Just returned from a week on the Isle of Arran, Scotland...

A week spent in the company of wonderful writers such as Gerry Potter, Mel Rees, Stevie Turner, John G Hall, Sarah Miller, Chanje Kunda, Steve Waling, Steph Pike, Anna Percy, Leanne Bridgewater, Charlotte Henson - and so many more I can't list them here!

Peaceful mornings spent sitting at my window in Lamlash, overlooking Holy Isle. I did my morning pages with a pot of coffee, watching the seals swim in to take up position on the rocks.

The March Violets announce the first round of dates for the Made Glorious Tour in Oct / Nov!

These gigs are confirmed, more to be announced, so, diaries at the ready...

Ted Hughes Festival

Saturday October 26th

The Trades Club

Tickets on sale soon

Supports TBC

Tough Life Boogie - John Peel week, The Dark Side of Peel

Sunday October 27th

The Continental,

Tickets on sale soon

Special Guests: Flesh For Lulu, John Hyatt (Three Johns), The Inca Babies.

That is correct.

https://www.facebook.com/events/406821436094484/

DV8

Sunday 3rd November

The Coliseum

Tickets on sale soon

Special Guests Partly Faithful

RFTK Promotions Newcastle

Sunday 10th November

Trillians

Tickets on sale soon

Supports TBC

O2 Academy2 Islington

Friday 22nd November

Tickets on sale soon

Supports TBC

Brudenell Social Club

Saturday 23rd November

Tickets on sale soon

Supports TBC

A wonderful time was had by all the fundraising evening for the Young Oncology Unit at the Christie Hospital... I was honoured to be invited to be one of the speakers - in the company of inspiring (and entertaining) women like Val McDermid and Susan Calman. Not to mention the inspiring women on the committee who put so much passion into raising funds for this wonderful cause...

Honoured to be a part of it!

I'm absolutely delighted to report that I have just won The Wirral Festival of Firsts Poetry Competition 2013, with my poem 'A Short History Of Unicorns'.

www.festivaloffirsts.com

The judge was Colin Watts, a poet I respect. I don't know about other writers out there – but when a poet whose work I admire likes my work, it means a huge amount. It's a great boost.

Read my winning poem here

neo:studios

is an artist led, not-for-profit organisation, founded to aid the development of creative practitioners.

http://www.neoartists.co.uk/

Each month for the duration of 2013 neo:writers will be publishing and promoting the work of a different poet.

My new poem 'Eclipse' is featured for June 2013. Plus Scott Devon interviews me...

Read my new poem and the interview here

Thanks to Eric Page at GScene Magazine for this great review!

GSCENE JUNE 2013

Cast out by Victorian society, eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They soar to fame as The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in professor Josiah Arroner's Palace of Curiosities. Set in 1850s London, this is the story of Eve and Abel, both freaks of nature searching for escape. It tenderly explores what it's like to be different and traces their struggle for self-discovery on the boundaries of what is perceived as human.

Garland has produced a fascinating and delightful book. Like a cross between Philip Pullman and Angela Carter, she takes us on an evocative and wonderful journey, full of magical delights and stunning set pieces.

It's her debut novel and such an accomplished work. Her style is a joy. She made me gasp with the audacity of her ideas and smile with the lush beauty of her prose. Check her website for performance, poetry and written work. She's as interesting as the characters she creates!

Go and buy yourself a copy now, please – you'll love it!

www.gscene.com

Two new blog interviews / reviews about the launch of The Palace of Curiosities – and how long it's taken to get here.

‘What has always amazed me is that you have so many different aspects to your work. You write in your name Rosie Garland; you write and perform as your alter-ego Rosie Lugosi; you are the lead singer of The March Violets; you are a Goth icon; a legend in the world of burlesque; star of Woman’s Hour and women’s magazines; are there any other facets we don’t know about?’

Read the full interview here - click this link

• 'An assured and magical novel. Her poetic output provides the writing's lyricism and her involvement in cabaret and Goth gives her an eye for the strange.'

Read the full interview here - click this link

Blimey! I'm being used as the poster girl for next week's (sold out) Literary Death Match event The Hospital Club in Covent Garden.

This event is sold out but you can sign up for the waitlist - as tickets become available you will be contacted:

Waiting List

Here's the lineup of THE READERS

• * Rosie Garland, the debut author of The Palace of Curiosities
• * James Benmore, author of Dodger
• * A.L. Kennedy, actor, writer, comedian
• * Peter Rosengard, record-breaking life insurance salesman, founder of The Comedy Store

Literary Death Match London - link

Nice review for my recent workshop for Manchester Literature Festival - Postcards from the Past.

• Stories from the city, stories from the sea
• Postcards From The Past Workshop, Saturday 11th May, 2-4.30pm, Stanley Suite, The Midland Hotel

Words by Desmond Bullen.

Long before the supposed modishness of flash fiction, prior to the chirpy burst of Twitter, wit at its briefest found its way inked onto the back of a postcard. Denuded of the envelope's discretion, its commonplaces and tidings were status updates on mass-produced cardboard. To come across one now, forgotten between the pages of a secondhand book, is to have the past blossom with the delicacy of a Polaroid before one's eyes.

