Mel

It'll get so quiet when this record ends

You can hear the first hour of the world

t would be easy to think that my setting something in Essex or Chelmsford, or East Anglia, was a conscious choice. But actually, it’s just the matter at hand. It becomes a natural location for my imagination.

There’s a mischief in me when I write, and I really like provoking and surprising readers and ideally winding them up. And I think there is something quite provocative about writing about a kind of background that a liberal, contemporary, secular reader would assume would have been in some way devastating to the psyche, and show that a) all... See more

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

A man walks into a bar and leaves before his ashes hit the floor.

Stop me if I ever get that far.

The sun's a desperate star that burns like every single one before.