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.
Oct
31
Talk Like Jane Austen Day
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What? You didn’t know? Dear me. Well in that case, here’s another bit of YouTuberance for you, courtesy of Ms SableCaught. If you’re quick, you might just manage to grab a free copy of Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens…
Oct
25
More Reviews of Mrs Darcy and Stuff
Filed Under Interviews, Mrs Darcy | 1 Comment
One of the things they don’t tell you when you’re trying to get a book published (or – to be fair – it’s one of the things they do tell you but you blithely ignore) is how difficult it is to grab the world’s attention, even when your book has a decent-sized initial print run and has found its way into a fair proportion of the nation’s bookstores and you’ve got a massively eye-catching cover.
So I’m pleased to announce that there have been a number of victories in that area in the last few days. First of all, I managed to get myself interviewed by not one but two local papers – first the St Albans & Harpenden Review and then The Herts Advertiser (no online link to the story). Impressively, both papers seemed to get the facts pretty much spot on, so it can definitely be said that the noble art of journalism is alive and well in the provinces at least.
The reviews on Amazon are also trickling in nicely. Inevitably at this stage they are from people I know to a greater or lesser extent online, although I should add that I have only met two of them in real life, and then only once each. In fact, I’ve only come to know Jane Travers at all since I started serialising Mrs Darcy, so I am particularly chuffed that she likes it. And what I’m really pleased about is the extent to which every single one of the reviewers “gets” Mrs Darcy.
However, any writer who wants to take himself seriously isn’t writing for his family or his friends and acquaintances. It’s all about complete strangers. And on Sunday, my first complete stranger tweeted me to say how much she was enjoying the book. Then it turned out she had a review channel on YouTube:
Which is all pretty amazing. All I need now are a few more thousand complete strangers, and my life will be complete. So if you know a complete stranger, do urge them to buy the book.
Meanwhile, we have a few entries for the Tweet Treats prize giveaway, but NOTHING LIKE ENOUGH. Come on, people of the internets, I am disappointed in you! *stern face*
Oct
21
The first thing to say is that unless you’ve been to one of these events, this post won’t make a lot of sense without reference to this one. So go and take a look at that and come back when you’ve finished. There may be a short test…
…although on this occasion I’m going to let you off, because I imagine you’re desperate to hear how it went. No?
To be honest, it all went by in a bit of a blur. So rather than a blow-by-blow account of the night, here are a few random impressions:
Remember the sofa from Black Books that ate one of the customers? The one at the Firestation Arts Centre is one of its ancestors.
Those questions from the audience are SERIOUSLY random. My favourite Icelandic cheese? Caravan or curry?
Have to say that whoever thought up the paper dart manufacturing contest between John Harding and myself was a genius. Even if, as Scott said, both our efforts were shit.
I REALLY need to work on filling the silences when I can’t think of an answer to a question. And why oh why couldn’t I think of a name of a SINGLE horror film that I’d liked apart from Alien, after that one was unreasonably disqualified for being sci-fi horror? (Yes, I was that bloke muttering “Psycho” to himself over and over again walking back from the station at midnight.)
Scott Pack is a top bloke and his family are all lovely. Last night was in fact the first time that both Martha (10) and Ethan (13) had been allowed to come along to a grown-up swap and they behaved impeccably (including – if my assumptions are correct – coming up with a couple of extremely erudite, if slightly weird, audience questions themselves).
Marie Phillips is lovely and complete unaffected by the fact that she has a Hollywood film coming out based on her book and is therefore a TOTAL SUPERSTAR.
John Harding is a lovely bloke and not just because he wrote the awesomely brilliant “Florence and Giles” and also (to my stunned amazement) wrote this about “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens”.
It was a decent-sized audience – 40 to 50 at a rough estimate. I signed several copies of Mrs Darcy, some of which were bought on the night. And I also signed a few more for Waterstone’s stock. I met several tweeps for the first time and one or two whom I’m now in twitter contact with.
All in all, a good do.
Oct
19
Bristol Short Story Prize 2012 Launch Event
Filed Under Events, Mrs Darcy, The Literary World | 1 Comment
I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that I’m nothing more than a shallow attention-seeker. On the negative side, this is not necessarily a truth that a bloke of my moderately advanced years likes to come to (I was hoping for a bit more gravitas by now, frankly), but on the plus side, it does at least align itself very well with my nascent writing career. Because every now and then one is called upon to read something one has written in public, and this tends to work better when one is enjoying it.
