Behind the Scenes with M Duras

Film adaptations of her novel the Sea Wall.

Dear Friends,

In my bid to work out how to share behind the scenes extras to my paid subscribers I’ve decided to reserve Saturdays for such posts. Not every Sat (phew) maybe every second Sat, maybe occasional Sats, but def some Sats. Well, let’s see how we go!

I’m tempted to call you all ‘club members’. It might be more apt. Do you remember Enid Blighton’s series of children’s adventures, The Secret Seven? When I was about 8 or 9 my friends and I had a Secret Seven Club. We made badges out of bottle tops and had candle-lit meetings in our cellar. The rest of the time we rode about on our bicycles, or played in the bush, satisfied in the knowledge that we ‘belonged’.

I feel like that in the various ‘clubs’ I belong to as a paid member on Substack .

It’s the cosy, walled garden feeling that Elle Griffin @

The Elysium Project

and I spoke about once when I made a comment on one of her posts — see what I mean! In these ‘SS clubs’ a mere mortal can chat with the greats!

Elle Griffin

(over 11,000 subscribers) is the reason I’m here on SS actually. A Medium article about how she was serialising her utopian novel on Substack drew me in and here I am!

I’ve chatted with other greats too, like

Patti Smith

Tim Lott

The Camont Journals with Kate Hill

Lickedspoon with Debora Robertson

Beth Spencer

most recently with

Kimberly Warner - Unfixed

and more. It’s brilliant, because when it comes down to it we are all just mere mortals wanting to share our curiosity, knowledge, recipes, inspiration, communication, feelings, opinions, etc, etc.

I get so excited here on Substack by all the ideas and possibilities buzzing around. It’s so much more stimulating than Netflix and cheaper too! I’ve cancelled my streaming services and taken up Substack subcriptions instead.

Today I want to share with you some more treats I came across during my research for my travel memoir, Looking for Duras, Finding my Mother: a Mekong Journey. I’ve added ‘a Mekong Journey’ back onto the title. A tip from

Writers at Work with Sarah Fay

who introduced me to the ‘semi colon title’ and I must say I like it. (She has great vids and useful posts for writers working on SS).

If you’d like to keep reading please consider joining the extras club. My goal is to get 15 more paid club members by the end of the month! Special thanks to those who recently joined. I’m sorry I don’t have any bottle top badges to give out, but if you read on, I can tell you how to make your own!