Somewhere Else, or Even Here

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A. J. Ashworth captures, with honesty, the collisions that can happen between human beings, whether it’s a couple facing up to life after the death of a child, or lovers broken apart by infidelities either real or imagined. She explores those moments of realisation, those turning points, which will continue to resonate throughout the lives of her characters – those people who, even in small ways, will be forever changed, forever cut loose from their earlier selves. Praise for this Book

So one of the things I did in that video that I was a little bit wary that I did is I refer to the wonderful motor the ATP synthase. This is one of the most amazing little machines that bacteria have, for generating energy by pumping protons across membranes. And they basically have a molecular motor that rotates it, I don’t know, a thousand r.p.m. or something. I never say anybody that looked stupider,' a Violet said, so suddenly, that Alice quite jumped; for it hadn't spoken before. I love how compact they are, so that every word has to count. They’re very concentrated and can be incredibly powerful and resonant, staying with you for a long time so that you want to keep returning to them, re-reading them. I also love that, as a reader, I have to do some of the work to make meaning out of them. They don’t just offer themselves up as fully completed jigsaws with all the pieces in place – the reader has to help put them together. It’s a team effort with the writer and reader working together. What elements do you think make a good short story? When you say "hill,"' the Queen interrupted, ` I could show you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a valley.'Alice didn't like this idea at all: so, to change the subject, she asked `Does she ever come out here?' Paper Lanterns — 4.5 stars [sad...about a couple losing their 8-year-old son...it was well written, and I didn’t think it was over the top] These are just some of the characters and events which are given life in A. J. Ashworth’s Scott Prize-winning collection Somewhere Else, or Even Here. The stories, described as ‘dark’ and ‘delicious’ by the writer Maggie Gee, explore themes of loss and loneliness, desire and hope – with characters left to navigate the shifting landscapes of their lives. Alice looked round eagerly, and found that it was the Red Queen. `She's grown a good deal!' was her first remark. She had indeed: when Alice first found her in the ashes, she had been only three inches high -- and here she was, half a head taller than Alice herself!

Apart from a few very early stories, the collection contains all the stories I’ve ever written. The only one missing is one that Salt decided wasn’t quite right for the book, so that was removed. What did it mean to you to be one of the Scott Prize Winners and published with Salt? urn:oclc:record:1132393622 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier somewhereelseore0000ashw Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2vm30k7853 Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781844718801 Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, `you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.' Alice wondered a little at this, but she was too much in awe of the Queen to disbelieve it. `I'll try it when I go home,' she thought to herself. `the next time I'm a little late for dinner.'Looking for methane is a good method to indirectly look for life. The problem is, there are chemical ways to make methane as well. It is not a perfect surrogate for life. So the way most life-detection experiments are proposed from NASA, especially in this era of exoplanets, where so many planets have been detected around stars, is to do spectroscopic studies of their atmosphere. It is always involving abundant chemicals, like methane and CO 2. Is she like me?' Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, `There's another little girl in the garden, somewhere!' I don't know what you mean by YOUR way,' said the Queen: `all the ways about here belong to ME -- but why did you come out here at all?' she added in a kinder tone. `Curtsey while you`re thinking what to say, it saves time.'

AM: In a few stories, I felt that words and language gave me a sense of invocation of something, you know, like magic, like enchanted phrases. So the intelligent-design people—I’m almost wary to tell you this, because the last thing I want is for what I’ve said in public to be interpreted by intelligent-design people—they use ATP synthase as their poster child for intelligent design.I started writing short stories about six or seven years ago when I began taking some distance learning writing courses with Lancaster University. I don’t remember being overly encouraged to focus on the short story by the tutors – it was just the form that I was drawn to after having read and loved collections such as ‘Elephant’ by Raymond Carver and Susan Hill’s ‘A Bit of Singing and Dancing’. Then, a few years ago, I decided to study for an MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and I produced a collection of short stories for that. I submitted the collection to Salt Publishing’s Scott Prize and was one of the winners last year. What is it that you like about short stories? They’d say that’s just stupid. [ Laughs.] Because they’re saying, “Well, it had to start somewhere, and so why would you not think it started here? Why are you positing that we caught life instead of evolved it?” Because there’s clearly evidence for how life evolved in our genomes. It’s what’s called the RNA World, which was kind of the earliest form of life, and is still present in our genomes. We can see it there, and so you can discern early steps in evolution just by looking in modern genomes. In orthodoxy and all the textbooks, the RNA World—that’s kind of the precursor to the DNA world—was here on Earth four billion years ago. And I would propose, no, it was probably ten billion years ago, somewhere on the other side of the Milky Way, and it’s been spreading all across the Milky Way. And what discovery could convince you that you are wrong or that you’re in the minority for a reason? Authors, if you are a member of the Goodreads Author Program, you can edit information about your own books. Find out how in this guide. Her petals are done up close, almost like a dahlia,' the Tiger-lily interrupted: `not tumbled about anyhow, like yours.'

Alice curtseyed again, as she was afraid from the Queen's tone that she was a LITTLE offended: and they walked on in silence till they got to the top of the little hill.One aspect of writing the collection which really fascinated me was the effects gained from using different points of view. ‘Zero Gravity’ features a gang of girls, so it seemed logical to use first person plural (we) for most of the story, but to shift this to first person when one of the girls breaks free and begins to narrate the story herself. I enjoyed the feeling of writing in second person (you) as this gives a sense of dislocation, of separation, of being outside of things – something which can help to create an almost otherworldly atmosphere, giving stories a different kind of charge.