About this site
My name's Jonathan Pinnock. I lead a dual life. In one half of this, I run a software development company called Jonathan Pinnock and Associates. If you've come here looking for that, here's where you need to go.However, if you've come here to find out about the other half of my life, as a writer of fiction and non-fiction, you've come to the right place.
If, on the other hand, you've arrived here by accident whilst searching for Japanese Tentacle Porn, I suggest you try using a different search engine.
If you'd like to contact me, my e-mail address is jon AT jpassoc DOT co DOT uk.
Aug
7
Sparks Night Again
Filed Under Acceptances, Performances | 4 Comments
Just realised that I haven’t mentioned this before. I’m going to be performing at SPARKS 10 on September 7th, along with my VWC mate Oscar Windsor-Smith, as well as Vanessa Gebbie, Tom Vowler, Sam Mead, Naomi Foyle, Jac Cattaneo and Paul Toth. Vanessa Gebbie should need no introduction and Tom Vowler was one of the winners of last year’s Scott Prize. So no pressure, then …
I’m now thinking that maybe I should have chosen a slightly more profound piece than “‘Ello, ‘Ello, What’s All This Ear, Then?” I will have to do voices as well. This is not necessarily a good thing.
Still, if you fancy coming along (for the other star acts, if not for me), the venue is Upstairs at Three and Ten, Brighton, at 7:30PM on Tuesday, September 7th. Last time, I had a ball – a wonderful evening all round.
Jul
31
Nanoism
Filed Under Acceptances | Leave a Comment
Well, I’m seriously chuffed about this. I’ve finally completed the set of the TwitFic markets. Or at least I would have done if OneFortyFiction hadn’t just appeared on the scene. However, at the time I submitted this one to Nanoism, it definitely was the last one that remained un-cracked, so I’m going to claim a full house anyway. Although I guess I’m going to have to go after OneFortyFiction now as well.
For the record, this was the seventh submission that I made to Nanoism, which goes to show that (a) Twitter markets are definitely not a pushover and (b) persistence pays.
It’s appearing on August 20th. Going to be a busy month.
Jul
14
Everyday Weirdness
Filed Under Acceptances | 4 Comments
I received a very quick acceptance today from Everyday Weirdness (run, incidentally, by N.E.Lilly, who is also responsible for the rather splendid Thaumatrope) for my suitably odd piece “Oh, How She Changed!” I wrote this as part of a six-week competition run by The Write Idea, and this acceptance means that half of the pieces arising from that have now found homes.
It will appear there on August 9th, which means that August is going to be quite a busy month, what with appearances in Fifty-Two Stitches on the 1st and Trapeze some time in the second week – to say nothing of the little matter of the BBC on the 18th.
Jun
28
Every Day Fiction Again
Filed Under Acceptances | 2 Comments
It’s been a while since I’ve had something in Every Day Fiction, which is a pity because it’s one of my favourite places. I did submit a piece a while back and got a “fix and resubmit” response, but I felt that the changes that they requested – whilst probably sensible from an Every Day Fiction point of view – would have turned the piece into something different. So I decided to hang onto it the way it was. It’s still unpublished – make of that what you will.
Anyway, this new piece is a very short one called “The Colour of Criticism”, which I did for a charity flash event a while ago. I’ll be interested to see what EDF’s readership make of it, because I’m in two minds about it myself. Now there’s a recommendation, eh?
Jun
22
trapeze magazine
Filed Under Acceptances | Leave a Comment
Got an e-mail yesterday from the estimable Kaolin Fire to the members of the Twitfic forum asking if we were still interested in continuing with the forum. This prompted me to visit the place for the first time for a while and I discovered that a new e-zine called trapeze magazine (@trapezemag) had recently started up and was looking for ultra-short pieces. I took a look at their submission guidelines and was particularly attracted by the fact that they offered a 24 hour turnaround and didn’t give form rejections (wonder how long that’ll last 
)
So I immediately sent off an old favourite of mine that very nearly made it into Weird Tales a while back (and was then rejected, nine months after submission) and this morning I received my acceptance, with a proposed publication some time in August. Moral: always take a few minutes every now and then to keep in touch with those forums.
Jun
12
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Filed Under Acceptances | 12 Comments
Well, then. Towards the end of October last year, I sent the BBC my story “The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife” for their annual “Opening Lines’ competition – which is essentially their route into broadcast for new short story writers. I’d chosen that one because (a) there weren’t any bad words in it and (b) I thought it might work well on the radio.
