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.
Aug
20
That Nanoism Tweet
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I made my first appearance in Nanoism today with this little offering. I think I’m right in saying that this was my seventh attempt to break into this particular market, which just goes to show that the small ones are not always the easy ones. This was another one that arose out of the NYC Midnight “Tweet Me a Story” competition – the final in fact, where the keyword was “below”.
Aug
10
That Trapezemag Piece
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… went up today. Here’s a link to it. Enjoy.
[UPDATE: Oscar Windsor-Smith has just suggested the title "Better Than One". Excellent!]
Aug
9
Oh, How She Changed!
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This odd little piece went up on Everyday Weirdness today – my first appearance there. Not much to say about it really, apart from mentioning that the names of the characters are significant. But you probably spotted that already. If you did, here’s another question for you: which 70s folk-rock band provided the title? No Googling …
Aug
1
The Wrong Thing to Say
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Speaking of mash-ups … my contribution to this year’s Fifty-Two Stitches project went up today. It’s called “The Wrong Thing to Say”, and it originally arose from an internal competition run by The Write Idea under the title of “The TWIWrite Zone”. The prompt for the round in question was “In the name of the Father” – although it went off at a bit of an odd angle after that. I should perhaps warn readers likely to be offended to look away now – but if you’re made of sterner stuff, here it is. Enjoy.
Incidentally, three out of the six entries to that competition have now found good homes, which is a decent hit rate. I’m now wondering whether or not to commit myself to this year’s, which starts in September. Could do with some more material, although I really need to sift through the debris from this year’s Whittaker Prize and decide what to do with that first.
Jul
20
The Colour of Criticism
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My rather gruesome little flash, “The Colour of Criticism”, went up at Every Day Fiction today. Look away now if you want to avoid spoilers, but it’s essentially a variation on the old Vincent Price “Theatre of Blood” story, set in the murky world of modern art.
I originally wrote it during a charity flash marathon in less than an hour, and I really wasn’t sure whether it was actually worthy of a wider audience – in fact, I almost pulled it from the EDF submission queue. So I’m quite pleasantly surprised that (at the time of writing at least) it seems to have got a favourable reaction. You never can tell, can you?
Jul
11
Folded Word 3Cheers Awards Win!
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Following on from last month’s unexpected nomination for a Folded Word “3Cheers” award for my ultra-short PicFic piece “Not So Much a Rough Guide”, I found out this morning that I’d won. So many thanks to everyone who voted!
No money will change hands as a result of this, but I am now permitted to use the piece of “blog bling” that you see decorating this post and – more importantly – the piece appears in the amazingly cool video that you can see here:
Jun
12
A Brace of TwitFic
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Here are a couple of TwitFic pieces on a similar theme, yesterday and today. Not a lot more to say about these really. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.
Jun
11
The Muse and the Mojo
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My poem “The Muse and the Mojo” is up at Every Day Poets today. I wrote this in a slightly desperate frame of mind having run out of inspiration for Round 7 of last year’s Whittaker competition. I’d actually led the competition for the first five rounds, but took a serious dive in Round 6. “The Muse and the Mojo” stabilised things a bit, but the damage had been done 
Oddly enough, I was doing quite well in this year’s competition until Round 6. I see a pattern emerging. Round 7 is due in tomorrow midnight, and I haven’t the faintest clue what I’m going to write about. Ho hum.
May
31
#VSS Anthology Volume 01
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Just remembered I haven’t blogged about this yet. Not long after I went on Twitter, I came across a call for submissions to an anthology of very short stories, where “very short” meant short enough to fit in a tweet – in other words less than 140 characters. Such stories tend to be published on Twitter with a hashtag of #vss – hence the name of the anthology. Don’t know what a hashtag is? Ah … some other time maybe.
The anthology was initiated by Brent Millis, who tweets as @idiotandroid, and it was duly published earlier on this month as a free download (in a bewildering variety of formats) from Smashwords, here. The cover was designed by Piotr Kowalczyk, otherwise known as @namenick, and there’s a full list of authors on his blog, here.
It’s an entertaining read. It’s inevitably hit and miss, but the hits more than outweigh the misses and some of the hits are absolute bullseyes. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that I’ve got four stories in there myself.
May
14
Piss and Patchouli
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I’m very pleased indeed to be making my second appearance in the hallowed pages of Litro, this time with “Piss and Patchouli” – described in the editorial as “a tale about a burned-out artist”. Don’t you just love it when someone else points out your own unconscious metaphor? It hadn’t even occurred to me, but it’s spot on. Can’t wait to get my hands on one of the print copies – of which there are apparently going to be 100000. Yes, that was indeed a one followed by five zeroes …
And if you want one yourself, they’re available free all over London at places like Foyles, Rough Trade and so on. Don’t forget to say “I know that bloke” when you ask for yours. The person behind the counter will be so impressed.