The Flood’s Up and Different Perspectives

~ Jan Kaneen ~ Leave a comment

I had my first ever supervision Team’s meeting today with both my supervisors wherein we discussed:

How the induction went last week

Me starting to fill in my York St John Postgraduate Development Needs Plan which will help me identify and fill skills gaps in order to become a good researcher

Me getting my PhD Distance Learning Commitment Statement signed off by the three people who need to sign it off. This is to make sure I have the right equipment to do my PhD and also so that I can have things like actual copies of library books and post-grad booklets sent to my home address.

Working out how writing as a researcher is different to writing as a practitioner

How useful the online lecture I attended entitled Writing not Reporting was (spoiler alert – very).

Getting au fait with one of the referencing programs provided by the Uni as soon as poss so I don’t lose track of what I’ve read

Starting a notebook where I document insights that occur to me as I both read and write creatively so threads of understanding don’t get lost. I’m very keen to do this as when I read, ideas keep zooming into and out of my head To this end I’ve decided to get myself a mahoosive hardback notebook and take it with me everywhere I study and create. I’m also going to do this blog which will give me the bare bones of what I think and do

The flood outside my house (the tiny thatched cottage on the right of both these photos). The WiFi connection went weird in the meeting which I put down to the flood being up. I live in the Fens on a flood plane which as you can see is pretty watery at the moment. We still managed to cover everything needed though so all good.

I took these two photos after the supervision, half an hour apart going to and from the doctors to pick up a prescription. It’s mad how fast the sky moves round here. Blue and thistledown on the way out, a whole spectrum of grey on the way back. Thought I’d capture it to mark today because doing my first supervision seemed like a quantum leap and therefore worth marking somehow. It makes it feel like the PhD is really happening. Like its moved, just like that, from my imagination into reality. I’m off to Poland again tomorrow and I’m looking forward to reading on the journey. I love studying when I’m travelling. You can get a lot done in the limbo that is an airport. Hope the sky’s a wee bit stiller tomorrow though. Fast moving’s fine when you’re down here – but up there – whole different perspective.

And so it Begins (again)

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I have no voice (speaking not writing) because viruses are no respecters of folks’ first weeks on their part-time PhDs. Got back from Poland the week before last, where I had to make a quick unexpected dash due to my eldest son’s nan passing away and him having to leg it back to the UK. My wee grandpeep Leyla was off nursery with a cold which I of course caught during the few sleeps I was there. Now 10 days later, I still have only a squeaky whisper where my voice usually is and a throat that feels as raw as a very,very raw thing indeed. Still, I feel loads better than I did last Tuesday – my online induction day – which I’d been looking forward to for weeks, no months, no all my whole postgraduate life, in those daydream moments when I envisaged in a far off future having the time/qualifications/talent/cash to do a PhD by Creative practice – so it was a proper bugger when the day finally FINALLY arrived and I felt like death not all that warmed up and couldn’t wait for it to bloody end.

But that was last week and now in week two despite this throat from hell I have:

my first supervisory meeting set up for next Monday

a working postal York St John library account, with two books from my huge reading list ordered and one ebook downloaded. Said books are: Barthes, R. (2002 [1977]) A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments; Alison, J. (2019) Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative and Barthes, R. (1989) The Rustle of Language. These are from the indicative reading list I put together when writing my proposal

a student ID card with which I can access loads of other libraries

Sconul access which means I can borrow books/have access to e-books from all UK unis

a York St John email address

access to Microsoft 365

a first rubbish draft of the first flash fiction for the novella-in-flash I will be writing as the creative aspect of my PhD by creative practice (working title) Artifact. I say first flash because it will be the first one I write, but it wont be the first in the novella

this quick rubbish blog entry to chart my progress thus far.

Will write again next week after my first supervision when hopefully I will once again be able to speak in words. In the meantime I’m not going to bang on about ICE or Trump or genocide or the climate crisis because being ill and busy makes you seriously short-sighted. Instead here’s a photo of the Polish snow (I love snow) and grumpy husband and Nolly-the- dog walking in Wells-Next-the-Sea the week before I got this lurgy, the week before my PhD first chapter wrote itself.

Doorways, Hinterlands and Other Thresholds

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I love liminal spaces – marshes, tidelines, fens, doorways, veils, wishing wells – anywhere where one state of being merges into another. I like to call New Year’s Day, doorway day because, though human chronology is a man-made construct, new year’s still feels like stepping from the past into the future. Which is kind of why I’m blogging now – to log exactly that sort of moment – when I phase-shift into what’s coming next.

