I wrote my MPhil thesis on Elizabeth Bowen. She used to shut herself away to write in her drawing room and would emerge, exhausted and sweat-soaked, having wrestled the words into submission.

If you're on the fence about coming to St Hilda's Crime Fiction Weekend, allow us to direct you to this showreel of some of our favourite moments from last year. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c_z...

I get so much unsolicited advice from men. Asked one to call his off-lead dog away because Rory isn't always friendly (and there was bacon in the picnic). He didn't, and said, 'You should get him a friend so he learns to be friendly.' a) not how dogs work b) he wouldn't have said it to my husband

Publishers also sell directly to readers fyi and mine are being very generous at the moment…

PRE-ORDER to STREAM my movie about how crypto is dumb and bad NOW @: everyoneislying.com

DELIGHTED to be in the Good Housekeeping summer reads along with @sarramanning.bsky.social and many more. Stock up for holidays here. www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle...

Ad Rock: you can disagree with the current All: POPE MCA: but if you push his buttons then you’re a All: DOPE Mike D: ordain yourself a bishop and you’re All: SCHISMATIC Ad Rock: excommunication is All: AUTOMATIC

There are resurfacing works going on in the road and the bin men are flinging rubbish around and the house next door is being renovated but still, clear as a bell, rises the voice of a man wandering past saying, 'I'm fucking meself IN THE ARSE with this one'.

Can we mention Brexit too? If you’re not going to live, study and work in a country you might not bother learning the language. But we are all intellectually richer for learning to think in other languages.

What is the word for when you finally bought the shoes you wanted and they haven't despatched them yet because they were too busy announcing the summer sale and taking a third off the price of the same shoes which NB you paid full price for?

This is what Bluesky is made for.

The month of July Juillet, Palais Comtal de Poitiers Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry Illuminated Manuscript on vellum, 1412-1416 Musée Condé ⁦, Château de Chantilly

Have I missed the schism?

This is why physical media is still so important.

My literary icon Mary Stewart is a 99p Kindle daily deal today. Airs Above the Ground is for you if you love a tightly plotted thriller, Austria, horses, or hot men with hidden depths. Features a great rooftop chase and one bit that makes me go funny. Should have been an Audrey Hepburn film.

I’m on the In My Good Books podcast with Susie Green talking about Everything She Didn’t Say and Maeve and more, if you want to hear me instead of seeing me in your timeline wanging on about these things. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/i...

I had to google something about one of my very early books for a reader and the AI summary answer conflates that book with the most recent one and includes a massive spoiler as well as gratuitous, unfounded comment on the characterisation.

I wrote a book set in a heatwave. If undercover cops pretending to be a couple, suburban murder and a twisty mystery sound appealing, this is for you. Also features a dog called Pippin.

Are you even a dog owner if you don't pretend to be confounded that your dog is doing what he always does: being an antisocial twat.

I didn’t know this! Revelatory! The actual word apparently derives from the (French) sound of the block of print clicking into place…

I did very uninspired shopping for my lunch and no one is more disappointed than the dog, who doesn't like hummus, is medium keen on carrots, and is moodily chewing a piece of sourdough while wearing his most martyred expression.

Townleyhall Passage Tomb • Louth Affectionately known as ‘Little Grange’, this small passage tomb is part of the extensive series of megalithic monuments in the Boyne Valley. The tomb's passage is aligned on summer solstice sunrise. 🔆

Sanity check: well into my third hour of crying this week but the reasons so far have included: Whether the dog walker has ghosted us when the dog is an ANGEL and has never done anything wrong A picture of my 16 year old niece when she was 4 This letter to the Irish Times.

Can’t sleep? Simple methods that work: • study hurricane forecast • who hates me • what did i forget • relive supreme humiliation • win 12-yr-old argument • buried alive? could happen • what i did vs should have done • dead people i miss • what if i’m bad • why do i say stuff • what’s my fuckin deal

I always think The Chain is the musical equivalent of a psychological thriller. Everything’s fine… we know where we are and we’re happy about it… good Lord.

I am such an AI sceptic that I’m wary of always sharing bad-news information about it but really, it’s concentrated toxicity all the way down.

Painted in Paris in 1883, 'The Breakfast Table,' exemplifies John Singer Sargent’s regard for the formal innovations of the French impressionists - it also evokes the paintings of Degas and Manet. The sitter peeling an orange whilst reading a book, is Sargent's sister Violet.

Long time followers will know my answer to this: bacon. It’s just salty and you all like salt. The sensory nightmare of rasher gristle is… 🙃

What are we even doing? There has never been any plausible epistemology according to which these things are reliable sources of knowledge. They model LANGUAGE, not INQUIRY.

I was thinking about why this was so haunting and I think it's because it's an extreme version of the common male refusal to step aside for women on pavements. It's a small-scale thing but it's all the time. www.lbc.co.uk/article/mult...

My 14 year old would, no joke, love this.

I interrupt your scheduled browsing to share that if you preorder my new book in any format, from any bookseller, you can get a free Maeve Kerrigan short story (UK and Ireland only at present). gleam.io/mXEd9/receiv...

👩‍🎨💐This bouquet has seen better days. The flowers are drooping and starting to fade. In the middle, a wilted opium poppy has been cut off, leaving behind a tiny droplet of moisture. The empty space left there lends depth to the bouquet. Rachel Ruysch, Vase with Flowers, 1700

This is from Mark Edmundson’s Self and Soul and it’s weird to me how often people forget or ignore that neither Achilles or Hector wanted to fight and die. Achilles hid in another kingdom to try to avoid going to war and in the Odyssey, says he would have rather been a living slave than a dead hero

Widow’s Bay episode 4 was perfectly written and directed. I love it so much.

It really was a lovely chat! I adore Philippa - always full of enthusiasm and a true book lover.

Today on the podcast I have a lovely time chatting to @janecasey.bsky.social about her new book Everything She Didn’t Say.

#EverythingSheDidntSay from @janecasey.bsky.social and @harpercollins.bsky.social is one of those books that has you questioning everything. Looking forward to stepping back to the 80s next with #TellTale from #ClaireParkin and @panmacmillan.bsky.social #BookSky

The only good thing about a cone as far as Rory is concerned is that it functions like a brandy snifter, but for piss.

Love to get marketing emails from companies wondering why I haven't bought the thing I was looking at when it. Is. Sold. Out.

I can’t stop thinking about this and how it’s not satire? Like… recent history shows us why guns in the general population of Northern Ireland are not helpful! Very recent! Living memory!

I would die so quickly if I lived anywhere there were wild tigers.

Group chats? Disgusting. I believe a chat is between one man and one woman. The man, who does not know the woman, says "hello beautiful" The woman says nothing. The man's account is deleted a week later.

Released 40 years ago today. Still the greatest day off.

This is like a curse. You steal the work of millions of writers and creatives but you end up with Elias Thorne, every time.

A Regency novel where the high-born heroine was unshakeably attached to the phrase 'ever so'. 'I'm ever so grateful, my lord.' 'This biscuit is ever so nice.' I can put up with a lot of anachronisms but that was just wrong.

Whether your summer holiday is going to be spent by a swimming pool, or trapped inside an air bnb avoiding torrential rain, you’re going to need some new books. Order the Summer Reading bundle and I’ll send you three books that I think you’ll love!

The dog is on all the drugs and has a minced paw. Diagnosis: very small injury licked until really impressively infected.

the phrase "lipstick on a pig" has always inspired a deep sadness in me. I think of the pig, looking forward to her big night out, and I bring myself to the verge of tears.