Vicky MacKenzie

We'll consider some of the key aspects of historical fiction: how and when to do research, what it’s okay to invent, and how to create convincing historical characters and dialogue. We’ll look at published examples and have some relaxed, lively discussions, as well as time for your own writing. 2/2

Teaching Experienced creative writing tutor offering mentoring and editing services. Also available for readings, Q&A sessions, workshops and residential courses.

I'm running a one-day online workshop on Writing Historical Fiction on Sat 16th May, 10.00am-4.00pm. More details on my website. Fee: £150, and writers at all levels welcome! Let me know if you've any questions. 1/2
victoriamackenzie.net/teaching/

Really looking forward to this! 📚💙 #HistFic #CreativeWriting
(And now I get to say - I'll be discussing my novel FOR THY GREAT PAIN - "as recommended on #CoronationStreet! "😂)

Woo hoo! Lovely news! 🥳

This sounds absolutely amazing!

Calling #poetry friends in #Cambridge
You're invited to Poetry of Care - readings from BYCATCH by @csmithpoet.bsky.social
Rock Road Library, CB1 7UG
Wednesday 25th February at 7.15pm
Book your free place here:
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-of-...

When is Peter Mandelson's birthday?

I'd say he's sweating now

Still from Coronation Street Tuesday 17th Feb 2026 showing two women discussing FOR THY GREAT PAIN HAVE MERCY ON MY LITTLE PAIN.

The most surreal experience. FOR THY GREAT PAIN was recommended in the women's prison library on Coronation Street tonight! 📚😍

A life goal achieved - one I didn't know I had! 😂

Still from Coronation Street Tuesday 17th Feb 2026 showing two women discussing FOR THY GREAT PAIN HAVE MERCY ON MY LITTLE PAIN.

The most surreal experience. FOR THY GREAT PAIN was recommended in the women's prison library on Coronation Street tonight! 📚😍

Copy of my book with the White Horse symbol of the Richard Jefferies Prize above it.

Absolutely thrilled to be Shortlisted for @rjaward.bsky.social! And in brilliant company. Lovely to have that white horse sticker on #GhostsoftheFarm. My farming women & their workers & families of all those decades ago, would be so proud! (As would younger me.) @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social

Peter Mandelson issues secret notice demanding press leave him alone – read in full LATE on Friday evening, this notice was circulated from representatives of Peter Mandelson, via press regulator IPSO and the Press Association news…

NEW: Mandelson just sent a memo to UK newspapers via the press watchdog demanding they stop publishing his links to Epstein.

He cited clauses in the Editors code, designed to protect grieving families.

The memo was NOT to be published.

The National just said ‘fuck that’ & published it in full 👏

Bezos isn't destroying the Washington Post because it isn't profitable. He's destroying the Washington Post because he's calculated that a robust free press threatens the ability of his class to warp society around their interests

I'm doing a creative writing workshop at Lancaster Litfest on Sat 21st March on 'Writing Historical Fiction' (4-6pm). Apply by 28th Feb: litfest.org/workshops26/ ✒️😍

Delighted to be reading at Lancaster Litfest on Sunday 22nd March 2-3pm, in conversation with @alexwragge.bsky.social about all things historical fiction!

Sensing love to you, Rachel 🥰

So happy I read this wonderful book - in no small part thanks to your recommendation! 😍📖

Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban What a captivating, wryly humorous novel this is – a life-affirming read with none of the schmaltz or saccharine this description might suggest! It’s my book group’s current read, and I can’t wait …

From the archive for Russell Hoban, #BornOnThisDay in 1925, my thoughts on TURTLE DIARY.

A wry, piercingly perceptive exploration of different facets of loneliness & the fear of stepping outside one’s comfort zone in the maelstrom of middle age. #BookSky 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/04/20/t...

Illness and suchlike can bring an odd intimacy between people sometimes! Glad you have a good friend with a suitable bathroom 🧻 And hope this awful bit is over soon! X

Good lord, Jane! Random Internet stranger here reading your posts with awe - and some squeamishness at this one! Love and solidarity to you as you go through hell with what seems like extraordinary fortitude and humour. You are clearly incredible, wishing you all good things. X

This whole thing where billionaires snap up media properties so they can run them into the ground to make it harder for people to call them and their cronies to account is extremely obvious and very tiresome. It also limits our access to largr information about culture and the world, also by design.

