DIANE SIMMONS
WRITER
A TRICKY DANCE
My flash fiction novella A Tricky Dance was published by Alien Buddha on 7 January 2024. Copies can be purchased from Amazon in the UK and USA or if you would like a signed copy, you can purchase directly from me.
Signed copies are available for a cost of £7.50 (or £9.00 to include postage within the UK). Please email me for international postage costs.
If you would like to buy a copy, or have any other queries please email me at scooterwriter@gmail.com
You can hear me read two stories from the novella-in-flash here
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PRAISE FOR A TRICKY DANCE
A Tricky Dance is a delightful immersion into the life of Elspeth, a 1970s young teenager always on the edge of not belonging, but never giving up. The day-to-day situations Elspeth negotiates at school and at home are vividly depicted and realistic. Diane Simmons is brilliant at showing the ups and downs of friendships and life in a single parent family and how Elspeth’s longing to dance is finally realised. From the first page, you’ll be with this feisty, yet sensitive girl all the way.
~Jude Higgins, writer and Director of Ad Hoc Fiction
Diane Simmons explores the tricky dance of adolescence in this affecting novella-in-flash. My heart ached for Elspeth whose tough as nails exterior hides a young girl’s yearning to fit in. As the story concludes, Elspeth begins to find her place on the dance floor, with this reader cheering her on. Endearing, moving, satisfying.
~Damhnait Monaghan, author of the award-winning novel New Girl in Little Cove
A Tricky Dance, a novella-in-flash by Diane Simmons, is the story of Elspeth, a young girl growing up in an unforgiving Scotland in the 1970s. Those were the days when to have even a taint of Sassenach was grounds for ridicule and unpopularity. Yet, despite the handicap of being originally from London,
Elspeth’s feisty self-belief buoys her through the ups and downs of secondary school and life with a single mother in a household with little money to spare. In her pitch-perfect voice, Elspeth tells us about her fickle friendships and her dream of becoming a dancer despite the odds.
Diane Simmons’ descriptions of Elspeth’s daily life in that era are spot-on – jammie dodgers, the Bay City Rollers, Morecambe and Wise, and Jackie magazine. Having grown up in the same decade in a very similar Scottish town, I remember them all. And I sympathize with Elspeth's feeling of being different and her burning desire to prove it to the world, which Diane Simmons has captured so well.
“My mum’s got no patience with me. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being ordinary,’ she says, ‘Being clever or famous isn’t the be-all.’ I’d like the chance to find out.”
A Tricky Dance manages to be deeply moving yet unsentimental, which is a tricky dance in itself, one that Diane Simmons has pulled off to perfection. Highly recommended.
~Fiona J Mackintosh, author of The Yet Unknowing World
Diane Simmons’s story of an English girl growing up in 1970s Scotland is both moving and funny. We follow feisty Elspeth as she navigates her ever shifting friendships at school and her desire to be a dancer. I adored Elspeth’s developing relationship with Rory as he supports her dancing ambitions and represents a kindred spirit in his desire to breakaway from all that is ‘ordinary’. There is a real skill in balancing humour and complex emotions in a story and Diane Simmons manages it time and time again.
~Jeanette Sheppard, author of Seventy Percent Water
