Morning Folks.
I am on Facebook as AlexBootCampKeegan (all one word) and I have just started a group called
Runners Who Write; Writers Who Run
The following is a note I've posted on FaceBook about it. If you write ad run (should be BOTH, that's the point) then why not join me?
I have only run three hours in the last 4-5-6 months but I was a serious veteran club runner AND I WILL BE RUNNING TODAY.
Imagine going on a writers retreat where you ran first thing in the morning and everyone was so ALIVE!
I have just finished a weekend of teaching creative writing in a very intense atmosphere, up around 0600, going to bed around 0100. That intensity was on the back of almost thirty days of non-stop, heavy-duty writing and too many late nights. I went INTO the course dog-tired.
Once upon a time, as an athlete, I would have been overjoyed at the surroundings of the chapel. All those fantastic runs, with great views. This time I went, only just recovered from an injury having done no exercise whatsoever for six weeks and abusing my body with too-long days, too much time at the computer and too much (I drink when I write a lot) wine.
But one of the ladies on the course was out first morning, out there running with the sea air in her face. Day Two I HAD to go out.
I was three stones and more (as much as fifty pounds) over my racing weight, unfit, slightly upset tummy, hungover, mentally running on empty AND WE WALKED-RAN FOR TWO HOURS.
We didn't exactly hammer things. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that our mile-running pace was nearer ten minutes than nine, but we walked up those hills, ran along the cliffs, saw an amazing blue lagoon, came back sweaty (and I was sore) but the day FLEW by and I was twice as good a teacher, full of energy again.
This is what I remember when I was running a lot (up to seventy miles a week at my peak).
The physical, mental, philosophical side-effects of running are fantastic. When I'm fit, especially through running (and carrying a lot less weight) I feel younger, sharper, cleverer and insights come so fast I can't catch them all. I used to say running "empties my head of fat".
So, I want to form a group of people who firstly consider themselves writers (whether professionals or serious non-professionals) people who wake up and 19 days out of 20 are immediately thinking, "When and where today will I get my writing space?"
Ability and publications is NOT the point, desire an seriousness, and how you define yourself is the mark of "writer". I was unpublished when my son Alex was born. On the birth certificate my wife, unprompted, put my profession down as writer. That must mean I was, even if the 350-400 publications I now have hadn't started.
And running?
Well, the definition of writer is above. My definition of runner is similar. Do you get up evry day WANTING to run? Is it your main way of being fit? You may or may not be super-slim or fast, but at some time in your past you ran seriously (say 4-5 or more days a week) and raced a bit (even if you finished way down the field.
You own running shoes, shorts, vests etc and you get somewhere and you want to run, want to run, want to run.
You might be like I am right this minute (but watch this space) grossly overweight and maybe a bit ashamed, with short-term and long-term injuries. Running might now make you breathless. You aren't supple, you may not be quite so young. There's no way you are going to enter the next County Cross-Country, and the idea of The National, try to stop laughing.
BUT, like with me last weekend, someone was going running and you HAD TO try, because that's what you are, even if you're a fat old fat, you define yourself as a runner, you want to be fit again, want to feel that sharpness in body, brain and soul.
You quite like the idea, a year down the line, of a half-marathon where every person in the field is a writer. Wouldn't that be glorious?
JOIN ME!!
PS
If you write and don't run, START.
Tuesday 23 June 2009
Wednesday 17 June 2009
Date Change for Newbury Talk
My SIGNING date at Newbury Borders remains the same (27 June)
but the talk/reading will now take place at 8:30 PM
Wednesday 8th July (one week earlier)
but the talk/reading will now take place at 8:30 PM
Wednesday 8th July (one week earlier)
Tuesday 16 June 2009
Signing in Oxford St, London
I will be signing copies of Ballistics from 12 Noon until 4PM at
BORDERS, Oxford Street, London
Saturday July 18th
Please come along if you are in London that day and say hello.
BORDERS, Oxford Street, London
Saturday July 18th
Please come along if you are in London that day and say hello.