The postcard is of a room. The room is in a hotel, the kind with a history; one whose inlaid angels have witnessed the relentless ebb and flow of guests and staff over years weary and gay, over decades heavy and light. The tales they could tell are on the tips of their tongues, but their tongues are still. The people in the room are not. They prowl and declaim, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, giving rise to an unintentional poetry, part Dada, part poetry.

And conducting this displaced cabaret is the quicksilver figure of Rosie Garland, a protean figure – neither poet nor mistress of ceremonies, neither March Violet nor author, but all, and more – now coaxing ink from pens in a workshop that is far more play than toil.

There is paper, too; the inevitable flipchart, the outpourings of the group in marker pen across it, like benign graffiti. And the pads and notebooks, their lines no longer flat, but beating with prose of which its authors might be cautiously proud. Each table has a soul or two brave enough to voice their new-found words to the room at large. Each has a postcard to send that's funny or thoughtful, angry or melancholy, flirtatious or droll.

Wish you were here? I was glad I was.

Dealing with the internal critic

Or

A 12-Step Programme for Coping with Mavis

I have a voice in my head. It never says anything nice. It undermines any attempt I make to write. Examples of the things it says are you're a fraud, you'll never amount to anything and who told you you could write, anyway? On and on and on, wittering ad nauseam.

Sound familiar? You're not alone. It seems like whenever I 'fess up to this internal censor, a common response from fellow-creatives is a stunned good god, you get that too?

Simply put, this inner censor wants me to stop writing. It's been there since I was in my early teens, and shows no sign of going away. Sure, it's had to change its script a little over the past few months what with the launch of my debut novel 'The Palace of Curiosities', but it has simply developed nasty new mantras. One example: when people say they like 'The Palace of Curiosities', they're only being nice.

I used to listen and believe every word I heard. Result? I stopped writing. For years. Call it writers' block if you will. An important part of my writing life has been improving how I deal with these internalised put-downs. I've shared some ideas below – if any of them help, that's great.

1 - First off, I worked out when the voice first appeared. 'Forever' was not an acceptable answer. Speaking personally, my earliest creative efforts were encouraged. However, that changed in my teens when I started to explore the weird, the odd, the different, the opposite of sugar and spice. Suddenly (and it was sudden) the support and praise evaporated. Ta-dah! My internal censor was born at the precise moment in my life when I was developing into an independent person, and it grew fat on raging hormones and adolescent angst.

2 – We are born free of internal censorship – it comes later. My ability to write and my love of writing were both there before the censor. It helped to separate that out.

3 – Another key was to recognise it was a voice in my head, but not 'my' voice. I can separate my self from the put-downs. Who first planted doubts in your head? You sure as hell didn't.

4 - Part of the externalising process was to create a character and give it a name. I call my internal censor Mavis, because it's silly and helps diminish the yap-yap-yap. She is not a huge terrifying demon; she's small and she's squeaky. It's much harder to take such a creature seriously.

5 – She makes herself pretty easy to spot, as her script lacks originality. She trots out the same old tune, the same old words. I recognise Mavis on one of her rants, rather than believing that what she says is true. It isn't.

6 – However, I don't try to ignore her: she just shouts louder. I acknowledge she's there, say hello Mavis; listen to what she has to say, then I get on with whatever it was I was doing. My suggestion? Hear it, note it, move on.

7 - Develop your own practical strategies. One of mine is writing early in the day. Mavis isn't a morning person. I get up before she does, while she's still snoozing. Once I've started and am on a roll it's not so difficult: the blank page is when she's at her most undermining.

8 - I write longhand when I'm starting out, whether it's a novel or a poem. There are many reasons why I do this (and they're the subject of a different blog). As a strategy for getting round Mavis it works like this: to the censor, handwriting is 'scribbling', ie not serious or important. She stops paying attention - and I get to explore ideas without her peering over my shoulder and sneering 'well, that's not very good is it?' If she does start snooping around I say I'm just scribbling. Nothing for you to bother about. I work under the radar and sneak my words past her – rough, unedited words – but words. I can't edit nothing, which is what she's aiming for.

9 – Don't try to reason or argue with the censor. You'll use up all your creative energy and never, ever win. There's no point trying to reason with the unreasonable. My censor says things which logically I know aren't true. But oh boy, does my fearful emotional jelly of a self wobble. That's her power. If I try to engage logic, I end up going in circles. She always has an argument to top mine. She always gets the last word. She's always got a 'yeah, but - '. These arguments leach away time and energy when I could be writing.

10 - Speak out. Say she exists. Stop being ashamed. Stop believing her.

11 - Talk to other creative people. Find out what their internal censors act like. Share strategies for coping.

12 - For years I tried to repress her, ignore her, make her go away. It didn't work. I've accepted I'll never be rid of her. And maybe, just maybe, there's a positive side to all of this head-talk. It keeps me on my toes. With Mavis around I won't become one of those writers who think that every word they commit to paper is perfect and woe betide any foolish mortal who dares suggest they might need to edit the hell out of it.

And if I do become big-headed, blasé or swan around saying do you know who I am? – tell me. Loud and clear.