Pinned lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Aug 19, 2021 Almost three years ago, my editor called me early one November morning. A wildfire had sparked near a town called Paradise, he said. Could I go? (1/13) 0:02 / 0:10 lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · 47m I was just laid off by The Washington Post in the middle of a warzone. I have no words. I'm devastated. Quote lizzie johnson @lizziejohnsonnn · Jan 25 Waking up without power, heat, or running water. (Again.) But the work here in Kyiv continues. Warming up in the car, writing in pencil — pen ink freezes — by headlamp.

A publisher who lays off a reporter whose pen is freezing because she's covering a frigid war zone while dodging missiles is not an editor you want to work for, in a more perfect world

This is a tremendous story:

A photo of copies of Riddley Walker, Fremder, Turtle Diary, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin Boaz, Kleinzeit, Pilgermann, The Medusa Frequency and The Mouse and His Child, all by Russell Hoban.

"Riddley Walkers ben to show
Riddley Walkers on the go
Dont go Riddley Walkers track
Drop Johns ryding on his back

Stil I wunt have no other track."

Happy birthday Russell Hoban.

EARTHBOUND AND DOWN The Challenger Disaster hit our playground in a shower of reprehensible jokes: NASA stands for 'Need Another Seven Astronauts'. What's a spaceman's favourite drink? Seven Up. Same as Snow White, said Danny Speed. He and his older brother Craig were genius engineers of the winter ice-slide, buffing and polishing from just after dawn, a smear of Vicks Vaporub over the frosty schoolyard. No shoes with a grip or ridged sole allowed. You scrambled hard then froze with the ice, stillness carrying you further and faster than movement ever could. Grounded flight. Adults wanted unearthly beauty but to me it was humdrum: Mozart's 'Ave Verum' was something I'd rehearse as I plunged on my Raleigh Milk Race down Berry Hill Road. I wanted the opposite: I was asking the earth. Eating a girl out, Craig once said, was to slip into warmed-up Angel Delight, almost unbelievably frictionless, the perfect slide. My lunchbox full of tongue-sandwiches, I hid them in gorse and watched them rot, the same bush that yielded Readers' Wives, find of the century, pages stuck together. Grey fur grew on the lolling, folded meat. Much later, Danny went down for dealing: whizz, mostly - amphetamines - his surname meaning he made it to the national news. I saw it. He got years. We all got years.

Spent a few hours with @ravoon.bsky.social's fab 'Dirt Rich' last night. He lightly and lovingly provides an anatomy of what we might pretentiously call England Profound. It put me in mind of JL Carr's 'A Month in the Country', a very good thing. Oh and funny too, like so:

We are delighted to host a second course led by @susannacrossman.bsky.social

Through generative exercises, exploring texts from authors like Rebecca Solnit, Joan Didion, Noreen Massud, and Georges Perec we’ll be writing place and time, deciding where we’re standing and making this world alive.

CUSTARD Custard is this. It has aches, aches when. Not to be. Not to be narrowly. This makes a whole little hill. It is better than a little thing that has mellow real mellow. It is better than lakes whole lakes, it is better than seeding.

Custard

Gertrude Stein, from ‘Tender Buttons’

I've read the title story so far - extraordinary! 😍

Pile of books: Transcendence for Beginners by Clare Carlisle, The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin, The Last Englishman: The Life of J.L. Carr by Byron Rogers, The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing by T.J. Clark, Immortal Thoughts: Late Style in a Time of Plague by Christopher Neve, The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade, The Story of Tudor Art by Christina J. Faraday, Helm by Sarah Hall and finally: Saint Francis of Assisi by Gabriele Finaldi and Joost Joustra (a beautiful book of paintings of St Francis, plus essays, published by the National Gallery to accompany their 2023 exhibition).

Forgot to put this up - my amazing birthday book haul from January. So many treasures here! 📚😍