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.

But… I did once write a post for another occasion when I was looking for submissions and I think it may be time to trot that one out again. So… *drum roll* … here’s a repeat appearance for Swiss Toni’s Guide to Writing Short Stories. That should give you a bit of a clue as to what I’m looking for.

In other news, I had a fab time at Liars’ League last night – fantastic audience (wow, it’s grown since the last time I went), some wonderful stories and an absolutely spot on performance of my piece by Greg Page. I’ll post the video when it’s available.

Drum roll, please

Is…

Keep drumming, goddamnit

Is…

Come on, come on

DAN PURDUE!

So step forward, Dan, and claim your prize. If you want to e-mail me your address, I’ll pass it on to Steve. Many thanks to everyone who took the trouble to join in. I may well do the same for Mrs Darcy in the next day or so, so watch this space…

Turns out it did. I was on edge most of the weekend, I hardly slept last night and I was a complete wreck this morning. I kept checking the RSS feed to see if there were any new entries on the Salt blog and every time there was (and there were two false alarms: the Crashaw announcement and a piece about David Rose, who’s just got a new novel out) I hardly dared look.

And then this appeared. With my name in the right place, alongside Facebook/Twitter chum Andrea Ashworth and new Facebook chum Cassandra Parkin. I still can’t really believe it. I actually have TWO books coming out this year. A comic sci-fi romp and a book of pukka literary short stories. What an extraordinary year it’s turning out to be.

Anyway, when I submitted a couple of new poems to Helen last week, I was more than a little disappointed not to receive a reply within a matter of minutes as per the style of the old regime. Then this morning, I saw this post on IS&T which explained why. D’oh: I really should have spotted that myself. I duly resubmitted and received a blink-of-an-eye acceptance for my poem “Conundrums”. So all is well with IS&T and long may it flourish. The piece in question will appear some time in May.

This acceptance went some way to assuaging my disappointment at ending up bottom of the class in Round Two of the Whittaker (after a decent showing in Round One, too). But in truth, it was a pretty lousy effort, and probably deserved its low score. Can’t say I’m looking forward to reading the judge’s comments though.

Finally, some really sad news: Jenny Hewitt of JBWB has died. I’ve entered their competitions a few times and they always seemed efficient and well-run. My condolences to her partner, Doug.

I made up for my no-show in last year’s anthology by sneaking two poems into this year’s, “A Lover’s Alphabet” and “The Longueurs of Après-Midi”. I’m particularly pleased with the first of these because it’s the first time I’ve managed to construct a technically correct sonnet.

As a taster, here are the first few lines:

“So: A is for the ARSEHOLE I once wed
and B is for the BASTARD you became.
Then C is for the CRAPPY lies,” she said,
“and D is for your DOUBLE-DEALING game.

Which gives a rough idea of what it’s all about. However, I’m afraid if you want to read the rest, you’re just going to have to buy the book. Go on, you know you want to.

So, as one of the top ten poems in the competition, “Cyprus Delight” will now receive the ultimate accolade of print publication. Which is all rather exciting.

I still find poetry completely baffling. I dabble in it (I hate that phrase, but it’s true) because I enjoy it and I like to think that my experiments in the discipline with choosing the right word and getting the rhythm right etc. inform my fiction writing. But despite clocking up a few moderate successes like this one, I still feel a total fraud because I read very little poetry – partly because there’s very little that I feel completely comfortable with, but mostly because I’m lazy and ignorant. Actually, I could probably do with some pointers as to who I should read, and any suggestions would be most welcome.

In other news, my interview with Vanessa Gebbie went live on Salt Publishing’s blog yesterday. I hope I managed to do her justice, despite me not having much of a clue about interviewing. It was fun to do, though.

And I had a very swift acceptance yesterday from Escape Velocity for my piece “Symbiosis”, a tender story about the love of a young girl for her medicinal parasitic tapeworm. This will appear in their forthcoming anthology.

Finally … just take a look at the cover for Murky Depths 16. And then take a look at the wonderful artwork for my story, “Teamwork”, by Caroline Parkinson. And then go and place your order …

Amazing how things change. When I submitted my manuscript for “Dot(.), Dash(-)” back in October, I had all but given up on finding a publisher for Mrs Darcy, so I’d shifted my focus back to short stories. The following month, Proxima picked up Mrs Darcy, so everything changed again. The other weekend at Get Writing, with Mrs Darcy safely in the can, I found myself pitching a long-cherished non-fiction project.

So what kind of writer am I? Which project do I really want to succeed?

Daft question. You might as well ask me which of my kids I prefer …

This is my story:

Professor the said, “surprise a was that, well.” Backwards run to began time, on machine the switched they when.

I know it’s a bit gimmicky, but there you go. Any way to make it stand out from the crowd

And last night at midnight the word for the final was distributed, and it was “surprise”. Which was a bit of an awkward one, because half the trick in these things is to find a less obvious interpretation of the prompt word and at first sight “surprise” doesn’t offer much scope for thinking outside the box. But I’m quite pleased with the three I came up with eventually – certainly more so than last year’s final, anyway. The results are announced on Monday.

Before that, Mrs P and I went to see The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in concert. Wonderful. Here they are in case you’ve never come across them before: