Jan

5

Longlisted at Cadenza Again

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So … for the second time running, I’ve been longlisted at Cadenza, this time with my story “Piss and Patchouli”. Whoo hoo! And for the second time running, I’ve failed to make the shortlist. Boo hoo! Clearly I’m doing something right, but not quite right enough. Still, I guess that’s my first hit of 2009. Now where else can I send it?

Dec

6

Milton Keynes Speakeasy Competition 2008

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Just heard that I came second in this one, with my piece “Fishermen’s Tales” (or, as they refer to it in their e-mail, “Fisherman’s Tale”, which is probably better). This one has had an unbelievably tortuous life. It sort of started out as my first-ever entry for the (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) Café Doom weekly flash challenge, all 349 words of it with the title “Bait”, back at the start of November 2007.

It then mutated into the first piece I wrote on the practice night for last year’s Children in Need, 356 words long, with the title “I Caught an Amazing Fish” (I hadn’t realised that you were supposed to use the prompts as inspiration, not as titles - duh). Following this, I inserted a whole load of backstory at the start, taking the word count up to 1133, with the title changed to “Catch of the Day”. This was, much to my surprise, Highly Commended in this year’s JBWB Summer competition.

Meanwhile, I’d posted it on the VWC virtual manuscript evening, where it was (quite justifiably) torn apart. I took the tattered shreds, stitched them together, renamed the piece “On the Hook”, and put it into the September session of the Café Doom crit group. There it was torn apart a bit more, following which I produced the final version, now renamed “Fishermen’s Tales” (or “Fisherman’s Tale”, if you prefer), with the word count bumped up to 1305, and the voice changed from first person to third. And the rest is history.

The moral of the story? Easy. If you’ve got an idea that you know works, keep plugging away at it. But never be afraid to subject it to criticism. And always, ALWAYS act on that criticism.

Nov

18

Back Again …

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… from a week and a bit in Hong Kong. Whilst I was away I managed to get to the shortlist for the Café Doom competition, with a final placing of seventh. I’m quite pleased about this, because the story I submitted, “The Future of Photography”, was a rather unpleasant sweary and violent first-person, present-tense piece, thus committing several sins in one go. I’m not entirely sure what to do with it now, but I think it probably deserves another outing somewhere. The winning story, “The Rules” by Jaelithe Ingold, managed to be extremely elegant as well as taking a big gamble with the form - watch out for that one when it appears in Necrotic Tissue.

Might post a few pics of HK when I’m marginally less jet-lagged. Fab place.

Oct

22

txtlit

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What was I saying about txtlit the other day? Well, I just had a text from them saying that I was a runner-up in the September comp, and that they’d like to publish my piece on their website. Just shows you never can tell. I thought my entry for the August one was absolutely ace, but they ignored that one completely, whereas I thought this one was a bit weak, relying as it does on a truly atrocious pun. But maybe that’s what they liked. Either way, at 154 characters on the nail (including spaces and punctuation), it’s definitely my shortest hit yet. Woo hoo!

Sep

18

My Fake Bio

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Hehe. My fake author bio made it to the shortlist in the Poetic Asides contest! Not entirely sure whether this is one to add to the CV or not :)