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Rosemary Furber
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BiographySTOP PRESS Lapwing Publications in Belfast have just published a pamphlet of my wee poems (each one 17 syllables long):A laughter stew with a Garnish of song And a salad dancing please. My eyes see my daughter grown. My heart Still cradles her baby body. Sing with me and write and laugh and run - Fuck misery, let's go dancing. That sort of thing … more samples on the Books page. 
After my third child was born, I had a sort of mental explosion - I had always wanted to write and it was time to get on with it. A journalism course at Goldsmiths limbered me up and soon I was writing for the Evening Standard, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Tribune and various magazines. I still reckon that journalism is about the best training for writing fiction that you can get: it teaches you to love a deadline, write fast and not to be too precious when stuff has to be cut or rearranged. I now write as full time as I can. My first novel for adults THE MOST INTIMATE PLACE was published in July 2009 by the Maia Press, freshly merged with Arcadia Books. It is a psychological thriller reviewed by Laura Wilson in The Guardian: On the face of it, scriptural exegesis looks like pretty unpromising material but, in the hands of debut novelist Rosemary Furber, it is transformed into the basis for a gripping, plausible and beautifully written literary thriller. Half-arsed journalist and heavy-metal nerd Patrick Price-Johnson is on remand for the rape and murder of a woman priest. His story begins with a mundane assignment for a local newspaper, but he soon finds himself manipulated into detective work concerning the doctrine of Midrash in order to uncover a Church of England scandal. This small book is nuanced, complex and wide-ranging, taking in love, hypocrisy, despair and faith. The lyrics to songs by the made-up heavy metal band Sword Rampant (such is Furber's attention to detail that the group has its own website)are worthy of Spinal Tap. Spinal Tap? I just hope the mighty Sword don't find out she thinks they're made-up! My first novel WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET was published in June 2005 by Dublin's Wolfhound Press. It's a ghost story for 10 - 14 year olds set in Greenwich and Blackheath. The novel does more than scare the pants off readers, it challenges beliefs about the limits of our scientific knowledge, and about the supernatural and the afterlife. "This book is wonderful: funny, frightening, compulsively page-turning and all in all a rattling good read," says cartoonist and author Martin Rowson. THE FINE ART OF THE LAW was a short drama I wrote for BBC Radio 3 in December 2005. They let me perform in it too. Meanwhile my agent was intent on putting my legal qualifications to good use at last and in October 2006 Crombie Jardine published I SUE YOU, a collection of daft court cases from all over the world. A volume of ridiculous crimes, YOU'RE NICKED, followed in September 2007. I'm currently working on a third novel, also under contract to Maia, and a non-fiction book proposal. I live in London but I was born in Belfast and grew up within sight of Portstewart Strand. 
Yes, I do miss the sea. |