧 pod.fo/e/366136 #AgathaChristie

Happy 100th birthday Winnie. If you need a little heartening listen this week you could do worse that listen to @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social Who Are You In Winnie the Pooh? on Radio 4. It’s been great company this week.

Mary Ruefle… and breathe

It’s almost two and I’ve been saying, I’ll just put five more pieces into this jigsaw for at two and a half hours…

Always delighted to stumble upon another response to The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Spending the afternoon with @jesstraynor.bsky.social stunning new poetry collection. @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social

It’s only taken me for 45 years to work out what my true vocation is. From here on in, I’ll be doing jigsaws while listening to Uncanny and eating prawn cocktail crisps. You would not believe how good I am at this.

Has anyone ever come up with a cocktail for using up Shloer?

Just finished Barbara Pym’s autobiography in diaries and letters - perhaps one for the completists rather than the casual fans as it’s truly exhaustive, quite repetitive and the young Pym is a bit insufferable. However it doesn’t throw up some wonderful one liners. Here are a few of my favourites.

Barbara Pym to Philip Larkin. “Original” hmmmmm

…… it’s jigsaw time.

Back at it, working on something extremely exciting this morning. We’ll have news to share after Christmas #FewAndFarBetween

Yesterday I had such a good hair day. This morning I woke with the hair of your man from Spinal Tap.

Once I spent two whole weeks making a giant poster of every lyric from the Counting Crows’ song “Anna Begins” by cutting out each individual letter from a newspaper and I have just this evening remembered this and realised that is two weeks of my life I’m never getting back.

shout out the guardian photo editor one time

Loved being a London commuter this week but it’s so good to be back home in Belfast for the foreseeable. 2025 was some year for travel adventures/misadventures. Staying put for the next few months.

I want to adopt every single one of these. Particularly "you have no dead in this funeral"

And that’s a wrap on recording the audiobook of #FewAndFarBetween. I learnt loads over the last few days like segue isn’t pronounced seeg and it’s amazing the way one of your characters can miraculously change names in the final chapter and nobody will notice. Off to sit in a dark room quietly.

One for the diary 👌 @shhomeplace.bsky.social @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social

As someone who considers herself a connoisseur of prawn cocktail crisps, am positively evangelical about the latest offering from M&S. 5 stars from me.

These smiley faced legends have worked so hard to make #TheRaptures and #FewAndFarBetween audiobooks sound great. Big thanks to Rosie, Alfie, Gray (who was hiding) and all @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social audio team. Had such a lovely time in the studio this autumn. Audiobooks coming in April

As per every year since the advent of social media, I will not be sharing my favourite books of the years till the stroke of midnight on 31st December. There are still 14 perfectly usable reading days left in the year. I may yet be blown away.

Just finished The Letters of Shirley Jackson and it was such a good read. There’s a Jackson here who’s neither the Jackson of her fiction or non-fiction writings about family life.

South Bank looking very sparkly and festive tonight.

Urban fox ran right across the pavement in front of me on my walk home tonight; always a sign of a good day.

In London at the Penguin mothership this week recording an audiobook of #FewAndFarBetween

RIP Rob Reiner, who made a perfect film on more than one occasion.

Deep into the selected letters of Shirley Jackson and it is the gift that just keeps giving #MyYearWithSJ

This gave me such a rush of nostalgia in the charity shop this morning…

I’ve been away for such a long time, I only got to see my UK/Ireland proofs in the flesh for the first time yesterday. @irene.martinez.covers design looks incredible in real life and I’m so pleased to finally have a book with a map in it. #FewAndFarBetween coming April 9th 2026

This was a great chat with @zoecomyns.bsky.social Also included is a new short story I wrote and read about community art projects and camera wielding men

An essay on my year of reading Barbara Pym is coming in the New Year along with some recommendations of where to start if you’re new to the wonderful world of Pym

An Academic Question is my final Barbara Pym of the year. It was published posthumously and isn’t her best but it has some genuinely astounding passages such as this paragraph about dead hedgehogs and adulterous husbands which might be my favourite section in any of her novels #MyYearWithBP

🎟️ Tickets available now at > seamusheaneyhome.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

This short story seems hell bent on becoming microfiction. Every time I’ve sat down to work on it for the last week it gets shorter and shorter

Reading Barbara Pym at 2:30 in the morning - there are some positive aspects to jet lag.

Summer can’t get here soon enough! Great author.

Proofs of the US version of #FewAndFarBetween just landed on my doorstep and they are absolutely gorgeous. Published by @scribnerbooks.bsky.social 28th July.

It's always an absolute treat to read @shhomeplace.bsky.social Absolutely delighted to be reading and talking about my new book, #FewAndFarBetween within a stone's throw of the Lough Shore. The event is on 25th April and tickets are available via the link below.

A lot of truth to be found in John Gardner’s “On Becoming A Novelist”

Introducing my latest travel acquisitions to the rest of the lads.

Home and sleeping in my own bed tonight for the first time in six weeks. What an adventure that was. Thank you to everyone who’s contributed kindness, conversations and hundreds of tiny acts of generosity along the way. Always lovely to come home from a trip with a rake of new friends.

Places going fast for this one day course @irishwriterscentre.bsky.social

I really enjoyed these short stories and can confirm it is perfectly sized for a large sock (whilst reading, I carried my copy around in my jacket pocket)

Now available for pre-order: FOUND IN A CONTEXT OF DESTRUCTION, the debut poetry collection by acclaimed writer Tim MacGabhann, out in February 2026. Cover design by @jackflag.bsky.social 🪨 bansheepress.org/shop/p/found...

Goodbye Mexico. You have exceeded all my expectations and I will definitely be back.

Our Belfast special provoked the most conversation this year! We found that one so illuminating. Check it out if you missed, or listen again at ➡️ pod.fo/e/3090e9 #AgathaChristie #podcast with special guest @jancarsonwrites.bsky.social

Tonight I got to read in Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and my Poirot-loving heart was in art deco heaven.

Can anyone recommend good quality black lace up ankle boots that will last well. I’m done with DMs The sole has entirely come off one boot and the upper has split from the other after less that two years wear.