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.
Apr
26
The Voices, the Voices!
Filed Under Acceptances, Anthologies, Performances, Publications | Leave a Comment
I’ve been having a play with recording myself reading stuff. My initial motivation for doing this was the fact that Eclectic Flash have a “Voices” section on their site and I thought it might be fun (and a bit of a challenge) to record myself reading “The Language of Angels”, which they published in their very first edition. Here it is anyway – see what you think.
Having done that, I wondered about recording other things and I remembered that Every Day Fiction have an occasional podcast, so I went through the pieces I’d done for them to see which ones might work, given my frankly rather limited range as a vocal artiste. I ended up choosing the very first piece of mine that they published, “Cock Up”, which duly went live yesterday. I’m still not entirely sure whether that was an entirely appropriate choice for Easter Monday, but there you go. At least there’s no French in it.
In other news, a Twitter haiku of mine has been selected for 7×20′s first anthology, and my very wonderful publishers, Proxima, have started a blog – make sure you add that one to your list.
Apr
11
Teamwork
Filed Under Publications | 4 Comments
I think I can safely say that issue #16 of Murky Depths, which is out now, has the most arresting cover of any publication containing my work.
*Pauses to wipe steam off glasses*
Anyway, I am dead chuffed to be in there, because Murky Depths was, like they say on the site, judged to be the best magazine/periodical in the 2010 British Fantasy Awards, which must be a good thing.
My story, Teamwork, started life as an entry in the 2008-9 Slingink Eurofiction competition, where it was inspired by the prompt “Write a story set in three different places”. It ended up as an existential science fiction thriller, and it’s one of the most intricately plotted things I’ve ever written. Even the names of the characters are highly significant. The illustrations to go with it, by Caroline Parkinson, are first rate too.
So all in all, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy. Can you?
Apr
7
Club Eclectic: The STIRRED POeT 1.3
Filed Under Anthologies, Competitions, Publications | Leave a Comment
Another spiffy cover by the artist who goes by the enigmatic moniker Five Seventeen heralds the anthology from this year’s STIRRED POeT competition, which is now on sale here.
I made up for my no-show in last year’s anthology by sneaking two poems into this year’s, “A Lover’s Alphabet” and “The Longueurs of Après-Midi”. I’m particularly pleased with the first of these because it’s the first time I’ve managed to construct a technically correct sonnet.
As a taster, here are the first few lines:
“So: A is for the ARSEHOLE I once wed
and B is for the BASTARD you became.
Then C is for the CRAPPY lies,” she said,
“and D is for your DOUBLE-DEALING game.
Which gives a rough idea of what it’s all about. However, I’m afraid if you want to read the rest, you’re just going to have to buy the book. Go on, you know you want to.
Apr
1
The Sixty
Filed Under Publications, The Literary World | 3 Comments
Now this is something rather exciting. “The Sixty” is a collection of sixty stunning science fiction images created by the stupendously talented Andy Bigwood, each accompanied by a specially-commissioned piece of flash fiction.
The authors involved include Geoff Nelder, Bec Zugor, Oscar Windsor-Smith and … me. My piece is called “Pioneer”, and I’m really proud to be involved with this, because it’s a pretty special project altogether.
It’s being launched at 6pm on 22nd April at EasterCON, National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham UK and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.
In other news, massive congratulations to everyone longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, especially the ones whose wonderful books on the list I’ve read and enjoyed over the past few months: Jo Cannon, Vanessa Gebbie, Nik Perring and Tom Vowler. Fab stuff.
Mar
15
Advice re Elephants
Filed Under Mrs Darcy, Publications | Leave a Comment
If Saturday’s fiction offering was all about flies, today’s subject is elephants. The excellent Metazen are playing host to my piece “Advice re Elephants” which made it to the shortlist of the Seán Ó Faoláin award last year. Out of everything I’ve ever written, I think this is one of my favourite stories. And I love the picture that Metazen have chosen to go with it.
