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.
Books
Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens was published by Proxima Books in September 2011.
The Scott Prize-winning short story collection Dot(.), Dash(-) will be published by Salt in 2012.
Jan
3
Every Day double whammy and other stuff
Filed Under Acceptances, Mrs Darcy | 2 Comments
Didn’t have time to mention before 2011 ended that I’d had one more acceptance, from Every Day Fiction for a flash called “Rôle-Play”. This means that I have a bit of an Every Day double whammy this month, with an appearance in Every Day Fiction on January 23rd followed by Every Day Poets on January 24th. Which is cool.
In other news, Amy McLean and I were both a bit stunned to see that her video (see last post) has been picked up by the “Tim Burton news” twitter account (presumably unofficial but with a very high follower/follow ratio). Will be interesting to see if it spreads any further…
Dec
7
Every Day Poets Again and Other Stuff
Filed Under Acceptances, Anthologies, Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment
I’ve been subbing a few odd things here and there in between whatever it is I’m doing right now and yesterday I heard that one of them, a poem called “Perspective”, had been accepted by Every Day Poets. Unlike pretty much everything else I’ve had published by EDP, this one is quite serious – sad even. More about it nearer the time.
In other news, we’ve had a rash of mentions for the VWC anthology, “The Archangel and the White Hart“. Scott Pack picked out a couple of stories in it for his Me and My Short Stories blog (making a total of four so far!) : Katie Carr’s prizewinning entry from the 2010 Get Writing competition, “Beating the Blues” and Oscar Windsor-Smith’s splendidly peculiar and somewhat filthy “Camera Segreta“. We also got a nice review for the anthology as a whole on Amazon, from someone who isn’t in it as far as we know.
Finally, I was more than a little stunned to read (via the wonderful medium of Twitter) that John Harding (of “Florence and Giles” fame – you have read it, haven’t you? If not why on earth not – it’s utterly brilliant) had lunch with none other than PD James today and gave her a copy of “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens”. The bit that I’m struggling to get my head around is that apparently she was thrilled to bits. Sadly, I’m guessing this means that the challenge to a duel didn’t get any further than her agents, but this may actually be better still.
Nov
22
Ink, Sweat and Tears Again and Other Stuff
Filed Under Acceptances, Competitions, Mrs Darcy, The Literary World, The Publishing Industry | Leave a Comment
What with promoting Mrs Darcy and so on, I haven’t done a lot of submitting stuff lately. But I sent a few things off the other day and I was very pleased to get a quick acceptance from Ink, Sweat and Tears for my poem Lost for Words. I’ll let you know when it appears.
What else? Had an unexpected sighting of Mrs Darcy the other day, courtesy of the lovely Sarah Salway (that’s Sarah-Salway-who-gets-cover-quotes-from-Neil-Gaiman-and-recently-shared-a-platform-with-William-Gibson, in case you were wondering). At a poetry reading the other day this chap was apparently enthusing about the book, saying that there were “lots of belly laughs”. I’ve no idea who he is, which makes it even better.
I’ve now added a 404 page to the Mrs Darcy website. Try going to a non-existent page like this one and see what happens. I should do something similar to this place, too, whilst I’m at it.
I’ve also restarted my Too Many CDs project – the one where I listen to every tenth CD in my collection and give my impressions. We’re now up to number 100, which happens to be the splendid “Remedy” by Basement Jaxx.
And finally, if you haven’t been keeping up with the increasingly bizarre and unpleasant Brit Writers Award story, this post – and the comments under it especially – will tell you everything you need to know. Wow. Just wow.
Sep
28
Blog Tour, Day 27
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OK, sit down. We’ve got a lot to get through today. First of all, today’s official blog tour stop was courtesy of the multi-talented Gale Martin, who I first encountered as a fellow competitor in the Whittaker Prize at The Write Idea forum. Gale is an accomplished mezzo-soprano and opera fan as well as a writer, and she’s about to have her first novel – set in the world of opera – published by Booktrope. Anyway, Gale and I chat about writing serials, getting noticed and … blowholes.
Today we also have a little bonus. Something odd is happening on Amazon in the UK, in that “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens” is “frequently bought together” with this completely unrelated book. Now I vaguely know the author of the other book, Gavin James Bower, on Twitter and he messaged me to suggest that we ought to make something of it. So we got in touch with Helen J Beal, whose fault it all was (because we’re both being featured in her book group in the next couple of months – hence the skewed buying patterns).
Helen then put together a massively complicated three-stage three-way competitive interview, the rules of which we both managed to misinterpret in different ways. I think this actually played to my advantage, but honours in the end were fairly divided between the two of us. This may well be the future of book promotion and if Helen wants to be the referee for my forthcoming duel with P D James then the job is hers. (For the record, Gavin seems to be a top bloke and I might actually buy his book because the word on the street is that it’s pretty good.)
