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Over a few days in June 1940, some two million people left Paris ahead of the Nazi invasion. Some had the money or connections to relocate in good time but many, like the family in the photograph above, piled their possessions haphazardly onto whatever vehicle …

One of the central figures in my novel Swimming with Tigers is based on a real historical person connected to surrealism in the 1920s known as Nadja.  In this post, I want to share with you how I transformed this shadowy figure from history into …

Julia Cameron’s concept of the shadow artist in The Artist’s Way (1992) refers to someone who desires to be creative but is found servicing artists instead, such as an assistant, critic or teacher. To be a shadow artist, in Julia Cameron’s opinion, can conceal an …

Swimming with Tigers is set in four different countries in Europe (France, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal).  It takes us to three cities (Paris, Amsterdam and Lisbon), to a small town in Catalonia, and all the way through the south of France. Many readers have …

My novel Swimming with Tigers contains many descriptions of surrealist artworks, mainly from the 1930s.  Some appear exactly as they are and some I have altered and adapted for my own narrative uses. Many are made by characters in the book, while others are experienced …

This interview was part of the launch of Swimming with Tigers at Blue Sky cafe in Bangor, North Wales on October 15th, 2024. It’s just under half an hour long and begins with my friend Annie Williams explaining how we know each other and saying …

Swimming with Tigers is based on real historical figures associated with the surrealist movement in the 1930s. When I first started to plan my novel, I was all set to fictionalise the life of one particular surrealist: Leonora Carrington, whose life-story already reads like a …

The launch party for my novel about the women surrealists, Swimming with Tigers, took place on 15th October 2024: 100 years to the day since Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in Paris. Our celebration was in Bangor (North Wales) at an independent café called Blue …

My soon-to-be-published novel, a historical recreation (with liberties taken) of women in the surrealist movement in the late 1930s, is called Swimming with Tigers. The title refers to a key scene in which my main character is at her lowest point and goes into the …

Friends had read my novel manuscript. Some were creative writing lecturers, some were writers themselves, and some were readers in my genre (historical literary fiction). I’d had lots of positive feedback from them but the fifty rejections I had accumulated over the years, from agents …