Back in August, the very wonderful Every Day Poets published a poem of mine that – to my amazement – turned out to be their most read poem of that month. And that means that the lovely Oonagh Joslin of EDP has now interviewed me about my poetry. Now this is all a bit odd, […]
This week I have been thinking a lot about Romola Garai. Now don’t get me wrong – she’s very pretty, no doubt about that, but she’s not really my type. No, it was this extraordinary interview in Sunday’s Independent that set me off. There’s loads of stuff about her acting and all the wonderful people […]
And another Twitter fiction market is cracked! This was a bit more of a challenge, as Outshine require tweets involving optimistic, near-future science fiction, and it’s so much easier to write dystopian stuff. But it was worth persevering with, as they pay $5 per tweet – which, in this case, works out at just under […]
Here’s another Twitter fiction market that I discovered thanks to the twitfic forum: escarp. I submitted a piece to them last night, received the acceptance this morning, and it’s just been published here. Interestingly, I’ve just been editing a story for submission to a competition that’s closing soon, and I’ve been finding that I seem […]
It’s always a pleasure to find a new market, so I was particularly excited when one of my colleagues on Café Doom brought the excellent Library of the Living Dead Press to my attention. LotLDP is something of a specialist imprint, dealing exclusively in Zombie-related books (I’m guessing that you’d spotted that already). Now I like […]
I’ve found a new forum to hang out on: twitfic, which is dedicated to (guess) Twitter fiction, and I’m already reaping the benefits. I had no idea how many outlets there were for Twitter fiction, and I certainly hadn’t come across 7×20 before. This one takes poetry as well as fiction, so I sent them […]
After the phenomenal success of the first year of Fifty-Two Stitches (copies of the anthology still available here). the redoubtable Aaron Polson has decided to do it all over again, and I’m very pleased to say that my flash “The Wrong Thing to Say” is going to be part of it. Good to hear that fellow […]
I’ve just heard that my rather peculiar bilingual piece “The Language of Angels” has been accepted for the inaugural issue of Eclectic Flash. I think I like this magazine already. More about the piece when it gets published. [EDITED TO ADD: Have you seen the bios of the editors? I like this magazine even more […]
Had a thoroughly wonderful time at Sparks Night last night, in the intimate venue at Upstairs at Three and Ten, Brighton. Jo Mortimer compered in her entertainingly idiosyncratic way and the whole evening went off without a hitch. Some great pieces by Jac Cattaneo, Katie McCullough (read by Jo), Yeu-Ing Mo, Wendy Greenhalgh, Vanessa Gellard […]
The near-misses are coming thick and fast. I found out today that my poem about Lizzie Siddal, “Imitation of a Suicide”, was Highly Commended in the Hastings International Poetry Competition. This is probably my most complex poem to date, so I’m especially pleased that it’s (almost) hit the spot. The letter also said that ‘your […]