Oct

13

Tuesday Shorts

Filed Under Acceptances | 1 Comment

After going through several metamorphoses (which I’ll share when it finally gets published), my short piece “Misunderstandings” has been accepted by Tuesday Shorts. I think I’m right in saying that, at exactly 100 words, this is the shortest prose piece that anyone’s taken from me. I guess one of those 55 word sites is the next target, although I’ve still got my eye on txtlit. Which reminds me: I haven’t done one for the October comp yet.

Oct

11

City of Derby Short Story Competition

Filed Under Competitions | 6 Comments

Now it can be told. A month ago to the day, I received an e-mail from Rob Smallwood, the organiser of the City of Derby Short Story Competition:

Alex Keegan, our short story judge for 2008, has settled on his favourite ten stories entered in this year’s competition out of well over 500 entries, and we are pleased to be able to say that your story The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife is one of his favourite ten stories.  Over the next couple of days he will be deciding which of these will be in the top three places, and will therefore win monetary prizes.

I was sufficiently flabbergasted by this to completely fail to respond for a couple of days. When I did get back to them to say that I would love to go along (never wanting to miss the opportunity to network), I got the following reply:

I’m so pleased that you will be able to attend.  I have just discovered today that your work will be one of the top 3 stories, although I’m afraid I’m unable to say whether it will be 1st, 2nd or 3rd until the announcement on the evening itself.

If I were a teenager, I’d probably have gone Ohmigodohmigodohmigod. Actually, I probably did do something just like that. It’s not just that the money or the kudos of placing in a competition, but the fact that a guy with Alex Keegan’s fearsome reputation had picked out my piece.

Anyway, last night we went to Derby for the prizegiving ceremony, and I found out that my story had come second equal, which I have to say that I was really rather chuffed about. It was a fascinating evening and it was very interesting to meet Mr Keegan. There are places that I go on the web where the very mention of his name causes cracks of thunder and a darkening of the skies, but I have to say that in the flesh he was extremely personable, and Mrs P and I had a very pleasant chat with him. His critical analysis of each of the finalists was harsh but ultimately fair. I came away with a strong feeling of what I had to do in order to push myself that crucial little bit further so that I can do a little better than just place next time.

Given that this is the time of year when Eurofiction is starting up again, I should perhaps mention that this piece, “The Amazing Arnolfini and his Wife”, was originally written for round 2 of last year’s Eurofiction competition, where it scored all of 4 points (placing it 24th out of 50-odd entries). There are two morals to this, the first of which is that all scoring is massively subjective. The second is that if you want to generate a portfolio of submittable stories, you can do a lot worse than sign up for competitions like Eurofiction. If it hadn’t been for EF, this story would not have been written at all.

Oct

8

Ominous Signs

Filed Under Competitions | 2 Comments

I’ve just received a rather worrying e-mail from Fish Publishing regarding their Criminally-Short Short Histories Competition, for which I entered a couple of pieces of somewhat dubious merit:

Dear Writer,

I have recently returned, after a two year absence, to run Fish Publishing, and am in the process of familiarizing myself with the state of the various competitions. The Criminally-Short Short Histories competition, which you entered, has not attracted enough entries to make it viable, and I am forced to close it down. I am very sorry to have to do this, and I ask your indulgence for the following course of action.

With your permission, I will transfer your entry to the 2009 Fish One Page Prize. (Obviously there will be no further charge to you). The closing date for this prize is 30 March 2009, and the winner and nine best others will be announced on 30 April 2009. The winners, as per usual, will be published in the annual Fish Anthology of Short Stories, which will be launched in the summer of 2009. The first prize is 1,000 Euro, and 50 Euro for nine runners-up. All who are published will receive five free copies of the anthology.

If you do not want your story to be transfered, please let me know by email, and include your name, the title of the story, and confirming that it is a Criminally-Short Short Histories entry, and I will refund your entry fee.

I apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused. We at Fish want to ensure that the high standards we have developed and maintained over the years are continued, and that the 2009 Fish Anthology is successful in promoting the writers within it.

I think I’ll take this as an opportunity to pull out, because the two pieces that I sent in won’t stand a chance in the open comp (particularly as I’ve just noticed that one of them has a switch of tense in the last line – oops). But are the economic conditions affecting competition entry numbers now? Things must be getting really bad.

[UPDATE: Apparently, it's not just the Criminally-Short Short Histories Competition. Ouch.]

Oct

7

Every Day Poets

Filed Under Acceptances | 1 Comment

Well, there’s a thing. I’ve just had my third poetry acceptance, courtesy of the bright new shiny Every Day Poets site. If this carries on, I’ll need to separate out the poetry into a separate page. It’s for a piece called School Uniform, which was shortlisted in a Writers’ News humorous poetry competition back in (good grief) 1996. As far as I’m aware, this is the only time that my name has ever appeared in Writers’ News. The moral is, I guess, never throw anything away, even if it takes twelve years before you finally make use of it.

I think I like EDP as much as I like EDF. They responded to my initial submission quickly, inviting me to try again after I’d fixed some of the inconsistencies in the metre. Funny how you don’t spot those when you read it yourself. So, having invited criticism from my colleagues in the VWC (and received some very helpful suggestions from Ian Cundell – who is also, incidentally, responsible for Toby’s excellent promo video below), I resubmitted and this time I got a “yes”.