Speaking of P D James, I am still awaiting the reply from her corner. I think she may be running scared.
I can, however, announce that I have added two more highly prestigious dates to the Never Ending Blog Tour: Sarah Salway on Saturday 1st October and Scott Pack on Monday 3rd. Scott will also be here on Saturday in the guise of Steve Stack, author of “20th Century Dodos” (just out!), on his blog tour.
Oh, and apparently I’m on the bill for the next Liars’ League event, Fear and Loathing, along with VWC chum Julie Mayhew and Proxima label-mate Niall Boyce, amongst others. Apparently, there’s also a new piece by some bloke called Stephen King. Anyone know if he’s any good?
Aug
18
TheRightEyedDeer Again
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Nice to hear today that TheRightEyedDeer have accepted my very short flash “Value for Money”. So that will appear in their very next issue, number 7, some time this month.
I originally wrote this during a charity write-a-thon thing – one of those things where you try and write a new piece every hour, and it’s amazing what kind of stuff turns up. Funnily enough, I may be talking about this kind of thing at my workshop at next year’s Get Writing conference. But more of that in due course…
Aug
11
Heron Issue 5
Filed Under Acceptances, Invitations, Mrs Darcy | 2 Comments
Way back in March I had an e-mail from Folded Word, asking me if I’d like to write issue 5 of their occasional broadside Heron. Folded Word are the people who produce PicFic (regular readers may remember this, as well as this) and I like their quirky approach to finding new ways to present fiction and poetry, so I was really pleased to be asked.
Last week I finally submitted my piece to them, entitled “Ultima Thule”, and to my relief they liked it. So watch out for Heron #5, which will fly in some time in October.
In other news, Mrs Darcy is now only three weeks away from publication. Eek. Amusingly, it’s been nominated for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, so if you fancy voting for it (and why not?) here are the instructions. In the meantime, Wickhampedia rolls on, with a short article on Lord Byron. Well, what did you expect?
Jul
19
The View from Here
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Aaaaaaaaand the second acceptance of the day comes courtesy of the very wonderful The View from Here, which is another cool place that I haven’t been in before. Rather annoyingly, I’ve got in there just after it ceased as a print publication, but never mind.
The piece in question is called “The Unsleepers” and it’s about … actually, I’m not entirely sure. Still, I’ll let you know when it appears and you can make up your minds yourselves.
Jul
19
Eclectica Magazine
Filed Under Acceptances, The Literary World, The Publishing Industry | Leave a Comment
… have just accepted my flash “Special Relativity”, an odd little piece about sibling rivalry, Einstein and the lies we tell our kids. It will be published in their next edition, which should be appearing very soon. I’ll let you know when it does.
In other news, the outrage about the BBC’s decision to cut down on short stories has made The Independent. Terrific work by Susie Maguire and Ian Skillicorn there. It’s nice to have been able to play a small part in spreading the word. However, it’s not over by any means and we need to keep up the pressure. There’s an online petition now and if you haven’t signed it already, I really would urge you to do so.
Jun
13
The Battered Suitcase
Filed Under Acceptances | 8 Comments
It’s possible that regular readers of this blog may have gained the impression that the course of my writing life runs like a smooth, well-oiled machine, untroubled by such petty problems as rejection, frustration or failure. However, nothing could be further from the truth: I get rejections and failures all the time. There are some publications that have almost certainly added me to their spam list, given the number of things I have abortively sent them. However, I do like to think that the fact that this doesn’t bother me (and it really doesn’t) has something to do with whatever impression of success that I manage to project.
Some of my favourite stories have travelled the world so much they have special T shirts printed, showing everywhere they have visited on their long journey, and I am delighted to announce that one such story, “Dinner with Sylvia” has at last found a home – and a good one at that – at The Battered Suitcase. I wrote this story for a VWC competition back in 2004 and I have been sending it out, off and on, ever since I started submitting stuff to the outside world in 2007. So I’m particularly pleased to see this one finally flee the nest, because it deserves a wider audience. Well, I think it does, anyway.
Jun
7
Another Fling at Every Day Poets
Filed Under Acceptances, Other people, The Literary World, Things I like | Leave a Comment
Well, today started nicely with an acceptance from Every Day Poets for my parody “Now We Are (Practising Safe) Sex”. A.A.Milne’s corpse should probably get ready to spin now.
In other news, I received my signed copy of Nicola Morgan‘s “Write to be Published” today and it looks terrific. Especially page 246. Page 246 is wonderful. In fact I would go as far as to say that page 246 of “Write to be Published” is the best page of writing advice ever written. I certainly can’t stop looking at it. Buy the book here. You won’t regret it.