( I know, I know. This REEKS of dragging it out. But it’s a month today, and I did promise Tark and Mara’s take on the Blog Awards ages ago. Then we’re done, I swear.) Somewhere in a parallel universe, a large function room in Co. Kill Dare was brimming with hope, excitement, and alcohol, wherein the Blogerati had gathered,…
Category: Actual Writing
Look Away Now… It’s Irish Writing Kryptonite
Tell me. Have you breathed any air, lately? Got up in the morning? Smiled, any time in the last 6 weeks? Yes? Well, pull up a pew, then, because you need to listen to this. I don’t want to be the girl who cried wolf, here, because that could possibly ruin my cheap and nasty…
I WON AT THE BLOG AWARDS! And, um, this outfit happened
So I wasn’t expecting that! (Obviously, or I never would have promised you a photograph.) But I won the award for Best Newcomer at the Blog Awards last night. And I’m so delighted I don’t even mind jeopardising everything I hold dear now, by showing you just how seriously I took the 1980s fancy dress theme. It was marginally funny…
Tark And Mara Do Fashion… And Scottish Independence
Mara was spitting fire. “Please stop spraying lighter fluid on that naked flame, my little pyronymphomaniac,” said Tark, lounging against the Baby Grand in the open-plan concert kitchen of their Dublin penthouse, a post-flight gin and tonic in his hand. He had been expecting his wife to explode ever since their private jet had touched down. “If a second Damien Hirst…
Tark And Mara Visit The Irish Riviera
* Tara is off on her jollidays for a couple of weeks. Fictional Guest Bloggers, Tark and Mara, have climbed down from their pedestal to leave you with this post. “Ugh.” “Another one?” “And again! Tark!” “Just lift your feet, darling, and watch where you’re going.” Mara made a noise deep in her throat. She had just about…
Writer’s Arse, And Other Ailments
The gurus over at Writing.ie have published another article I wrote today. A sort of confessional piece. I talk about the terrible afflictions which writers suffer, and how I suffer in particular (from being terribly afflicted). Some non-writers will be sceptical about this. That’s fine. They can go around sympathising with whichever they believe to be loftier, global concerns.…
Tark and Mara Search For Meaning
In a universe close away from here, Mara was feeling philosophical. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, knowing without a five-o’clock-shadow of a doubt that Tark would want to hear what was going on inside what was, by far, the heaviest part of Mara’s size zero frame. “Have you, my platinum preying mantis?” said Tark. He…
An Arts Festival Is No Time To Get Creative
Writing.ie has published an article I wrote about the fiasco that was my attempt to get writing last week, whilst out west for the Galway International Arts Festival. Go on. You know you want to read it. Go on. Seriously. Your week would be incomplete without it. If you don’t, you might never know why, ever…
Through the Looking-Glass: Power. Money. Baldness
Tark and Mara who? I did warn you. Explanation here In a universe not far from here, but somehow very like here, Tark was busy writing. “Darling, what are you doing?” asked Mara, newly transplanted eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement and distrust. Her husband’s industrious expression was severely out of place in their six-bedroomed chrome-and-mirror penthouse. Tark never…
On Blogging, And Memories Of Those Who Never Were
Following on from my last post, in which we discussed online personas, factual or ridiculous, I’ve been thinking about a couple of characters I dearly miss from blogging misadventures past. One very talented writer whose blog I love (thank you, Elaine Canham) suggested that whatever personal stuff writers say about themselves online could just be made up. This made me…
Tara Sparling writes 