Quoyloo Quill

Thanks to Rachael McGill for providing this blog, bringing attention to the Stromness Plays Project. I’ve just run a couple of playwriting workshops in Stromness and Kirkwall, part of the Stromness Plays project I’m organising with the Stromness Drama Club. The idea of the project is for people to write a short play inspired by one of the themes discussed by the Stromness Debating Society, which ran from 1953 to 2012. My granddad was a founder member and my dad was one of the last secretaries. I was looking through the minutes, which Dad has now given to the Orkney Archives. They’re a funny, fascinating snapshot of Stromness people’s thoughts on issues since the 50s; everything from ‘Old Stromness is not worth preserving’ (1966), to ‘the experiment of democracy has failed’ (1995). I thought it would be fun to use these ideas as prompts for telling stories. I managed to get some funding through a Scottish Society of Playwrights (SSP) Fellowship, so the Stromness Plays project is now one

Happy New Year, and what better way to begin than with some lucky white heather? Every January I tell myself I am going to do something different during the year. Usually I get to September/October, with nothing having been done and I decide it is too late to start for that year, but promise to get down to things once another new year is upon us.  Will this year be any different? Possibly not, but I do have some incentive. I have a new publisher for my next novel, which is due out around October - a dark fantasy/horror set during an Arts Festival on a remote Scottish island. (Not sure where I get my inspirations from). I have a marketing guru friend who tells me the best time to begin marketing a book is before it is written, so I've missed the boat on that one, but I am already thinking up a strategy. Visiting the States isn't quite on the schedule, although perhaps Helmsdale, Auchterarder and Monrose. You may find some little snippets of the story find their way into a few of

  I am excited and delighted that poet Chris Tait has agreed to contribute to the Quill. Chris is not only an outstanding poet, but is also a playwright, fantasy writer and spoken word supremo. She currently lives in Glasgow, but her writing still very much flows from her Shetland roots. The poems are from her anthology Literary Skulduggery.  https://amzn.eu/d/11yOlvM The Stone Solitaire Islands A skull in a blistered helmet Called from the Nordic crews His bones marched streets in amulets And sailed seas like a bruise His ruined croft was Camelot A golden egg by a goose Rings on cushions from rats Bonds for the guizer jarl's house The ruffled manes of hamlets In a rock measured radius Crofters jousted for their plots Tassels are handcuffs and a noose Beelzebub and his Minions Patrick's criminal fingerprints He clumsily slipped the sovereign At the castle with razor points The carriage burst to a pumpkin The little match girl was a servant Learning spells with cauldrons Banquet

                                   Our first trip, so to speak, was a quick jaunt to Birsay for a tea/coffee in the tearoom there and a look out to sea. It wasn't until after our second 'joy ride' - a sunny drive to the round church in Orphir, en route encountering a distinctly uncooperative set of traffic lights, and admiring a preening seal in the shallow waters of Stenness loch - that the idea for a journal took root. Although neither my neighbour nor I are reduced to wearing purple (well, maybe sometimes) we are both of an age to laugh in the face of self-consciousness, which augured well for hearty adventures. Two things came to mind when planning this blog. The first is that due to declining eyesight and reduced mobility my neighbour no longer drives herself. During our trip she observed with wonder the cloud patterns over Hoy and the sun ripples on the water of the loch, and declared how beautiful Orkney is. My neighbour has lived on Orkney for many years, but not ge

  I am delighted to welcome Irish based writer Nina Oram to the Quoyloo Quill. Nina's books are bulging treasure chests of Celtic folklore, some of which are not too far removed from Orcadian folk legends. When Babs offered me the chance to talk about my writing and Irish mythology and folklore, I was thrilled and honoured. I thought it would be so easy, after all, my trilogy and many of my stories are immersed in Ireland’s rich tradition, and yet the more I tried to put my thoughts down, the more elusive they became. It was like unpicking a knot. My YA Dark Fantasy Trilogy started with a trip to the Carrowkeel Tombs, five neolithic tombs perched on top of a hill in County Sligo in the province of Connacht. Being able to sit inside stone walls that had been built millennia ago, listening to the wind shriek past, was for me, sublime. Evoking, as it always does, that strangely wonderous feeling of having connected with something magical. But old magic. The magic of the crow,

Thanks to Orkney Scriever, Alison Miller, for her reflections in this blog piece. Would I like my personal diaries and letters to be read by other people when I’m dead and gone? Would I like them mined for works of fiction? It’s not an easy question to answer. Sure, while I’m still on the planet, the thought of somebody raking through private letters and journals feels somewhat uncomfortable. What did I say? What did I reveal about myself that I would rather keep hidden? Did I malign people? Was any of it actionable? I could ensure this scenario never happens by getting rid of diaries and letters while I still have time. On the other hand, when I’m dead, I don’t imagine I’ll give a stuff.   I recall a writer friend telling me she’d destroyed all her journals, written over decades of her life because she didn’t want her daughters-in-law to read them when she’s gone. The pang I felt when she said this was visceral. How could she consign years of details of her life, years of thoughts, ye