No idea when it’s appearing, though. The site doesn’t even go live until next month!

Oct

5

A Storm is Brewing

Filed Under Other people | Leave a Comment

As readers of this blog will probably be aware, it was mainly set up to service my ego. To this end, pretty much all of the posts have been about me, me and me. However, there comes a time when an exception has to be made, and that time it now. My mate Toby Frost has just brought out his second book, and it’s even better than his first. But let YouTube tell the full story:

Oct

4

All Change

Filed Under Charity, Stunts | 2 Comments

First thing this morning I sent in my entry for the final round in the Whittaker competition. It’s been a lot of fun, this one, with some quite challenging prompts to work with. For the record, here are the ones that I went for (out of a choice of three for each round):

the phone rang at 4 a.m.

stained ground beside Forsbury Chapel

orange wellies

going down an angle so sharp it makes Pythagoras puke

the middle of nowhere sings

nicotine-stained walls and a broken air conditioner

Do you take American Express?

he was always such a quiet boy

on Friday, a duck fell from the sky

See what I mean? That’s the sort of stuff that’s guaranteed to send you off into all sorts of odd directions. Anyway, one piece (”Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions”) has already been published, and one other is currently in competition. The rest will be out there just as soon as I’ve hacked them around a bit. Oh, and I’m currently in fifth place. Can’t see much chance of getting any higher, as I had a couple of duff rounds. You can sit one round out, because only your best eight count, but two’s gonna bring you down. Still, like I said way back when this started (before this blog had even got going) the most important function of a comp like the Whittaker is to force you to generate stuff, and winning it is a secondary issue. (Of course, if I was leading the comp at this point, it is possible that I might have a different opinion.)

And speaking of comps like the Whittaker, its spritual parent, Eurofiction, has just started up again on the SlingInk site. The first prompts went up on Wednesday. So off we go again.

BTW, I spent the rest of today writing stuff for the Grail charity writeathon. Great fun, and lots of interesting ideas bubbling around. I eventually came up with eleven pieces altogether: 8 stories, 2 poems and 1 piece of non-fiction. I’m fairly happy with this, although one of the people there managed to do 35 pieces altogether. I suspect that she is actually an alien with more than one brain. And, of course, the donation page is still open here.

Oct

1

Charity Writeathon

Filed Under Charity, Stunts | 1 Comment

 Should have posted about this ages ago, but never mind. This Saturday I’m taking part in a charity writeathon, which will involve writing as many stories as I can to prompts between 11AM and 11PM. It’s being run by a writers’ group called The Grail and this year it’s in aid of Volunteer Reading Help, which is a cause that should be dear to anyone with a love of reading and writing. So (hands up who saw this coming) I’m asking for your hard-earned cash. I know, I know, times are hard, but it is a really good cause, isn’t it? And, trust me, you’ll feel so much better for it.

As for the event itself, I’ll be fascinated to see what happens. The pressure often disengages the left brain and throws up some interesting stuff, such as this one that emerged during last year’s Children in Need event. I’ll let you know how it goes …

Oct

1

After Michelangelo

Filed Under Publications | 6 Comments

Issue #4 of Necrotic Tissue appears today, containing my story “After Michelangelo”. This is an important story for me, because it’s the one that got me back into writing fiction. From 1997, when I got the commission to write Professional DCOM Application Development, up until 2005, I either wrote about software or nothing at all. But in the autumn of 2005, I rejoined the Verulam Writers’ Circle, and one of the first things I did was enter the competition for the David Gibson Cup (a truly hideous prize, incidentally). The theme for the cup was “David”, and this story (which then went under the the rather boring title of “The Model”) was the winner by popular vote (although one of those present said that he would have voted for it had it not been so unpleasant, which I treated as a compliment).

I hadn’t really got into the groove of submitting stuff elsewhere then, so it sat in the proverbial back drawer for the next couple of years, apart from a couple of desultory attempts. However, at the beginning of this year, I began to take a more aggressive attitude to getting my work out there, and I heard about the fledgling Necrotic Tissue via Café Doom. I submitted it, virtually unchanged from its original form, fully expecting them to snap it up. Five days later, I received a rejection. Crucially, however, the editor, Scott McCoy, did what all really good editors do, and pointed out what I needed to do to make it acceptable. So I swallowed my pride and did just that. Next time around, it was accepted. Not only that, but the payment arrived two days after that, back in April. Even better, the T shirt (yes, you get an amazingly cool T shirt for every story that gets accepted!) came through the post shortly afterwards.

Anyway, hope you like the story.

In other news, the schedule for this month’s Every Day Fiction has appeared, and “Visiting Time” looks like it’s appearing on the 15th. And, wow, I’m on the same programme as Nuala Ní Chonchúir, who was the judge for this year’s Sean O’Faolain competition (and who inexplicably overlooked my entry – well, I guess she has her off days too :) ).

Finally, we’re all excited at the VWC (yet again), because the lovely Meena Wells has just become the fourth member of the circle to get herself an agent this year (making five altogether). So, to all those out there who say that it’s a closed shop, you ain’t trying hard enough. And that includes me. Of course, it does help that Meena is a massively talented writer. Remember her name.

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