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
19
NYC Midnight “Tweet Me a Story” Competition Time Again!
Filed Under Competitions, Stunts | 2 Comments
I think I mentioned last week that I was taking part in NYC Midnight‘s “Tweet Me a Story” competition again. So I duly stayed up until past midnight last Thursday and awaited the arrival of my prompt word, which turned out to be “perfect”. I thought about this for a while, consulted Wikipedia, and came up with three tweets of varying quality and sent them off.
Today the first-stage winners were announced, and I found out that two of my three have made it through to the voting stage in my group. This is one less than last year, when all three of mine made it through, but one of my efforts was a bit pants this time, so no real surprises there.
Anyway, this is the point where I come begging you for your votes. Here are my two tweets:
She seemed perfect: tense but with a passive voice. His mood was imperative, his gender masculine. He offered to conjugate but she declined.
and
“I want this perfect moment to last forever,” she’d said. But after a century together in the time bubble, he was beginning to annoy her.
(I like the second one particularly 
)
To vote, all you have to do is click here, then click again where it says “Click here”, check the boxes against my two tweets and confirm. Last year I was the audience award winner in my group and I made it through to the final. However, during the final, I had a really neat idea but completely tangled the words up, crashing and burning in the process. It wasn’t a complete waste of time however, as two of my entries from the final, suitably revamped, went on to appear in PicFic and Nanoism respectively.
Dec
21
Slingink Scribbling Slam
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 2 Comments
I came home from a week’s holiday on Friday to find that I’d managed to bag third place in the fiction section of this year’s Slingink Scribbling Slam (formerly known as Eurofiction), alongside Jocelyn Hayes and behind the awesomely prolific and consistent Stef Hall and Sallie Tams.
I was particularly pleased about this because I have considerable respect for the judge, Nik Perring; his book of short stories, “Not So Perfect” was one of the highlights of the year for me. I was also pleased because the half-dozen pieces that I came up over the twelve weeks of the competition were the first short stories I’d written for quite some time and they turned out to be a bit different from my previous work.
Paradoxically, what I’m really, really pleased about is that I managed to get that place with some stories that are actually quite flawed, but which can be fixed (thanks mainly to Nik’s critique). So I’m looking forward to seeing them all get out there into the big wide world in 2011.
I also took part in the poetry section, and although I ended up somewhat lower down the order, I’ve got some pieces that I can work with there as well (thanks again to the critiques of the judge, Mandy Pannett). I’ve said it before, but you really can’t beat competitions like this one and the Whittaker to force you to produce new work.
And in case you’re wondering what the Great God Dan is doing there, for the purposes of the competition I went under the pseudonym BrownDan and I borrowed this rather splendid caricature from Slate magazine as my avatar. I’m finding it quite hard to say goodbye to him now. I’m sure his eyes are following me around the room …
Dec
10
Body Parts and Coal Dust
Filed Under Anthologies, Competitions | Leave a Comment
Now there’s an arresting cover for you, eh? This year’s Whittaker Prize anthology is now available, and what a stunning piece of work it is too. Massive kudos to Donna Gagnon Pugh, the editor, and her cover designer, the enigmatically-named Five Seventeen.
Oh, and I’ve got a couple of poems in it, “Rock Bottom” and “I Suppose We All Thought That, One Way or Another.”
Get yourself a copy now!
Dec
2
Secrets and Silent Times
Filed Under Anthologies, Competitions | 2 Comments
Some time ago I took part in the Slingink Prize and managed to get shortlisted in the poetry section with my piece “Imitation of a Suicide”. The resulting anthology is now available from Lulu and a good read it looks too. I’m looking forward to getting my copy and I’ll be particularly intrigued to see how the junior prizewinners stack up against their more seasoned counterparts. My suspicion is that they’ll more than hold their own.
In other Slingink news, today I submitted my entries for the final round of this year’s scribbling slam. I’ve really enjoyed this year’s competition, having not written much in the way of short fiction this year. In fact I sat out last year’s Eurofiction (the precursor of the scribbling slam) as well as the fiction section of this year’s Whittaker Prize and it was really nice to get back into being forced to come up with some stories.
I think I’m reasonably pleased with all of the stories and all but one of the poems I came up with. I’m not really in contention for the top spot in either category, but I’ve definitely got some material that I can work with – which is, after all, the main reason for doing it.
