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Thresholds review The Best British Short Stories

 There’s a top review of Salt Publishing’s Best British Short Stories 2012 over on the tip top Thresholds. For those not familiar with the site, Thresholds is the International Short Story Forum. It features interviews, podcasts and essays covering the world of short fiction, as well as reviews of collections and anthologies. It should come as no surprise that it is required reading for anyone with an interest in the form. Reviewer Lela Tredwell picks up on the dark side of the collection mentioned in previous reviews, ‘I’d recommend The Best British Short Stories 2012 to all existers, for those who recognise the dark – the darkness at the centre…

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Deck The Halls

 Today sees the paperback release of Deck The Halls, festive tales of fear and cheer. Deck The Halls was the first of eMergent Publishing’s Literary Mix-Tape originally published as an ebook back in December 2010, with each of the stories being inspired by a line from the Christmas classic. My own story, Perfect Light, was inspired by the line ‘Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!’ This paperback edition and the new ebooks are expanded for this festive season release and include a handful of new stories, including the excellent Weatherboy by Nik Perring. Here’s the cover: And here’s the back cover copy: DECK THE HALLS traverses the joy and jeopardy of…

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Pushcart Prize nomination

 Received some exciting news yesterday. The lovely folks over at Referential have nominated The Man Who Lived Like A Tree for a Pushcart Prize. You might remember that they already nominated this story, published on their excellent site back in February, for a Best of the Net Award. As you can imagine it is exciting to have my writing promoted in this way by the Referential editors. Again, I would urge you to check out the excellent writing and artwork published by Referential on their unique site. And you can read The Man Who Lived Like A Tree here. Other than that have a frabjous day. As you were.

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My Life in Short Fiction – Carys Bray

 Carys Bray’s debut short fiction collection is published by Salt Publishing this month and is already receiving rave reviews. Sweet Home, which won this year’s Scott Prize, has been described as full to the brim with ‘razor-sharp prose, a killer eye for the stop-you-in-your-tracks detail and a real understanding of the hidden cruelties and unexpectedly…

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NSSW2012: Fleeting Six Word Story Prize

 One of the most challenging short fiction competitions this year has to have been Fleeting’s Six Word Story prize. As you may remember, my own entry emerged from the 5,000 strong flood if entries and onto the shortlist back in early October. In the following weeks, busy with preparing my Scott Prize entry and work and half-term with the kids, I quite forgot about being in with a shot. Fleeting have announced the winner, which I am pleased to say is Ami Hendrickson‘s excellent entry. Ami’s story was my favourite of all the other entries and I honestly thought it not only a worthy winner right from first reading it, but…

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NSSW2012: One Story

 It’s National Short Story Week and I have decided to post every day this week on the subject of short fiction. Yesterday I posted the ingredients for my current work in progress, a short story made up from some seemingly disparate elements. Today I want to talk about my favourite short fiction periodical, a magazine that manages by the unique nature of its form to be, in my opinion anyway, the perfect vehicle for the presentation of short fiction: One Story. Each issue of One Story features exactly that, one short story, because they believe ‘that short stories are best read alone. They should not be sandwiched in between a…

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Ingredients of a Work in Progress

 The idea for this post comes from Jessica Patient by way of Suzanne Joinson who have both posted the ingredients for their own current works-in-progress, a short story and a novel respectively. Inspired by their own excellent insights into the writing process, here is my own. With my MA novel currently on sabbatical while I plow through this term’s Contemporary Novels II course reading list, my current WIP is a short story composed/cobbled together from the following inspirations and elements: Highcliffe in Dorset: Coastal erosion and the defences put in place to combat it The best setting descriptions from an old story of my own set there that never quite worked…

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First Story.