Which is one of the reasons why I jumped at the opportunity to nip down to Bristol yesterday to attend the launch event for the 2012 short story competition. One of the other reasons was of course that the BSSP is rapidly becoming one of the top short story prizes in the country so I was very honoured indeed to be asked. Also, Joe Melia, who pretty much is the BSSP, is a top bloke and it was great to see him again. Oh, and did I mention that none other than Tania Hershman was also on the bill?
The event seemed to go very well – there was certainly a good-sized audience and some excellent readings. Emily Bullock (nice to see her again too!) started the evening by reading an extract from this year’s prizewinning story, “My Girl”, a wonderfully visceral piece of writing. She was followed by Alan Toyne, who read an extract from his shortlisted story from the first year of the BSSP, “Tuesday Night”, a very wittily-observed description of a male bonding ritual. Then I did my bit – I’d decided to read a couple of whole stories rather than extracts, so I went for “Canine Mathematics” and “Advice re Elephants”, which seemed to go down OK. Then Tania wrapped up proceedings with four utterly wonderful flashes – I knew (and loved) a couple of them already and the other two were equally beguiling.
Then we all mingled for a while and drank a glass or two. It was lovely to see Sarah Hilary and Nastasya Parker again, who were both in the audience, and it was also great to meet Twitter chum Chris Wakling, whose latest book “What I Did” I’ve just ordered. Oh, and Foyles had also ordered in a dozen or so copies of Mrs Darcy, half of which went on the night, which I don’t think is too bad considering it wasn’t her event at all. I also signed the other half, so if there’s anyone in Bristol who’s after a copy with the tentacle signature, get down to Cabot Place now.
And the fun continues tomorrow night, where I’m going to be sitting alongside the awesomely-talented John Harding (whose “Florence and Giles” may well be the best book I’ve read this year) on the Firestation Book Swap sofa. Do come along – it should be a good evening. To whet your appetite, here’s my pre-swap interview with the lovely Emma Buckley of Beat Magazine.
Oct
14
Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens Unofficial Launch
Filed Under Events, Mrs Darcy | 2 Comments
Mrs D’s official launch took place alongside the rest of the Proxima imprint at the Brighton FantasyCon a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to have a local one too. So I arranged an unofficial one for last night at Waterstone’s in St Albans and what a fun time we all had. Lots of old friends turned up (including one or two unexpected ones) and a lot of wine was consumed, along with some tasty canapés from the wonderful Madeleines and Marmalade (she’s taking orders for Christmas, you know).
It’s customary to read a bit from the offending book on these occasions, and last night was no exception. I may have had a glass or two by the time I did this:
(Thanks to Ian Cundell for the camerawork, by the way.)
I did have a slightly sore head this morning, so it’s more than a little surprising that the phone interview I conducted with a lady from the St Albans Review turned out to be pretty accurate. I think I was a bit more forthcoming with the lady from the Herts Advertiser who called me later on in the day, so that one may turn out to be a little more detailed when it appears.
In other news, Scott Pack has blogged about next week’s Firestation Book Swap. You are all coming along, aren’t you?
And now I’m preparing for my Skype session tonight with the Chichester Readers. I have absolutely no idea what this is going to be like.
Oct
10
Dinner with Sylvia
Filed Under Mrs Darcy, Performances, Publications | Leave a Comment
Today we make a brief return to the world of short stories. My piece “Dinner with Sylvia”, a story about some meat with unusual qualities, is in the last-ever edition of “The Battered Suitcase”, which you can get hold of here.
This is a story that searched long and hard for a home – much to my surprise, because there are plenty of lesser stories of mine that have been published. Still, who am I to judge?) Anyway, do take a look.
And if you’re in London tomorrow evening, do head over to The Phoenix in Cavendish Square, where by an odd coincidence a piece of mine called “Rare Meat” is going to be read at Liars’ League. Hmmm. There’s a bit of a theme developing here.
Finally, June Gundlack has reviewed Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens for issue #12 of The Pages magazine. No meat in this one, but a lot of tentacles.