In March, I received a letter telling me that I was on the longlist of 65 out of over 600 stories received.
Towards the end of May, I received another letter telling me I was on the shortlist, from which three would be chosen for broadcast.
And today I received an e-mail telling me that my story is one of the ones that has been chosen! I am quite unbelievably excited about this. The broadcast date is some time in August, but you can be sure that I will be telling you all about it nearer the time. You may well get very bored with me.
Quick word about the story’s genesis. I wrote it for Round Two of my very first Eurofiction competition (run by Slingink) in response to a prompt to “write a story about trust”. Hence the subject matter: a husband-and-wife tightrope-walking duo (plenty of trust issues there, I think). As it happens, the story bombed completely in Eurofiction, but I kept faith in it and submitted it to the City of Derby competition in 2008, where Alex Keegan awarded it joint second place. It’s really nice to see the BBC giving it their seal of approval too.
Jun
3
Seedpod Again
Filed Under Acceptances | Leave a Comment
I’ve been getting a bit slack lately about submissions. This is mainly to do with spending most of my writing time on Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens and the odd bits of poetry that I’m doing for the current Whittaker competition (currently in third place, but due for a tumble, since you asked). But I had a bit of spare time yesterday, so I set a few odd bits and pieces off, two of which have already been accepted by the same place, @seedpodpub. As the publication suggests, these are both pieces of TwitFic, and they’re sort of related – but you’ll see what I mean later on this month when they appear.
May
13
Hazard Cat
Filed Under Acceptances | 2 Comments
Thanks to @kaolinfire on Twitter I found a new market last night, called Hazard Cat. As the name suggests, they specialise in cat-related material, and as it happens I had a cat poem ready to roll. It’s a mildly satirical piece called “fat cat”, and they accepted it just over two hours after submission. Not only a quick response, but they pay, too: $5, which isn’t to be sneezed at.
Apr
15
Litro Again
Filed Under Acceptances | 2 Comments
I was thinking the other day that I hadn’t had a short story published for some time, when an e-mail from Liars’ League dropped into my Inbox, asking if any of their previously selected authors fancied submitting something to Litro. By today. Apparently a little bird had told them that they were a bit short of stories for their “North London” edition, due out in May. I’m guessing that the little bird in question was Katy Darby, who is not only one of the team who run Liars’ League, but has also just taken over the reins at Litro.
I was in two minds about this, because despite the fact that I am indeed a twice-selected author for Liars’ League, it’s been quite a while since they accepted anything else that I’ve sent them. But then I remembered that I had just the piece – a thing called “Piss and Patchouli” that I wrote during my first-ever Whittaker competition and was subsequently longlisted for one of the late-lamented Cadenza competitions. I had high hopes for this getting even higher in several other comps, but it resolutely failed to make the cut in any of them. So I toned down most of the language (Litro has a no gratuitous swearing policy) and sent it in last night. The acceptance arrived this morning, and I’m dead chuffed. Litro is distributed free throughout London, and has a print run of 100000. I’ll say that number again. 100000.
The only problem I have now is that they’d like another title if possible, which is a damn shame because I really like that one. I tweeted about this earlier on today and received a lot of helpful advice, the most unexpected coming from Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works, who asked her kids to come up with something. The first suggestion was “Tinkle and Patchouli”, which was nice, although it unfortunately lost the alliteration. So they thought about the problem a bit more and came up with “Having a Tinkle from my Winkle”. They will go far.
Apr
12
Ink, Sweat and Tears … and more
Filed Under Acceptances, Anthologies, Competitions | 2 Comments
So the results are now in for Round Two of the Whittaker Prize and I seem to be in 4th place in the poetry section, surrounded on all sides by real poets. There is of course only one way to go from here on in, but I’m determined to hang on as long as I can (last year it was Round Four that did for me). Anyway, I had an idea that Charles Christian at Ink, Sweat and Tears might like my Round Two piece, “Rock Bottom”, and it turned out that my hunch was correct and it will appear there very soon. Apparently, it’s a concrete poem, and despite the fact that in my ignorance I’ve never come across the term before, the description is spot on.
What I didn’t expect was that when I mentioned the acceptance on the TWI forum, Donna Gagnon, who runs the Whittaker Prize, said that she was very keen to put the poem in this year’s Whittaker Anthology as one of her editor’s picks, and would I check that this wasn’t going to be compromised by its appearance in IS&T! I duly checked and there was no problem at all. So I think this counts as two hits for the price of one