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.
Dec
2
Last night I received a nice e-mail from Southport Writers’ Circle to tell me that my rather odd piece, “The Last Words of Emanuel Prettyjohn” had been commended in this year’s short story competition. I’m particularly pleased about this, as it is one of my oddest stories, but also one of my favourites, and it’s taken quite a few attempts to find someone out there who likes it.
Nov
3
The near-misses are coming thick and fast. I found out today that my poem about Lizzie Siddal, “Imitation of a Suicide”, was Highly Commended in the Hastings International Poetry Competition. This is probably my most complex poem to date, so I’m especially pleased that it’s (almost) hit the spot. The letter also said that ‘your work is worthy of consideration for “FIRST TIME MAGAZINE” should you wish to submit your poetry’. So I have 
Nov
1
Global Short Story Competition
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 6 Comments
Here’s another of those “persistence pays off” stories. Sort of. I’ve been entering the monthly Global Short Story competition on and off ever since it started, with absolutely nothing to show for my entry fees. I’d actually got to the point where I’d decided that they just didn’t like me there, but in September I thought I’d have just one more go, so I sent them my curious tale of obsessive love, “The Magnolia Bedroom”. That particular story is going to be in this year’s Whittaker Prize anthology, in fact, but I thought it might be nice to give it a public airing before then. And I found out today that it was shortlisted. So I’m pleased to have finally broken my duck there, even if I’m still way down on entry fees …
Oct
31
JBWB Autumn Competition
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 4 Comments
I just found out that I’ve got a “Highly Commended” in each category of this quarter’s JBWB competition. The fiction one is for my not quite ghost story “Unquiet”, and the poetry one is for “The Orange Girl and the Philosopher”. Slightly bittersweet feeling: I know I should be really pleased about this, but on the other hand, I’d quite happily swap one of them for an upgrade to the other one. Ach, I’m being greedy.
Oct
17
City of Derby in Pictures
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 1 Comment
Not entirely sure whether this is a good idea or not, but here we go …
Now what was that story about ...
Think ... think ...
Phew. I think I got away with it ...
The most important bit
Oct
12
City of Derby Writing Competition 2009
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 2 Comments
Weird business going in for short story competitions. On the one hand, there are some that I regularly enter where I’ve never had a sniff of the longlist, let alone a prize. And on the other hand, there’s City of Derby. Last year, when it was judged by Alex Keegan, I came joint second. This year, when it was judged by Sara Maitland, I came third. To say that I’m gobsmacked is something of an understatement.
Anyway, Mrs P, daughter P and I went to Derby on Friday for the award ceremony and a good time was had by all. Sara Maitland was an outspoken and generous judge with an obvious passion for the short story form. Last year we didn’t get to read any of our work, so I was a little surprised to be asked to read an extract and talk about it. I usually quite like reading my stuff out, but I think I rambled a bit this time. Actually, I rambled a lot. But the audience laughed once or twice, and on at least one occasion in the right place. And the winning story, Kite, by Gaby Pritchard, was very very good indeed.
I am also now in the possession of a signed copy of Sara Maitland’s book “Far North and other Dark Tales” with the word “CONGRATULATIONS” all over it. Which is worth more than any cheque really. I’ve only had time to read the first couple of stories in it and they are rather wonderful. Looking forward to reading more of her stuff.
Here’s the link to the winning stories. Obviously I’d like you to take a look at mine, but have a peek at the others as well. Especially the winner. It is quite special.
Sep
18
Woo Tiddley Hoo!
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 4 Comments
Here’s a tip that I offer for free. If you’re getting twitchy about rejections, competition failures and the like, write a maudlin blog post about all the bad things that have happened lately and how no-one likes your stuff any more. Within 24 hours you will receive an e-mail telling you that you’ve won one of the prizes in a competition. It’s not guaranteed of course, but it’s certainly worth a try.
After all, it just worked for me. More in due course …
Jul
21
Bournemouth Short Story Competition
Filed Under Competitions, Placings | 3 Comments
Over the last few weeks I’ve been nervously checking the website for the inaugural Bournemouth Short Story Competition (not to be confused with the Bournemouth Literary Festival competition, where I once had some success with erotica, God help me), watching for the results. Then last week the following rather disturbing notice appeared:
Due to the fantastic number of entries received, reading the short stories has taken longer than expected. Winners will be announced at the end of July.