Monday 15 June 2009
Third Review Amazon UK
5.0 out of 5 stars
A magician with words, 14 Jun 2009
By DJM King "david61751" (Australia)
Alex Keegan writes some of the finest short fiction around and this collection contains some of the best examples of his art.
`Ballistics', a chilling but poignant account of human anger that gives rise to disastrous consequences, was an excellent choice as the title story. Personal favourites are however those written in Keegan's inimitable Welsh voice: 'Meredith Toop Evans and his Butty Ernest Jones'; 'The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Price'; and 'The Bastard William Williams'.
Like the pauses between musical notes, the stories in this book will ring true long after the last sentence has been read. Keegan's magic lies in what is being said without the saying. His stories are never short in the real term.
David and Myra King
A magician with words, 14 Jun 2009
By DJM King "david61751" (Australia)
Alex Keegan writes some of the finest short fiction around and this collection contains some of the best examples of his art.
`Ballistics', a chilling but poignant account of human anger that gives rise to disastrous consequences, was an excellent choice as the title story. Personal favourites are however those written in Keegan's inimitable Welsh voice: 'Meredith Toop Evans and his Butty Ernest Jones'; 'The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Price'; and 'The Bastard William Williams'.
Like the pauses between musical notes, the stories in this book will ring true long after the last sentence has been read. Keegan's magic lies in what is being said without the saying. His stories are never short in the real term.
David and Myra King
Sunday 14 June 2009
New Amazon Review of Ballistics
4.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect Nuggets of Truth,
June 14, 2009
By
Diana Forrester "reader" (Grove City, OH)
Alex Keegan's Ballistics is a stunning collection of stories filled with grit, blood and truth. In the title story a toddler is blinded by his father's love _and_ anger. His life resonates with a need for understanding. In The Smell of Almond Polish(my favorite) Bridie Collins' life is filled with choices before it turns full circle taking her back to its beginning. In Post Cards from Balloonland, a man leaves a legacy for his children as he prepares to die. Each story contains its own nugget of truth, told perfectly, ready for you to read and ponder. You will not regret buying this book and while you are at it you should buy one for a friend
Perfect Nuggets of Truth,
June 14, 2009
By
Diana Forrester "reader" (Grove City, OH)
Alex Keegan's Ballistics is a stunning collection of stories filled with grit, blood and truth. In the title story a toddler is blinded by his father's love _and_ anger. His life resonates with a need for understanding. In The Smell of Almond Polish(my favorite) Bridie Collins' life is filled with choices before it turns full circle taking her back to its beginning. In Post Cards from Balloonland, a man leaves a legacy for his children as he prepares to die. Each story contains its own nugget of truth, told perfectly, ready for you to read and ponder. You will not regret buying this book and while you are at it you should buy one for a friend
Friday 12 June 2009
Where We Come From
OVERWRITING!
In Ballistics, the Story, "The Smell of Almond Polish" opens:
Paddington, London 1954
Bridie Collins steps down from the train, waits for the crowd to wrap her up. She looks above her; pigeons scattering under the great glass roof. Someone bumps her shoulder, rushes on. In the half-light she shivers, picks up her cardboard case and walks towards the ticket collector.
On the train, from Wales, Bridie had listened to the clattering songs in the track. "Did she do right? Well, did she do right? What could she have done? What should she have done? Was it right, was it right, was it right?"
After twenty-minutes, about an hour-and-a-half ago, the train had slowed down, clacking and slapping as it crossed points, then easing into the dark Severn tunnel. Bridie had felt her first real moment of guilt, then. How could she have left Pat, Jenny, Ronnie? And Barbara, Angela? Smoke had leaked in through an open window, but then the train emerged into light sunlight, bright, fresh English green, and she was excited. Now the rails whispered, "Of course it was right. Of course it was right. What else could you do, could you do, could you do? It was right. It was right. It was right."
*
The ticket-collector is a darkie. He smiles, has gold on one tooth. Bridie smiles back. Steam hisses somewhere, everything smells of sulphur. People push round her. She picks up her little case and walks out of the station into a damp morning. She has nowhere in the world to go.