Here are two photos, one of the outside right now, just beyond my writing-space window, where it’s blowing a hoolie and lashing it down as the latest named storm, Goretti, batters the garden. And here’s me just behind the fragile glass , warm and toastie with my log-fire lit. Inside and outside so very close and so very different, separated most precariously by my liminal window. And inside, I’ve just enrolled on my PhD in creative practice at York St John – part-time and by distance learning. I’ve also just set up my student deets and activated my email. My student portal now says enrollment completed. That’s all I can do until I receive my registration email next week, so I am, really, genuinely and absolutely in liminal limbo before I start my PhD proper in February, which is why I am documenting the moment and taking stock on this exciting tideline day.

I’m going to savour the moment and think a little – do what the poets say and stand and stare because I know I’m on the brink of some seriously hard work but it feels exciting, bracing even, like I’m facing a raging sea at the turn of the tide, catching the salt on my face as I stare at the horizon .It’s my 61st birthday next week, another threshold to cross and then the rest of 2026 to look forward to. I have totally no idea what the next few year’s reading and writing will bring, but I have never been so up for anything, ever. .I may well be the oldest student in the village but I am so grateful for this opportunity and feel genuinely raring to go. Also, I’m going to document my PhD journey like I did my MA journey by blogging here and vlogging too most like, so watch this space if you’re interested in experimental flash fiction, silence in story-telling and/or horror novellas-in-flash.

2025 and all that Jazz

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It’s been a weird year of ups and downs in these strange, unsettled and often dark times. Watching the news has been hard to stomach sometimes and writing about what’s going on, either directly or in fiction as subtext or allegory, has been hard too, and yet there have been really good times as I hope the photos below will illustrate. In 2025, I turned 60, my eldest turned 40, my youngest, 25; I went to Poland 5 times, had my 3rd book published, wrote (as yet unfinished) long stuff instead of flash fiction, read at several events including at Halloween, went to some fabulous concerts including Max Richter’s brilliant Sleep at Ally Pally with Harry, saw The Snowman at the Peacock Theatre, had a brill holiday in Pembrokeshire curtesy of bessie mate Clarey Fairy, stayed up a snowy mountain with grumpy husband, attended a wonderful wedding, grew some gorgeous flowers, did cartoons of grandpeeps and loads of crafts with them, watched my youngest son fight in the ring, met a constellation of stellar authors, had two sleeps at Gladstone Library, saw wonderful dawns and sunsets, went to Bat out of Hell the Musical with my Sis and walked up Winter Hill, saw my pup Nolly turn 4, had big fun at the Flash Festival and applied to do a PhD at York St John (more about this in the new year). The non-chronological montage of moments below is by way of documentation and also farewell to the year. Thanks for the memories 2025, but to say I’m looking forward to 2026 and all the writerly challenges it will bring is a wee bit of an understatement, and now we’re past the solstice, it seems like a good time to say farewell. So happy holidays blogosphere peeps. Hope the holidays bring some joy – and see you soon for a brand new start in a couple of weeks.

Launched

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Had a wonderful night on Thursday at the launch of Hostile Environments and have been so thrilled so see copies winging into the world. Above are some that have found their forever homes and/or a place in the best bookshop ever. One is on Northodox’s ‘for sale’ table at the fabulous northern indie that is The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley. Northodox are this month’s indie publisher of the month at The Grove and so have a promotional table there during August which is full of amazing Northodoxian Books. And I’m very happy to report that Hostile Environments has sold out it’s first order there. Thanks so much to everyone who posted photos of their copies including The Grove, who you can read more about by following the link to their website, here: https://www.grovebookshop.com/

And I’m very happy to see from the flowers in some of the photos, that there’s several potential contenders for plant of the day – though I’m not expert enough to be able to identify them all. This being the case, I’m going to nominate the fern in the last photo which I do recognise. I love a fern and grow several myself. They provide lush green backdrops for the bursts of colour provided by petunias and nasturtiums in the flower bad outside my writing shed, but they’ve struggled this super dry, hot summer and needed a bit of additional TLC. But their time is coming, and soon it will be September – cooler shadier days that they much prefer, and even in winter when everything has died back they still make the garden feel alive with their feathery fronds and fractal shapes. Hoping it will be the same for my newly born book which houses several dark and weird stories very well suited to drawing-in evenings and nights by the fire. Going to be doing some spooky season readings in the coming months to help promote Hostile Environments and though the launch is now in the balmy past, the book’s future is only just beginning – which feels really exciting, more of which next time when I should also have good news about the PhD project I’ve been banging on about in previous posts. Safe to say it’s been quite the week in the writing shed, one that I’ll remember for the rest of forever. Thanks for sharing it with me blog buddies. Wouldn’t have been the same without you and if you fancy getting a copy of Hostile Environments either in paperback or as an e-book, here’s the links: https://www.northodox.co.uk/product-page/hostile-environments-paperback https://www.northodox.co.uk/product-page/hostile-environment-ebook

