OK. I am a writer. I have written many pieces including short stories (some published), poems (some published), four novels, a 200000 word thesis and lots of technical stuff for work. I will always write, I consider it my freedom.
Since I have escaped academia, I have found a new freedom. I have begun a project that had allowed me to take what I learned about identity construction during my time in academia and through my doctorate and ground it in real live situations. I have then expressed this through fiction. the result is my ‘Dirty Sparkle’ which you will read lots about in this blog!
Dirty Sparkle. It’s a concept really. I first thought about it when I looked at some of the girls who frequent the Northern Quarter in Manchester. I heard stories about MSc students working as lap dancer to pay their fees and business women working as dominatrix to double their salary. I also knew that some women in the sex industry work there out of necessity.
So I wrote my first novel, Dirty Sparkle about the sex/love dialectic and the Dirty Sparkle project was born.
Book 2, Finding Isaak, deals with the fertility and age issues. With their biological clocks supposedly ticking, the women in this story go to extraordinary length to be parents.
Book 3, Life: Immaterial is my current work in progress and favourite. It deals with the family/relationship dialectic and addresses the controversial issue of mother’s not loving their children as adults.
So that’s an overview of the Dirty Sparkle project. Within it’s boundaries, I am free!