250 words
I have just found the same scene in a novel I started when I didn't have much of a clue. it's 416 words but WHAT words!
Please ensure you are sitting down before you begin reading this:
Nineteen Fishguard to Paddington trains had now clacked neutrally through the back-garden mishap of London. The dry late September was a gagging dust and sweaty afternoon. On the second of those nineteen trains, in third class, feeling the sulphury tang of smoke and disembodied breaths, Bridie Jones had been chained to a corner seat. Somewhere furiously inside the sadness and lethargy of the flat, unseeing look she had was the fiery dream of the fifteen year-old that had left Cork to change the world a little. Now the red laughter and temper had turned inward as a tiny voice agreed with the running train in her brain.
“Of course you did right!”
“Of course you did right!”
“Of course you did right!”
The skin at the edge of her right eye was bored deep a trench that was the mark of the window surround. Snakes of wires and banks and poles ran a high sea of speed across her face, raced round the carriage wall and died. Somehow, the brown eyes didn’t quite focus on the greens and blacks. What was out there was of no consequence, just as the train was a limbo between breaths where thoughts lasted forever and came again and again and again and again...
__________________________________________________________________
A dark metal animal had hissed steam at the dead-end bumpers of Platform Five, Paddington. People were with newspapers and taking heavy battered suitcases for walks. Trickles of them unstrapped doors and fell to the platform. The stream burbled along the smooth stone floor and washed against the trellis end-gates and a thin, wrinkled man. Miles away, the sky was laced with iron and glass and a heartless, toneless voice filled the air. To breathe, there was no way except to swallow the bark of “Bristol, Paignton and Torquay” and anyone who noticed could taste the acid and coal of each letter as it melted in the mouth. It was a place full of people, and, like any other station, it was the coldest, saddest, loneliest place on earth. Mary Bridget Jones was on her own. Behind her a single ticket cooled from the warmth of her body and was buried in the bony cold of business trips, holidays and going-homes. As she looked at the fat black clock and saw ten-past-six, the ticket-man took his last piece of cardboard and touched his cap. The fingerprints on one piece of green were fifty-six tickets from the first and more than a hundred lives from the last.
===================================
Incidentally, as far as I can remember I wrote "Almonds" 10-15 years after the attempt at a the novel, and I don't think I copied and edited.
In Ballistics, the Story, "The Smell of Almond Polish" opens:
Paddington, London 1954
Bridie Collins steps down from the train, waits for the crowd to wrap her up. She looks above her; pigeons scattering under the great glass roof. Someone bumps her shoulder, rushes on. In the half-light she shivers, picks up her cardboard case and walks towards the ticket collector.
On the train, from Wales, Bridie had listened to the clattering songs in the track. "Did she do right? Well, did she do right? What could she have done? What should she have done? Was it right, was it right, was it right?"
After twenty-minutes, about an hour-and-a-half ago, the train had slowed down, clacking and slapping as it crossed points, then easing into the dark Severn tunnel. Bridie had felt her first real moment of guilt, then. How could she have left Pat, Jenny, Ronnie? And Barbara, Angela? Smoke had leaked in through an open window, but then the train emerged into light sunlight, bright, fresh English green, and she was excited. Now the rails whispered, "Of course it was right. Of course it was right. What else could you do, could you do, could you do? It was right. It was right. It was right."
*
The ticket-collector is a darkie. He smiles, has gold on one tooth. Bridie smiles back. Steam hisses somewhere, everything smells of sulphur. People push round her. She picks up her little case and walks out of the station into a damp morning. She has nowhere in the world to go.
250 words
I have just found the same scene in a novel I started when I didn't have much of a clue. it's 416 words but WHAT words!
Please ensure you are sitting down before you begin reading this:
Nineteen Fishguard to Paddington trains had now clacked neutrally through the back-garden mishap of London. The dry late September was a gagging dust and sweaty afternoon. On the second of those nineteen trains, in third class, feeling the sulphury tang of smoke and disembodied breaths, Bridie Jones had been chained to a corner seat. Somewhere furiously inside the sadness and lethargy of the flat, unseeing look she had was the fiery dream of the fifteen year-old that had left Cork to change the world a little. Now the red laughter and temper had turned inward as a tiny voice agreed with the running train in her brain.
