Underneath the Tree
This Wednesday (November 4) sees the publication of a very special anthology of Christmas short stories from Northern Irish writers and you’re all invited to join us in sending it out into the world via a Zoom launch (what else, these days?!)

Underneath the Tree is a collection of 12 short stories which take place over the Christmas period and include everything from the ghostly and gruesome, to the magical, criminal and otherworldly. It has dystopian fiction, historical, speculative and comedy … We’re not lying when we say there really is something for everyone in this book.
Myself and fellow author, Kelly Creighton, have spent most of this year co-editing the anthology, having dreamt up the project last December. Once we got our funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Small Grants Programme, supported by the National Lottery, earlier this year, we were good to go.
We wanted to include a range of new writing from across Northern Ireland, including a variety of genres, which I think is what we’ve got in our final collection. We were also keen to make it a project that supported not just writers (who have all been paid for their stories), but the wider community, so all proceeds from the e-book and paperback sales are being donated to the Simon Community NI and the World of Owls NI.
Our writers are pictured below and are as follows:

Top row (L-R): Angeline Adams, Eddy Baker, Kelly Creighton, Stacie Davis. Second row (L-R): Sharon Dempsey, Simon Maltman, Gary McKay, Samuel Poots. Bottom row (L-R): Claire Savage, Remco van Straten, Morna Sullivan, Stuart Wilson, Jo Zebedee.
If you’d like to attend the Zoom launch on Wednesday, November 4 from 7pm-8.30pm, just email myself and Kelly here to register: info.sesheta@gmail.com We’ll have some readings from the writers so it should be a nice way to launch the book!
You can preorder the e-book here: https://amzn.to/35Xu1st
Paperbacks will be on sale from November 4.
Arts Council IERP grant

In other writing news, in October I was very happy to receive word that I was successful in the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Individuals Emergency Resilience Programme (IERP), which is funding provided by NI’s Department for Communities to support creative practitioners in their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be a great help in making up for lost earnings this year, as well as giving me some breathing space to focus on new work, such as my new novel, which will be aimed at an adult audience. More on that to come in the months ahead!
Wedding poem

October was a busy month and it saw me read a very special poem at my brother, James’s, socially distanced wedding on October 23. He had asked me earlier this year if I would be able to write something for the ceremony and my final piece was an Elizabethan-style sonnet which I think he and his new wife, Leanne, both enjoyed! It’s been a while since I wrote any poetry so it was fun to work on this, especially for the occasion that it was for.
Giant’s Causeway Book Club

Our GC Book Club has been going strong on Zoom too and one perk of being online is that we’ve been able to have authors join us to chat about their work.
In September we had Leon McCarron pop in from England to chat about his travel book, The Land Beyond, while in October we were joined by Louise Beech, who chatted about her latest novel, I Am Dust, as well as her other work.

Our November read is a collection of nature essays – Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald – which I’m really looking forward to as well.
Other than that, I’ve been reading some other good books myself and filling a notebook with scribblings relating to my next novel, which is starting to take shape, albeit at a steady/slow pace. But I’m excited about it – the blurb would entice me to pick it up right away and I really like my story premise, so lets hope I can do it justice!
Anyway, more as I have it. Don’t forget to join us on Wednesday if you’re free! The beauty of Zoom is that you can pop in at any time, so come along if you can.
You can preorder the e-book here: https://amzn.to/35Xu1st
Paperbacks will be on sale from November 4.