I was asked to write an Opinion piece for the Observer about reaction to the publication of The Day that Went Missing, including my own reaction to having written a memoir. How does it feel once it's out there? What was the point? 'Now I’m faced with the question of what happens next. What is a memoir actually for? There seems to be a lot of memoir about, but I can only speak for myself and wordsearching the typescript I discover the book contains 434 instances of the word Nicholas or variants. I have filled the pages with Nicky, with Nick-Nack, Nickelpin, Pinwin, all my brother’s various rescued nicknames. His solo photograph in beach-tinted Kodacolor is bold on a hardback

I'll be on the island of Guernsey for the weekend in May of the literary festival. On the Friday I'm talking about my new book The Day That Went Missing, while on the Saturday I'll be doing my Public Edit on two prose submissions picked at random from members of the audience. The details of how to submit are on the GLF website, as is the full programme, including my attempt to keep a panel of amateur cricketing writers in order on the Sunday. The Authors CC cricket club will also be playing two games of cricket against tough local opposition - no doubt to provide material for epic sagas yet to be written.

This is a new piece that I wrote for the Guardian family section. It's based on a photo that gets a mention in The Day That Went Missing, but the book wasn't the time or place for the full story of what that photo demonstrated or made me feel. 'For most of my life, and I’m 50 now, one piece of information about my brother had blocked all others. “Dead” became the barrier; a restraining wall. Nicky’s deadness became his defining characteristic, although he must have had others: he was nine when he drowned. I was 11, his closest brother by age, but to contain the grief I had dismissed his character as provisional. He was a child. Now he

The British Archive for Contemporary Writing has now catalogued the contents of the suitcases I delivered last summer. I thought I had a jumble of papers and notebooks. But to an archivist I had a documentary history that could be organised within an inch of its life. The bits and pieces are kept in climate-controlled conditions in the basement of the library at the University of East Anglia, and the catalogue is now online. Of the various listings, the highlights include 'Rejection letters, 1989-2000 (folder)' and 'Incomplete novel, in style of Micky Spillane, 1990 (folder)'. Though for the key to my writing career nothing will ever quite beat: 'FORUM / EROTIC STORIES magazines, 1990-1992'. For details of the full collection, the archive has

I wrote a piece about how my early-century rugby reports for Midsomer Norton rugby club found their way into one of the greatest Oulipian novels written in English. Full article here