“Of course you did right!”
“Of course you did right!”
“Of course you did right!”
The skin at the edge of her right eye was bored deep a trench that was the mark of the window surround. Snakes of wires and banks and poles ran a high sea of speed across her face, raced round the carriage wall and died. Somehow, the brown eyes didn’t quite focus on the greens and blacks. What was out there was of no consequence, just as the train was a limbo between breaths where thoughts lasted forever and came again and again and again and again...
__________________________________________________________________
A dark metal animal had hissed steam at the dead-end bumpers of Platform Five, Paddington. People were with newspapers and taking heavy battered suitcases for walks. Trickles of them unstrapped doors and fell to the platform. The stream burbled along the smooth stone floor and washed against the trellis end-gates and a thin, wrinkled man. Miles away, the sky was laced with iron and glass and a heartless, toneless voice filled the air. To breathe, there was no way except to swallow the bark of “Bristol, Paignton and Torquay” and anyone who noticed could taste the acid and coal of each letter as it melted in the mouth. It was a place full of people, and, like any other station, it was the coldest, saddest, loneliest place on earth. Mary Bridget Jones was on her own. Behind her a single ticket cooled from the warmth of her body and was buried in the bony cold of business trips, holidays and going-homes. As she looked at the fat black clock and saw ten-past-six, the ticket-man took his last piece of cardboard and touched his cap. The fingerprints on one piece of green were fifty-six tickets from the first and more than a hundred lives from the last.
===================================
Incidentally, as far as I can remember I wrote "Almonds" 10-15 years after the attempt at a the novel, and I don't think I copied and edited.
Two Reviews (2)
By CM Davies "CMD" (Milton Keynes, United Kingdom)
Alex Keegan has won numerous prizes for his short stories. This collection represents the best of his work including the 'The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Price' and 'The Bastard William Williams', both prize winners in the Bridport International competition.
If you have any aspirations towards writing stories yourself then buy this book to read a master at work. Keegan can take a man finishing with his girlfriend and crushing a wine glass in his nervousness and turn this 'Green Glass' into a metaphor for the resonant failures of his life.
If you simply want a good book to read then many of these stories pack as much punch as most contemporary novels.
Alex Keegan has won numerous prizes for his short stories. This collection represents the best of his work including the 'The Last Love Letter of Berwyn Price' and 'The Bastard William Williams', both prize winners in the Bridport International competition.
If you have any aspirations towards writing stories yourself then buy this book to read a master at work. Keegan can take a man finishing with his girlfriend and crushing a wine glass in his nervousness and turn this 'Green Glass' into a metaphor for the resonant failures of his life.
If you simply want a good book to read then many of these stories pack as much punch as most contemporary novels.
Two Reviews (1)
At Amazon
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Stories full of deep humanity and wonderful writing, 3 Jun 2009
By Alexandra Fox (UK)
I've never read any other collection with the breadth and quality of Alex Keegan's Ballistics. Each story here is already a prizewinner, and it's easy to see why.
Ballistics itself is a stunning short story, unravelling the consequences of a shocking event forward and back through two lives, tightly written and juxtaposing self-analysis with a deep and genuine humanity. This same humanity runs through all the stories in this unforgettable collection. There are moments of pathos, particularly in "Postcards from Balloonland" and the final story, "Happy as Larry", which cannot fail to move the reader, without ever veering into sentimentality. My own favourite is probably "Meredith Toop Evans", the story of the inexorable rise of Ernie the Egg from pit-boy to Caerphilly egg magnate, one of three stories in this collection written in the author's authentic Welsh lilt. The stories range from a fact-collecting barmaid to amputee marathon runners, from park football to Welsh rugby, from survivors of a train crash to desperate children building a crossbow. They're the kind of stories that you read, then sit and think about, then have to read again. I'd particularly recommend the weird but strangely resonant story of Miguel Who Cuts Down Trees, and the utterly believable Bridie Collins facing a mother's impossible decision in "The Smell of Almond Polish".