Oct
9
A Couple of Reviews
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I think this may well be the best review I’ll ever get. It’s from the lady who used to babysit for us years ago. She bought a copy of Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens on Friday, sat up most of the night reading it and came round the next day to tell me about it (the note was there in case I was out). What makes her note completely awesome is that she’s made reference to the footnote on page 114. I should perhaps mention that she’s well into her eighties.
And here’s another nice review from Rob Harkess. Protocol dictates that I should mention that Rob is a fellow Proxima author, but I’d like to think he didn’t feel obliged to be quite so nice about the book.
It’s odd. I’m picking up definite pockets of resistance out there from people who have heard about the book but no negative feedback at all so far from people who have actually read it. Although that’s probably because most of the people who have read and commented on it to date are known to me to a greater or lesser extent. However, it should get a bit more interesting this coming Friday, because I’m Skyping with a book group, sixteen of whom have been reading it but only one of whom I know. I guess that’s the point at which I’ll get to hear some home truths…
Oct
3
Blog Tour Extra! Extra!
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So the Never Ending Blog Tour™ finally reaches its conclusion, on Scott Pack’s blog. Scott should need no introduction from me here, if only because I interviewed him for his blog tour on Saturday. Although if you’re a writer and you haven’t heard of him yet, you probably haven’t been doing your homework.
As Scott has oodles of high-quality followers on Twitter, I thought it was probably a good opportunity to highlight my challenge to PD James. Indeed, as Scott himself tweeted:
It’s not every day that someone offers to fight PD James on my blog but it happened today.
Hmmm. I hope I’m not getting myself into trouble here. Still, at least I haven’t threatened to blow up an airport or invite anyone to a riot.
In other news, there’s a nice new review of Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens on Amazon, courtesy of Kevin Bennett. He is, of course, absolutely spot on with his assessment.
And that’s about it for the blog tour. Hope you all enjoyed it. I certainly have, although I must admit I’d underestimated how much work would be involved in visiting 30 different blogs in just over a month. Thank you so much to everyone who allowed me into their online homes – it really was most appreciated. And I’ve actually got a whole load of other stuff to talk about, but it will have to wait for another time.
Oct
2
Blog Tour Extra!
Filed Under Interviews, Mrs Darcy | 2 Comments
A very quick post on my return from an exhausting but entertaining FantasyCon to link to a couple of blog tour extras. First of all, this comprehensive and rather splendid feature by Sandra Norval appeared on the Fantasy Faction site on Friday.
And secondly, I made an appearance on the awesomely talented Sarah Salway’s blog on Saturday. Sarah is a wonderful writer and I have her to blame for me accidentally going all the way to Reading instead of Paddington on my way back from a Firestation Bookswap once because I was so totally absorbed in reading her fabulous book of short stories, “Leading the Dance” (which, incidentally, is now available again, so you have no excuse any more for not possessing a copy).
And that picture is of the shop window of Waterstone’s in Brighton. Many thanks to the lovely Sara Crowley for making it happen.
Sep
29
Blog Tour, Day 29
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Whilst I’ve been doing this tour, I’ve been constantly amazed by how inventive my hosts have been in the ways they have differentiated themselves from everyone else (yesterday’s visit to Lord Likely being a prime example). And today’s stop on the tour is no exception, as we visit the none other than Tania Hershman. Tania is one of those people that I was in awe of when I first started trying to make a name for myself in the short story world – and if you haven’t read her collection “The White Road”, well, just go and buy it now, OK?
Now the thing about Tania is that she comes from a scientific background and so it’s no surprise that her approach to “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens” reflects that. Take a look – it’s rather fascinating (and she says some nice things about the book too). Tania and I will actually be sharing a platform together in the not-too-distant future, by the way, at the launch of the 2012 Bristol Short Story Prize - should be a lot of fun.
Meanwhile, following Mrs Darcy’s appearance with Lord Likely, some of the Steampunk community have picked up on the book (US and UK) and there have been a number of interested comments on Twitter (my favourite pair being this one, followed immediately by this one). And Jessica Patient has given the book a very nice review, although once again my writing career appears to be shackled to that of Gavin James Bower. Well, he gets his own Wikipedia page, so I can’t really complain.