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.
Sep
1
Seán Ó Faoláin Prize
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The shortlist for the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition was announced today and, rather excitingly, my story “Advice re Elephants” is on it. I took a major gamble with this one, as not only did I wait until the very last minute before deciding whether or not to go in for it (so what’s new?) but I took a tactical decision to put in an ultra-short piece – 362 words long. The actual limit for the competition was 3000 words, but I knew that the sole judge, Tania Hershman, is a great evangelist for flash fiction so perhaps it wasn’t quite so much of a risk.
The piece itself had a curious genesis. I originally wrote it for the last round of the poetry section of this year’s Whittaker Prize. Whilst I was writing it, it struck me that there was no obvious need for it to actually be a poem – a comment echoed by the judge, Cathy Edmunds. So I turned it into prose, smoothed down the edges and sent it in with a couple of days to go.
Must say it’s rather cool to be sitting there as one of just four five representatives from the UK in the shortlist of 22 (out of 849 original entrants apparently), alongside the likes of established authors such as Elizabeth Baines. It’s also nice to see Nora Nadjarian, who I know slightly from Twitter, and Claire King, who I met a few weeks back when we were both on the Bristol Short Story Prize shortlist.
Aug
30
Slingink Poetry Prize
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I found out yesterday that I’d been shortlisted in the poetry section of the the inaugural Slingink Prize for “Imitation of a Suicide”.
I have to admit that I was in two minds whether or not to stay in this contest after it was announced that there weren’t enough entrants to fund the prize money – and in fact my initial reaction was to withdraw. But then I felt bad because both judges agreed to stay on anyway and I was also impressed by the way that the entry fees were refunded immediately so I decided to stay in. And I’m now glad that I did.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should also say that I failed to make the shortlist in the fiction section altogether. But that’s the way it goes with competitions; to paraphrase the excellent words of the judge, Sally Quilford: you win some, you lose some. Huge congrats to everyone who made it, though.
Jun
7
Bristol Short Story Prize Shortlist
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So the shortlist for this year’s Bristol Short Story Prize was announced today, and I still seem to be hanging in there. I’m really excited about this one, for several reasons. First of all, in just three years, the BSSP has emerged as one of the “biggies” (nearly 1500 entries this year, which is almost as many as the Fish). Secondly, the shortlisted stories all go into a nicely produced anthology. And thirdly, I get a cheque for £50 even if this is as far as I get!
It’s also nice to see a few Twitter chums in there as well: Claire King, Valerie O’Riordan and Clare Wallace. The prizegiving and announcement of the winners is on July 17th and I’m really looking forward to being there. The nailbiting starts now.
May
19
Bristol Short Story Prize Longlist
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As any writer will tell you, things should always happen in threes. Today has definitely followed that rule. Two of them arrived in the post this morning: my £100 prize-winner’s cheque from JBWB and a copy of Litro 95, including my story “Piss and Patchouli”. But I had to wait until this afternoon before the third one turned up, when the longlist for the Bristol Short Story Prize was announced.
Yes, that is indeed me. This is in fact the second longlist that this particular story has made it onto – the first one being the Fish earlier on this year. However, the longlist for this one is a little tighter than the Fish – only 40 entries out of nearly 1500 – and I have to say that I am seriously chuffed to be sitting there alongside the likes of Elizabeth Baines.
The shortlist is announced on June 7th, so I may be a little twitchy around then. The longlist was in fact as far as I got in the Fish, although I have tweaked the ending a bit since then (which was always the weakest part of the story). The question is: have I tweaked it enough? Watch this space …
[EDIT: Just realised that it was in fact the Fish shortlist that the story got onto, not the longlist. Although, weirdly, that shortlist was around three times the size of the Bristol longlist, for roughly the same number of original entries. *scratches head*]
Apr
30
JBWB Spring Competition
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My name is Jonathan Pinnock and I am a poet. There, I’ve said it. Anyone who has a problem with this can leave the room now (apart from my family, who I’ll make an exception for – even though they do indeed find it acutely embarrassing). I’ve been struggling against this for a while, ever since I stumbled into writing poetry again a couple of years or so ago, partly because it’s not the kind of thing that a grown-up bloke does and partly because my complete lack of training makes me feel like a complete amateur. (If any of this sounds familiar, you’ve obviously been reading Stephen Fry’s “The Ode Less Travelled”, where he makes the exact same points, albeit far more eloquently than me.)
However, I don’t feel that I can keep up the pretence of being a non-poet any longer, now that I have apparently won first prize in the JBWB Spring competition with my piece “Moving On”. I originally wrote this for the final round of last year’s Whittaker competition in a kind of elegaic mood and I think it’s one of my favourite poems – even though the Whittaker judges didn’t care for it that much (along with the judges for a couple of other competitions, in fact). See what you think, anyway. Here it is.
As it happens, I also clocked up a shortlisting in the short story section of the same competition. This was for a piece that used to be called “A New Man”, which I originally wrote for a VWC internal competition and then adapted for one of the rounds of the last Eurofiction but two. Since then I’ve sent it all over the place and hardly got a sniff, apart from a near-miss at Liars’ League. But before I sent it off to JBWB I had an inspiration, and I decided to make the title a bit more interesting. So that’s how it came to be called “How I Became a New Man and What Good It Did Me”. Never underestimate the power of a title, eh? Here it is. (Incidentally, I think that means that I’ve now placed nine out of the ten piece that I did for my first-ever Eurofiction competition.)
One final thought about poetry. One of the many things I saw whilst I was in India that made me fall in love with the place was an advert for the Commonwealth Games to be held there later on this year. What I loved was that one of the celebs who was giving his endorsement was described as a screenwriter, lyricist and poet. Can you imagine that ever happening in the UK? What was it Mahatma Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western culture? That it would be a good idea?
Mar
23
I had an interesting little double whammy in this competition this year, managing to be a finalist (but no further) in both the poetry collection and single poem categories. If I were perfectly honest, I’d probably be quite happy to trade one of them for something a bit closer to a prize, but I’m still quite chuffed – especially about the collection, because I’ve never tried putting together anything like that before (even if it was only ten poems). Oddly, I have no idea which poem it was that made the final, because I entered two, and they don’t identify the poems by name. However, I do know that the collection was called “Love and Loss and Other Important Stuff”.
Meanwhile, the third annual Whittaker Prize has just started: nine gruelling rounds over eighteen weeks, although this year I’m only entering for the poetry. I might have gone in for the fiction as well, having somehow managed to be runner-up last year, but the first round coincided exactly with my holiday. I reckoned that I might just get away with writing a quick poem, but that Mrs P would probably have objected if I’d spent my time away writing stories …
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
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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
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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.