In other news, Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens is now available for pre-order from both Amazon and Waterstones, which is all terribly exciting. Now if I were you, I’d stock up on some of those other books by the same author that they’re offering, because when I’m a worldwide celebrity they’ll be worth a fortune. Just saying. Then again, I should perhaps warn you that on the whole they have fewer jokes in them than Mrs Darcy.
Mar
13
Fly on the Wall
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As regular readers of this blog will no doubt be aware, I take myself very seriously as a writer. I eschew the base delights of genre fiction and I stubbornly resist any attempts to introduce any notion of humour into my work, preferring to focus my efforts towards the production of high literature.
However, I do not always succeed in this.
Mar
11
The New Writer Poetry Prize and Other Stuff
Filed Under Acceptances, Competitions, Interviews, Placings, Publications | 2 Comments
I like The New Writer. Specifically I like their poetry prizes. Their fiction prize is a closed book to me, but last year I managed to be a finalist in both their poetry collection and single poetry competitions. This year I went one better and I was highly commended in the single poem category for my piece about the “Green Line” in Nicosia, “Cyprus Delight”.
So, as one of the top ten poems in the competition, “Cyprus Delight” will now receive the ultimate accolade of print publication. Which is all rather exciting.
I still find poetry completely baffling. I dabble in it (I hate that phrase, but it’s true) because I enjoy it and I like to think that my experiments in the discipline with choosing the right word and getting the rhythm right etc. inform my fiction writing. But despite clocking up a few moderate successes like this one, I still feel a total fraud because I read very little poetry – partly because there’s very little that I feel completely comfortable with, but mostly because I’m lazy and ignorant. Actually, I could probably do with some pointers as to who I should read, and any suggestions would be most welcome.
In other news, my interview with Vanessa Gebbie went live on Salt Publishing’s blog yesterday. I hope I managed to do her justice, despite me not having much of a clue about interviewing. It was fun to do, though.
And I had a very swift acceptance yesterday from Escape Velocity for my piece “Symbiosis”, a tender story about the love of a young girl for her medicinal parasitic tapeworm. This will appear in their forthcoming anthology.
Finally … just take a look at the cover for Murky Depths 16. And then take a look at the wonderful artwork for my story, “Teamwork”, by Caroline Parkinson. And then go and place your order …
Mar
3
fat cat
Filed Under Publications | 3 Comments
I’d forgotten all about this one. Depending on your point of view, you can see this poem as either a piece of trenchant political allegory or a straightforward little piece of rhyme about a fat cat.
Take your pick. I’m happy either way, because I got paid $5 for it 
Which, in poetry terms, probably puts me in the fat cat earning bracket …
Feb
22
Perfect Moment
Filed Under Acceptances, Publications | 2 Comments
One of the by-products of entering a competition like NYC Midnight’s “Tweet Me a Story” is that in the course of it you end up producing several stories which can be used elsewhere even if they fall by the wayside during the competition itself. This one was actually my favourite from the first round, although it was a different story that got picked as the round winner.
So I wasted no time in sending it off to One Forty Fiction, a relatively new Twitfic outlet and they decided to use it last week, appropriately enough a few days after Valentine’s Day. Here it is.
Feb
22
Around the Block
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A little piece of mine about writer’s block (well, sort of) went up today at Every Day Fiction. So far, it’s pretty much the highest-scoring piece I’ve had there – in fact at the time of writing it’s in the all-time top 10, although on past experience the score will drop a bit over time.
As I mentioned when I had the piece accepted, it goes back quite a while – to my first phase of attempting to be a writer, in fact – so it’s doubly nice to see it doing so well. I did of course have to update some of the references – the bit about social networking and Twitter hashtag games originally referred to Minesweeper tactics, for example. Oh, how I used to love Minesweeper …
I think it’s quite a good example of how EDF can be a good home for pieces that wouldn’t fit in elsewhere, because it’s not a genre piece and it’s certainly not literary. But I’d like to think it deserves an audience.
Now what I really should be blogging about is the wonderful time I had at Get Writing on Saturday. But that will have to wait until the next post but one.