Hostile Environments – the launch

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It’s day 7 of my week of blogging to celebrate the publication of Hostile Environments and today I’m mostly promoting the on-line Zoom launch which will be on Thursday night between 7 and 8pm UK time. I’ll put a link to the Eventbrite page where you can book tickets at the end of this blog. It’s free but you do have to book.

But first – plant of the day – Celosia argentea or plumed cockscomb, or silver cock’s comb, or Lagos spinach. I bought this one (pictured here) from Aldi when I was doing a shop earlier in the year. It was sitting outside in that heatwave we had in spring, looking almost dead and I felt sorry for it, so, not knowing what it was I bought it and brought it home, watered it and it grew and grew. I had no idea what it was but it’s easy to identify and turns out it’s considered an invasive weed in parts of India and china and is grown as a beloved veggie in west Africa where it’s served as boiled greens. It thrives in hot sun (if watered adequately) and is easy to grow – just the sort of plant I like then and perfect for my potager’s garden. I think I will always grow it from now onwards – for the gorgeous brightly coloured grassy flower heads, which are soooo lovely as much as for the leaves which do taste very like spinach. It’s a win win win plant – lovely to look at, great to eat and easy to grow. Wish writing stories came so easily. It’s funny because quite often folks are surprised that writing a teeny flash can take such a long time. To be fair, in my life BCW (before creative writing) I too, thought authors just sat down and wrote and there it was finished. I had no idea that writing was re-writing, editing, experimenting with what you’ve got, leaving everything alone to settle in a drawer, coming back to what you’ve written some time later, then maybe repeating that process all over again, and again, and maybe even again.

Mark Twain got it right – he once wrote to a friend, sorry about the long long letter but I didn’t have time to write a short one. And then sometimes stories do just pop out ready formed – you put pen to paper and ta-dah – a flash. For me this is very rare though because I like to experiment and pare things down, to do an Ursula Le Guin i.e. cut down the word count of a story by half – a really fab exercise to do – why not give it a go? It’s amazing when you do it for the first time, you learn a lot about editing, crafting and your own style of writing. Reet going to finish there today because you know – brevity. Will write more about the PhD application later in the week but in the meantime, here is the link for the launch on Thursday where I’ll be doing readings, a lighthearted generating writing ideas ten minutes, and answering questions from Northodox Press. Bring a brew or some fizz or whatever you fancy and spend an hour in cyberspace talking Hostile Environments. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hostile-environments-book-launch-tickets-1480973193689?msockid=1f3453cc4e1460930acc46d94f126195

A Rose by Any Other Name

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Been trying to identify the name of this compact little climbing rose that’s lived in my garden since before I lived here as it is day six’s plant of the day. Have used three different apps that have so far matched it to (5 different) leaves and flower heads that simply do not conform to what it is, so for now, until someone gives me better info, going to just call it a rose.