So that’s me out, I thought. But I was wrong, because this morning I received an e-mail to tell me that my piece “The Problem with Pork” had picked up one of the runner-up prizes of £25, plus publication in the associated anthology. Woo hoo!
This is actually round about the second or third story that I ever wrote, back in the early 90’s, and (under its original name of “Meat”) it gave me my first-ever brush with success when it was highly commended in the 1993 Ian St James Awards (remember them?). At the time, I thought that anything short of a prize was a complete failure, so I didn’t take the message of encouragement from this that I really should have done, and not long afterwards I pretty much gave up writing short stories.
When I started writing fiction again, it was once more one of my earliest successes, getting longlisted in the 2007 Fish competition, and it’s really nice to see it finally winning something and getting published into the bargain. Especially as it’s not to everyone’s taste: I once submitted it to Whittaker judge Geoff Nelder’s magazine, Escape Velocity, and he absolutely hated it. But, then again, the piece does centre around eating meat, and he is a vegan (what was I thinking of?). And, despite this, he did very kindly offer some helpful advice on the writing aspects which I used in the final edit before entering it for this particular competition.
Jul
14
The Whittaker Prize 2009
Filed Under Competitions, Placings, Stunts | 2 Comments
… and in fact I came second in the fiction and fourth in the poetry. As far as the fiction is concerned, the excellent Cathy Edmunds grabbed the lead back in Round 3 and clearly wasn’t going to let go of it, so it was always going to be a race for second place in the end. And as for the poetry, well let’s just say that I think I eventually got found out. But I’m still quite chuffed that I managed to fool them for the first five rounds …
So what next? Well, I’ve got rather a lot of stories that could do with a good edit, and there’s also that full-length project that really needs a bit of attention. So it’s not as if I’m going to be idle
[EDITED TO ADD: Ooh, and I've just noticed that I get a free copy of the anthology for coming second. Yay!]
Jun
30
Calderdale 2009, The Brontës and The Dhol Foundation
Filed Under Competitions, Placings, Things I like | 6 Comments
A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail telling me that I’d won one of the top three prizes in this year’s Calderdale Short Story Competition, out of 420 entries. So last Thursday we headed off to Halifax (the one in Yorkshire, not the one in Nova Scotia) for the prize-giving. Despite turning up a quarter of an hour late (and walking in during Sarah Holman’s reading of her story – sorry, Sarah!) we had a great time. I was more than a little apprehensive about reading my piece, “Possible Side Effects”, because it contains a fair smattering of strong language, and it’s a bit peculiar to walk into a roomful of strangers and start swearing like a trooper. Fortunately, it seemed to go down reasonably well, and it even got a few laughs – although some of them sounded ever so slightly nervous.
In the event, I came third, behind two excellent stories from Sarah Holman and Sylvia Anne Jones, but the very slight disappointment was tempered by the fact that apparently mine was the only piece that was on both judges’ final shortlist of six. And it was good to meet the two judges, Ra Page and Jane Rogers, as well as several members of the audience.
Halifax is a fascinating and slightly scary place on a Thursday night, mainly populated by young girls with orange fake tans wearing dresses that look smaller than the average T shirt. Amidst the febrile atmosphere, Mrs P and I eventually found an excellent Turkish restaurant, whose only drawback was the lack of an alcohol licence. So I was sent back out into the night to track a bottle down. I eventually succeeded, although I think that paying £9.50 for a bottle of Echo Falls red counts as some kind of benchmark in desperation. Although, curiously, after the thrill of the chase, it didn’t actually taste at all bad.
We thought we’d make a short break of it, so we stayed a couple of nights in nearby Hebden Bridge – a lovely place, mainly populated by ageing hippies. On the Friday we left the car behind and took the bus over to Haworth, into Brontë country, where we went on an eleven mile circular walk up to Wuthering heights and back. Wonderful, and I didn’t break out into a Kate Bush impression once.
The icing on the cake came later on, when we were taking a stroll around Hebden Bridge after supper and we heard music coming from the cinema. It turned out that The Dhol Foundation were playing a gig there to kick off the local arts festival. Woo hoo! Ever since we saw tham at WOMAD a couple of years back, we’ve both been big fans of the Dhols, and as there was only an hour to go, we managed to get in for a fiver each. Oh, and they were ace as ever.