Is it that time of year already? Apparently it is. A week tomorrow (June 25th) is National Flash Fiction Day, 2016. I think I’m right in saying this is the fifth incarnation of the event, which suggests an impressive level of commitment from Calum Kerr and his loyal band of organisers. As ever, there was […]
And so this year’s Fish campaign draws to a close, with longlistings in the short story and flash categories and (yay!) a shortlisting in the poetry category. I didn’t make much of a fuss about the longlistings, because the Fish longlists do tend to be rather long, but I’m quite pleased about the shortlisting, given […]
Well, I didn’t get any further than the shortlist. But I still won some cool swag (I’ve got a couple of them already, but the rest are all new). And here’s my piece, published today with some very nice comments from the judges. Oh all right, if you absolutely insist. This is what they said: […]
Well, then. I seem to have made it through to the next stage. This is all rather splendid, because it means that whatever happens, my piece will be published on the Thresholds website. It also means that whatever happens, I’ll win something. I’d completely forgotten there were prizes for all the shortlistees, and to be […]
Quiet here, isn’t it? The reasons for my silence are not entirely unrelated to the terror alluded to in my previous post, which has induced one of my (thankfully quite rare) episodes of frozen brain. Anyway, I had some good news today from the people who run the excellent Thresholds annual feature-writing competition. Last year I […]
As you can see from the flyer to the left, I will be celebrating National Flash Fiction Day this coming Saturday by performing at Foyles in Bristol, along with loads of other totally awesome people (is that really Adam Marek in there?). It should be an utterly ace evening and what’s more it’s completely free! […]
I’ve probably said this before, but I do find poetry a little baffling. I think I have a reasonable idea of what constitutes a half-decent story, but I don’t really have a clue when it comes to poems. ‘The Orange Girl and the Philosopher’ is a case in point. I wrote it originally for a challenge […]
In case you’re wondering, yes, I still do enter writing competitions. However, my success rate has been somewhat less than stellar lately. No idea why – these things happen; I’ve had stretches like this in the past and I’m sure I will again. So I was somewhat relieved to find out over the weekend that […]
I was very pleased to find out that my sort-of-or-is-it-really-ghost-story “A Whole Bloody Century” has been shortlisted for The Fiction Desk‘s first annual ghost story competition. Especially so since it now looks as if all the shortlisted stories are also going to be included in an anthology, and not just the winners as previously planned. […]
Today the longlist for this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award was announced, and Dot Dash is on it, which makes a nice double with last week’s Edge Hill longlist. The list itself is even longer than the Edge Hill one, which I guess is reasonable enough given that is a truly international prize […]