I know the author not only as a writer but as a forthright and exceptional teacher, with a deep and knowledgeable love of the short story.
Tender, funny, dark, clever, above all human - and always exquisitely written and authentically voiced - if you haven't read any of Alex Keegan's work before, you're in for a treat.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Stories full of deep humanity and wonderful writing, 3 Jun 2009
By Alexandra Fox (UK)
I've never read any other collection with the breadth and quality of Alex Keegan's Ballistics. Each story here is already a prizewinner, and it's easy to see why.
Ballistics itself is a stunning short story, unravelling the consequences of a shocking event forward and back through two lives, tightly written and juxtaposing self-analysis with a deep and genuine humanity. This same humanity runs through all the stories in this unforgettable collection. There are moments of pathos, particularly in "Postcards from Balloonland" and the final story, "Happy as Larry", which cannot fail to move the reader, without ever veering into sentimentality. My own favourite is probably "Meredith Toop Evans", the story of the inexorable rise of Ernie the Egg from pit-boy to Caerphilly egg magnate, one of three stories in this collection written in the author's authentic Welsh lilt. The stories range from a fact-collecting barmaid to amputee marathon runners, from park football to Welsh rugby, from survivors of a train crash to desperate children building a crossbow. They're the kind of stories that you read, then sit and think about, then have to read again. I'd particularly recommend the weird but strangely resonant story of Miguel Who Cuts Down Trees, and the utterly believable Bridie Collins facing a mother's impossible decision in "The Smell of Almond Polish".
I know the author not only as a writer but as a forthright and exceptional teacher, with a deep and knowledgeable love of the short story.
Tender, funny, dark, clever, above all human - and always exquisitely written and authentically voiced - if you haven't read any of Alex Keegan's work before, you're in for a treat.
Sunday 7 June 2009
Ballistics on the Road
JUNE 27th
I'll be signing at BORDERS, Newbury 11:30 onwards
JULY 11th (Saturday)
I'll be signing in Waterstones Winchester Saturday, July 11th, coinciding with The Music and Literary Festival there.
JULY 15th WEDNESDAY 8:30 PM
CHANGED TO SAME TIME ONE WEEK EARLIER JULY 8TH
I'll be giving a reading/talk at BORDERS, Newbury after closing, in Starbucks upstairs
I'll be signing at BORDERS, Newbury 11:30 onwards
JULY 11th (Saturday)
I'll be signing in Waterstones Winchester Saturday, July 11th, coinciding with The Music and Literary Festival there.
JULY 15th WEDNESDAY 8:30 PM
CHANGED TO SAME TIME ONE WEEK EARLIER JULY 8TH
I'll be giving a reading/talk at BORDERS, Newbury after closing, in Starbucks upstairs
Saturday 6 June 2009
Book Signing
I'll be signing in Borders, Newbury
11:30 Saturday June 27th
http://newbury.borders.co.uk/events/newbury/39/
for details
11:30 Saturday June 27th
http://newbury.borders.co.uk/events/newbury/39/
for details
Friday 5 June 2009
The Ballistics Handbook
Today, I finished Volume One of The Ballistics Handbook
A craft book that refers a great deal to Ballistics
A craft book that refers a great deal to Ballistics
Wednesday 3 June 2009
Cool Idea. Where did YOU read Ballistics?
Just had a really cool idea. Saw a pikki of writer Jo Mortimer reading something or other in Jerusalem and joked that the book should be BALLISTCS.
How about everyone who actually has a copy, get some photographs taken, a person or persons reading Ballistics, but every picture in a different environment, with different views.
It could be a lotta fun.
Send a copy to me and I'll post it here.
How about everyone who actually has a copy, get some photographs taken, a person or persons reading Ballistics, but every picture in a different environment, with different views.
It could be a lotta fun.
Send a copy to me and I'll post it here.
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