Novel Nights

Category: Acceptances (page 1 of 13)

Novel Nights

July 26, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

Now I know I should really be out and about promoting my poetry collection, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to stand up in public and read from The Next Big Thing But One at this month’s excellent Novel Nights event. I did make a slight faux pas with the first extract I submitted, as for some unfathomable reason (probably something to do with testing my own comfort zones), I sent in a section with a lot of Very Bad Words. Fortunately, I was given a second chance and this time my piece was accepted, and I duly put on my pink performing shoes and stepped out, alongside the excellent Clare Snook and Mark Lewis.

For those of you who are interested, here’s a recording of my bit:

The main feature was a chap called Dan Jeffries, who gave a fascinating talk about crowdfunding and marketing, containing much food for thought. This inspired me to make a bit more effort about how I present myself online, as I’ve got a bit lax since the bold days of blogging and promoting Mrs Darcy. The first step is to combine the various Facebook pages for my first three books into a single author page, although this is not quite as straightforward as it might first seem. If you want to merge two pages, they need to have very similar names, and if you change the name of them in order to facilitate this, they seem to get locked for a while before you can actually go ahead with the merge. We’ll see what happens. I have at least changed the Mrs Darcy page to a more generic one, with a nice new banner featuring all four books. If you haven’t already liked it, please do give it some love.

Meanwhile, the reviews for Love and Loss and Other Important Stuff have started to trickle in, and everything is looking very positive. If you are a poetry blogger and you’d like to take a look, do get in touch and I might be able to spare you a copy.

GAR at Spelk

April 18, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

A new flash of mine went up at the excellent Spelk yesterday. Usually these things come from prompts, but this one emerged out of the blue. Can’t quite remember exactly how it emerged, mind. I think it was probably the mysterious cage that set it going and it acquired a life of its own after that. You are free to add your own interpretations, explanations and back stories as you see fit.

Cultured Llama to Publish DIP FLASH

February 8, 2017 / admin / 2 Comments

Well, it’s been a while since I last had a book published. Almost three years in fact. So I have to say I’m extremely pleased, not to say relieved, to announce that I have a new short story collection coming out in 2018, courtesy of the excellent Cultured Llama Publishing.

This book is a sort of sequel (or at least follow-up) to 2012’s DOT DASH, and is going to be called DIP FLASH. The running order is still a little fluid, although I can say that there will be fewer of the ultra short pieces, mainly because (1) I haven’t written many of them recently and (2) I’m beginning to think that kind of thing has run its course. As things stand at the moment, most of the stories have been published somewhere or other already, but it will be nice to have them all gathered together in one place. Stories do get lonely, you know.

And in case you were wondering where the title came from, here’s a clue.

Every Day Fiction Again

September 14, 2016 / admin / 2 Comments

Once upon a time I used to have loads of short story and poetry submissions on the go (I think the most I ever had out at the same time was 40). In recent years, however, this flood has dwindled to a mere trickle, mainly – I suppose – because I started getting proper books published.

I do still get a kick out of getting short stuff out there, though, particularly on places like Every Day Fiction, because you get to find out very soon what people think of your work – even if it isn’t always the reaction you were hoping for. So I was very pleased to get an acceptance from them for a piece I sent them recently called ‘Too Old for Suzuki.’ It’s a very slight piece, heavy on the dialogue with not a lot actually happening, so it may get some stick from the readers, but I still like it a lot. I’ll put up a link when it goes live.

Viral

September 5, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Back in April, I wrote a poem. It was (and I appreciate these things are always subjective) intended to be a funny poem. However, I couldn’t work out where to send it, and to cut a long story short, I ended up creating my very own online poetry magazine, specifically aimed at publishing humorous poetry, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis.

Of course, what happened next was that one of the responders to my very first post on SCOMA (still not sure about that acronym – sounds like an unpleasant medical condition) pointed out that a humorous poetry magazine already existed, in the shape of Lighten Up Online. Well, there’s room enough in the world for two humorous poetry magazines, so I went ahead with SCOMA anyway. Doesn’t seem to have done either of us any harm so far.

Having set up SCOMA, I thought the least I could do was send LUO the poem that started the thought process off. So that’s exactly what I did. What’s more, they agreed to publish it, and it went up on their site last week.

The odd thing about it was that in the few months between submission and publication, it’s already become out of date, what with Gawker being sued out of existence. Such are the perils of trying to write up-to-the-minute satire. I can see this is one piece that’s going to evolve over the years.

National Flash Fiction Day Anthology

June 17, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Is it that time of year already? Apparently it is. A week tomorrow (June 25th) is National Flash Fiction Day, 2016. I think I’m right in saying this is the fifth incarnation of the event, which suggests an impressive level of commitment from Calum Kerr and his loyal band of organisers.