Nov
30
Café Doom Annual Writing Competition and Other Stuff
Filed Under Acceptances, Competitions, Reviews, Things I like | Leave a Comment
The Sixth Annual Café Doom Writing Competition came to a close today. It’s quite a feat of endurance for the participants because all the entrants have to read everyone else’s entries and then pick their top three. This year there were 50 in all, with a maximum length of 5000 words, making a potential 250K of words to be read in a fortnight.
In fact, it turned out to be a breeze to do the actual reading part because in most cases you could decide pretty early on if a story was going anywhere and the ones that did go somewhere were a joy to read. Actually writing something new for the competition turned to be a bit more challenging, what with Mrs Darcy and the Slingink Scribbling Slam both going strong at the time, so I ended up re-visiting a story from 2007. This was “Symbiosis”, the everyday story of the relationship between a young woman and her intestinal worm, which I’d originally written for a Writing Magazine competition on the subject of “Putting on the Inches”. No, I have no idea what I was thinking either. Anyway, I’d always intended to go back to it and make the ending a bit more gross, so it seemed the ideal opportunity.
As things turned out, I was quite pleased that the piece made 5th place in the popular vote and was thus shortlisted. However, that was as far as it went. I suspect that the fact that there was another worm-related piece last year (which I’d completely forgotten about) may have gone against it, along with the fact that it was very English in tone (there can’t be that many horror stories around that reference Greggs, can there?) The presence of several better stories in the shortlist may also have had something to do with it, of course. Either way, I now have another piece that is ready to send out into the world when I get round to it – along with last year’s flop and 2008′s shortlistee.
Meanwhile, “M is for Monster” has picked up a couple of nice Amazon reviews. Obviously, this is my favourite bit of the first review:
As short as it is grotesquely satisfying, Pinnock’s darkly comical tale is delivered in a staggered fashion, setting down the back-story and plot whilst Tom’s final minutes are played out. The finale hits the reader with the full force of a good dollop of splatterpunk, concluding this downbeat little tale with complete and utter horror-enthusiastic perfection.
Splatterpunk. I like that.
Next – something that I completely forgot to mention a while back. My online chum Geoff Nelder got in touch with me asking if I fancied joining him and Bec Zugor (amongst others) in contributing some ultra-short pieces to go with a book of Sci-Fi art called “The Sixty” being produced by Andy Bigwood, two-time winner of the BSFA award for best artwork. When I saw the pictures, I leapt at the chance, picking this one to write a piece for (called “Pioneer”). I in turn invited my VWC mates Oscar Windsor-Smith and Dave Weaver to join the team and I’m really looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. Should be quite some book.
Finally, stop whatever you’re doing and take a look at this extraordinary piece of video art by Richard O’Callaghan based on Tania Hershman’s wonderful story, “The White Road”. Wow. Just wow.
Oct
10
Easy. Write a post about the Bridport Prize Shortlist. Extraordinary.
Oct
4
Word to the Wise
Filed Under Competitions, Rants | 8 Comments
Now listen ‘ere, you lot, he says with a conspiratorial tap of the nose. On checking my site stats (which I do from time to time – oh all right, every day), I’ve noticed that an awful lot of new people have found this site either by a direct link from this post on Teresa Stenson’s blog or by Googling variations on a theme of “Bridport Shortlist 2010″ (see the last post but one for the reason behind this).
Now this is all very nice – and a big “Hi!” to everyone, by the way (do have a look around whilst you’re here) – but I find the scale of it a bit surprising and ever so slightly worrying. I know that the Bridport is – for obvious reasons – pretty much THE writing competition (at least for those of us without an established track record), so it’s inevitable that an awful lot of writers start getting very twitchy at this time of year (I know, I’ve done it myself). But there are other ones out there that are just as deserving of your support, ones in which we all stand a much better chance of being in the money.
So whilst any short story writer or poet worth their salt should most definitely be sending their best work Dorsetwards every year, those of us who are looking to build up a track record should also be going in for as many of the second- and third-tier competitions as we can manage as well. If you’re wondering how on earth you can get enough material together to do this, I strongly recommend checking out competitions like the Slingink Scribbling Slam (running at this very moment) or the Whittaker Prize (which usually starts in March). There’s no better way of forcing yourself to come up with stuff, trust me. And if you need to know what competitions there are accepting entries at any time, the lovely Sally Quilford has done all the work for you: here’s her calendar.