Whatever its Latin name might prove to be, it’s defo a hardy specimen. We had the garden landscaped about a decade ago and moved this rose from the bottom to the middle lawn and it took the upheaval in its stride, which is another reason, in addition to: its beauty, its thin, fragile fragrance and the way the petals cluster so thickly that the rose heads are almost like huge buds even when they’re full grown, why I love it so much. It’s not a typical looking rose so I’m glad I’ve got the picture to show you what it really looks like. Without the picture maybe the default setting rose image that might pop into your head would be bigger or more open? Words are weird like that – they signify a thing that we all agree on but leave loads of room for error/difference. I.e. when someone says pig we all think of a pig – but then maybe my default setting pig is different to yours. Maybe the first image that pops into my head when someone says pig is a pygmy Japanese pot bellied pig – and maybe yours is a Gloucester Old Spot, or maybe its Peppa, or Babe. Which just goes to show, that words at once signify something in common but also have loads of margin for non-overlap – which is what makes them so interesting, especially for a writer of flash. That’s kinda what I was going to go on to say at the end of yesterday’s blog before Harry unexpectedly rocked up – about exciting and unexpected effects in writing which can result from wide spans in agreed meanings. Words can at once share and befuddle, or at least mean more than one specific thing to different people which is what, hopefully, I will be looking at when I do my PhD. (Yeay I got there eventually – took a week but you know – steady pace wins the race). It’s by no means a done deal yet, but I’ve put in an initial proposal to York St John to write a horror novella-in-flash as the creative part of a PhD by Creative Practice with a critical commentary, working title Off the Page and Between the Lines – a critical investigation into blank space, internal endings, pause and stasis in writing a horror novella-in-flash. Will write more tomorrow explaining how resonant word meanings fit into all this empty space – but just going to leave that there for now, because you know – white space is important and it doesn’t often get foregrounded. Before then though, here is me reading a story on the BBC last week called A Fairy-tale Ending (from my new collection Hostile Environments). This story depends on loads of breaks and spaces and silences to help with the moving on of vast swathes of narrative time – as I hope you will hear as you listen. I’m on at 1 hr and 21 mins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002h308?fbclid=IwY2xjawMFur1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFMeTRrYU5wOWRMT2ZIbDVoAR7DgvSJnB1zkEpA_-I_lrR-6Gth8013zxSRkdGKS2sPyLsh8ClqD_vG2mi32w_aem_eGclAHX5MC3fbfWtpYxqeQ

Home again, home again

~ Jan Kaneen ~ 1 Comment

Ended up not blogging yesterday because I was proper cream-crackered after grand-folking in Sidcup and also because I got home so late. It took an hour and a half to get to the Dartford tunnel and longer still to get back from there due to jams on the M11. Roads are such a nightmare in and out of London. Proper wish the trains ran better and to time. Anyhow back in the garden now, post book publication day and it’s been a joy looking online seeing copies of Hostile Environments out in the wild. Thanks to everyone who posted pics on Facebook and Bluesky – so lovely to see them. Here’s three,

I’m also very much looking forward to the launch event on Zoom on Thursday night, when I’ll be answering questions about the book and reading a couple of the stories. My author copies were waiting when I got back from Sidcup – here’s the vid of me opening them. I know it’s passe to do vids of book openings but I give no shits about any of that because for me it’s all joy and I worked really hard on this wee beaut and so am going to wring every last joyful memory out of it. So look away if it’s too self indulgent and skip ahead to plant of the day.

Hostile Environments safely home

Plant of the Day is cosmos as pictured above which is usually more than just these feathery ferny foliages. It’s usually masses and masses of gorgeous white flowerheads too (I always grow white ones though they come in many other colours too.) If you look really closely at the photo at the start of this blog, you can see one single flower finally starting to form. This lack of flowers had flummoxed me as its never happened before in any of the other years I’ve grown them so I set to googling to find out the answer. Turns out it’s to do (indirectly) with the globe courgette I mentioned earlier in the week. Cosmos it transpires, likes sparse conditions and poor soil and I’ve been feeding its courgette-y neighbour, and using the same (enriched) water on the cosmos saplings which has encouraged the foliage growth and disinclined the flower formation. I’ve rectified the mistake now and the first wee flower was open when I got home last night. I do love the foliage though – its so so pretty – like a sort of green mesh feathering which, from the place I’m sitting right now, looks lovely behind a pot of white violas. It’s fab to add to little arrangements I put indoors too – lasts for ages and sets off the electric pink sweetpeas a treat. Reet – was going to pap on next about contrast in storytelling and how sometimes stories take their own unexpected directions and do surprising things, but will enlarge tomorrow, as my youngest son – bang on theme – just unexpectedly rocked home from London (en route to going to Oslo tomorrow) – so off to chat to him now. More on surprise turns in storytelling tomorrow then.

LAUNCH DAY

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Had a lovely but very busy launch day looking after grandfolk in Sidcup, so didn’t get time to blog. Am doing the same again tomorrow but will blog again in the evening when I get home but wanted to record the wonderful Bluesky post my publisher made today about Hostile Environments which really touched me. I’ve been watching copies wing their way out into the world as when the day allowed (which wan’t often), but I’m going to have a proper look now before going to sleep. Having a third book in the world feels like something big and I am very proud of these tiny stories and so grateful that they are now out and about.