As ever, there was a microfiction competition, for which my very short piece “Saved for Later” was longlisted – although it was up against some stiff competition (take a look at the second prize winner in particular) and got no further. I was slightly anxious that this might mean that I was going to miss being included in the NFFD anthology for the first time ever (as I didn’t even get a free pass this time – for the last couple of years I’ve been a microfiction judge). However, my submission “Family Values” was indeed selected, so my record remains untarnished.

And here’s the book itself – rather striking, don’t you think? You can buy copies here and if you take a look at the list of authors, I think you’ll agree with me that it promises to be rather special.

Back at IS&T

May 20, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Had a mildly traumatic few days this week, after an OSX upgrade caused my vintage desktop computer to give up the ghost. It’s lasted almost seven years, so I can’t really complain. What I will say is that, for the third time in recent years, Apple’s Time Machine has proved to be a life-saver. If you rely on a Mac and haven’t set up Time Machine, (1) WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? and (2) DO IT NOW.

While all this was going on, I had an acceptance for my poem ‘The Incredible Zabriskie Ponders His Retirement Plan’, which will appear at the excellent Ink, Sweat and Tears in about three months or so from now. I’m really pleased that this one is going to get an airing, as I’m rather fond of it.

Phosphorescence and Other Stuff

December 13, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

Bit of a pre-Christmas flurry of activity going on here. First of all, my story “Phosphorescence” is now up at The Nottingham Review. As I think I mentioned when I posted about its acceptance, it was shortlisted – under a different name – for the Bridport Prize back in 2012 but it’s struggled to find a home ever since. I think the reason for this is that it doesn’t, on the face of it, make a lot of sense. To be honest, I really wasn’t sure what I was doing when I wrote it, but it sort of felt right, so I went with it. I should do this more often.

I’ve also had an acceptance from The Pygmy Giant for my flash “Phocoena Phocoena”. Not sure when this is going to appear, but I’ll let you know.

And finally, I’ve also got something coming up at an old favourite haunt of mine, but I think I’ll keep that under wraps for the time being. Always keep your readership hungry for more, eh?

Graffiti and Other Things

December 4, 2015 / admin / 4 Comments

My cheeky little flash “Graffiti” went up at Spelk the other day. In case you’re wondering where the idea for this came from, I was thinking about the “sword” dangling from Orion’s belt and whether that interpretation might have been somewhat bowdlerised over the years…

In other news, I was chuffed to find out last week that I was one of the finalists in this year’s Aesthetica Creative Writing Award for my short story “Adagio Assai”. I also found out that my humorous flash “Embarrassing Dad” had been accepted for Flash Magazine’s forthcoming “Funny Bone” anthology, which I’d been invited to submit to a while back. I always panic when I get invited to submit to things, because I never know if the piece has been accepted on its merits or simply because I got a free pass. I’d like to think that they could have turned this one down, but I’ll never really know. (This is, incidentally, the same reason why I try to avoid self-publishing – I need to know that whatever I’ve done has succeeded in fooling at least one gatekeeper.)

And finally, I also found out last week that I have passed my MA in Creative Writing. Get me.

Spelk, The Nottingham Review and Other Stuff

November 18, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

A casual viewer of this blog over the last few months would scarcely guess that it’s been running pretty much continuously for seven and a bit years. Time was when I’d be constantly bombarding you with reports about things I’d had accepted or published, to say nothing of the occasional interview or even a review or two. I recently got invited to a couple of events for book bloggers at the Groucho Club, and I felt too embarrassed to go because it’s been so long since I last reviewed anything here.

Still, even though the blog is a bit thin on the ground, I have been writing stuff. TTAAAP is now over 77000 words long and is nearing the final showdown. I’d love to share some nuggets of information about the process I’m going through with it, but it feels a bit presumptuous to do so. I still feel like a complete beginner with this. Perhaps I always will. One thing I can say is that I had a massive wobble last week when I discovered a plot hole the size of a small crater and it seemed like I was going to have to unpick a considerable part of the book in order to fix it. Fortunately, I managed to find an acceptable way of filling it, and I think I can now see my way to the finish. Just one detail to sort out, and we’re done. Then one last edit, and it’s over to the beta readers.

In the meantime, I’ve had a couple of acceptances for short stories. My cheeky little ultra-short, “Graffiti”, has been taken by Spelk, and my slightly longer story, “Phosphorescence”, has been taken by The Nottingham Review. “Phosphorescence” was actually shortlisted in the 2012 Bridport Prize under the name “The Joy Inside”, but it’s been struggling to find a nice home ever since. I’m quite fond of it, even if I still don’t quite understand it. You’ll see what I mean when it gets published.