Apologies if this came over as (a) a bit of a rant or (b) teaching Grandma to suck eggs. But when a perfectly respectable, if slightly low-key competition such as this year’s Slingink Prize fails to get enough entries to cover its costs, you have to wonder if we writers are sometimes being a bit too picky. I’d be interested to hear what anyone else thinks about this.
Sep
28
The Bridport Prize
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 13 Comments
Every year without fail since 2007, I’ve sent in an entry or two to the Bridport short story prize, essentially regarding the fee as a charitable donation. Given the number of entries involved, I’ve always thought of the odds of making any kind of impression as being absolutely minimal – a sort of literary, slightly less random equivalent of the National Lottery.
This year, for the hell of it, I sent in a couple of entries for the poetry prize for the first time. And today I heard that one of them, “Choking Hazard – Small Parts”, wasn’t in the prizes but had made the shortlist. I know from looking at previous years that it’s probably quite a long shortlist, but I am still pretty gobsmacked by this. And also, I have to say, really rather chuffed, because one of my writing goals for this year was to get on a Bridport shortlist. I just hadn’t expected it to be with a poem.
Today was one of those days when you can believe that almost anything can happen.
Sep
20
In Praise of Shortlists
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 5 Comments
Yesterday the winners of the Seàn Ò Faolàin prize were announced, along with the previously-announced shortlist and the full longlist. First of all, huge congratulations to Nikita Nelin and Bernie McGill for taking the top two slots – I’m really looking forward to reading their stories, along with those of the other four runners-up.
I already knew that I hadn’t made it any further than the shortlist, but had been sworn to secrecy – which made it a little bit odd when everyone was wishing me luck for the next stage. However, I’m extremely happy to be there (and described as “Highly Commended”, too), especially having seen some of the other names there and on the longlist.
Incidentally, I should perhaps add that my wife, ever the pragmatist, responded to my cry of “Hey, I”m on another shortlist” with “When are you actually going to win something, then?” I can sort of see her point, because this year I’ve made it onto the shortlist of three significant short story competitions (the Fish, the Bristol and this one) without actually winning anything.
However, having read this piece the other day by the judge of the Wells Short Story competition (and I’m now rather sorry that I didn’t have anything available to send them), I think that maybe getting on a shortlist may be enough after all. The prize money would of course be nice, but it’s a longer game I’m playing here.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it, anyway.
Sep
6
Ostensibly this has been a pretty good year so far, what with one thing and another. However, the curious thing is that this year I have only written three completely new stories, one of which was a mere 80 words long and scarcely counts. The reason for this is simple. I’ve been spending all of my creative energies, for better or worse, on Mrs Darcy. But if I am to take myself seriously as a short story writer as well (and I’ve never been one for the either/or mentality), I’m going to have to have some more material in the pipeline.
So last week I signed up for the Slingink Scribbling Slam, which is the new name for the old Eurofiction competition, which I took part in in 2007/8 and 2008/9 and which provided me with plenty of stuff to work with. For some reason, I’ve gone in for both fiction and poetry, which may turn out to be a mistake. But both the judges (Nik Perring and Mandy Pannett) are excellent writers that I have a huge amount of respect for and it seems too good to miss. If you fancy a go yourself, it’s not too late to register. Even if you get a low score in a round, you’ll still have written something, and it’s possible that the judges may have got it wrong. To name just one example, my BBC story, “The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife” scored a measly 4 points out of a possible 20 when I wrote it for round 2 of Eurofiction 2007/8. But I wouldn’t have written it at all if it hadn’t have been for Eurofiction.
I’ve also gone and signed up for this year’s TWIWrite Zone, another imminent six-round competition but across different disciplines (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc. etc. – kind of a literary hexathlon) and over six weeks instead of twelve. I must be mad.
One last thing: Greg McQueen, who organised the recent “100 Stories for Haiti” project (which to my shame I failed to submit to, thinking I’d got nothing suitably optimistic to use) is now organising a similar anthology in aid of the Pakistan flood appeal. Details on Tania Hershman’s site here. I’ve actually sent in something this time, so if my name doesn’t appear on the list of contributors, for once it’s not through laziness. It’ll simply be because my effort was a bit pants.