 My youngest son (not yet six) wrote his first story this week for his half-term homework, completing a story from a prompt sheet given to him by his teacher. He dictated the story to me and then wrote it out in his neatest handwriting. At present he has three notebooks of his own, one with a cloth monkey on, a Lego Moleskine and a Mickey Mouse in sunglasses pulling funny faces one. He says he likes to write stories everyday because he loves them. I have a feeling that give him a few years and he’ll be giving me a run for my money. For now it is just a…

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Lit Zines and Friday Flashes

 I’ve been reading the excellent first issue of Black & Blue. It’s a neat mix of poetry, drama, prose and other writing. Particularly sweet is the openness of the writing that such a broad sweep of genres allows. Particularly brilliant in the first issue is Angela Readman’s ‘The Alaskan Man I Never Married.’ A poignant glimpse of what might have been yet never would. They have copies to buy still at the link above and writers out there should check out the manifesto and get submitting to what is a rather special little journal. Want a taste of this great new periodical, then check out Beckie Stewart’s (Mg) from issue one.…

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The End of The Beginning….

 As I write this, the deadlines for the Salt Short Story, Poetry and Flash Fiction Prizes, the Scott Prize for an original collection, and the Crashaw Prize for an original poetry collection are fast approaching. All the competitions are part of Salt’s dedication to discovering new writing and emerging authors. The details of all the prizes can be via the links above. Just be sure to get your entries in before Halloween. I myself have entered a short story, a piece or two of flash and, in what may well prove to be an act of over confidence, a collection of my short fiction for the Scott Prize. When I started…

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The Games of Night: An encounter with Stig Dagerman

 In a recent visit to my local secondhand bookshop I stumbled across a collection of Stig Dagerman’s short fiction, The Games of Night (Quartet Encounters, 1986). Stig Dagerman was regarded as the most talented young writer of the Swedish post-war generation, publishing four novels, a collection of short stories, a book of travel sketches and four full length plays before his death in 1954, aged only 31. One critic, speaking of Dagerman’s passion and prolific output, said ‘His books exploded from him.’ I’ve been taking my time with this one, not least because of the weight of novels I have to plow through this term for my MA, so I’m…

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Fleeting Six Word Story Shortlist

 Woke this morning to find an excellent email from the good folks at Fleeting letting me know that, out of nearly 5,000 entries, my six-word story made the shortlist for the their Six Word Story competition. There are some big names on the list which makes landing on the shortlist from so many entries even sweeter. Exciting stuff. Click the link above to head to read all the shortlisted entries. My favourite would have to be Ami Hendrickson’s excellent tale of a taxidermist and his daughter. While over there be sure to check out the other writing on the site, including my story Her Hands Like My Hands. You can follow…

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National Poetry Day & Room

 It’s National Poetry Day today. I tend to have a book of poetry on the go for the pure enjoyment of reading poetry and because I find the imagery of poetry to be a useful reading experience in support of my own writing – poet’s really do have to think about getting the right words in the right order. As a small contribution to the day I thought I might share a few thoughts on the last couple of poetry collections I enjoyed, plus the one I am currently reading: John Siddique’s Full Blood is alive in the way only poetry is alive, full of passion (physical and emotional) and…

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Guess Who?

 My lax approach to shaving has lead to a full beard reappearing. Now when I look in the mirror I see a Guess Who? character. With my receding hairline, a bit like classic character Richard, only with blue eyes and hipster glasses. See? While Googling the above image of Richard I found this rather excellent video which explains what happened to the original (and best) Guess Who? crew of my youth. The guitar is a bit annoying, but the mini-epics explaining what happened to each of the characters after being axed from the game is one of the best  themed short story collections I’ve come across. Children of the Seventies/ Eighties,…

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Inspiring stuff

 Busy reading and editing and writing at the moment, inspired by the following: Efterklang’s new album, Piramida: From the Youtube page: The making of Efterklang´s new album started out in unusual fashion in August 2011, when the members of Efterklang (Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen and Rasmus Stolberg) went on a nine-day audio expedition to an abandoned Russian settlement in Spitsbergen, an Arctic island located just shy of the North Pole. Spitsbergen is home to more polar bears than people and also to the ghost town of Piramida, which was abandoned overnight in 1998, and today stands as a slowly decaying ruin still full of physical memories like the world´s northernmost…

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Back to School: Mature Student Online Edition

 This week marks the beginning of my second year on Manchester Metropolitan University’s  Creative Writing MA. I have already begun plowing through the ten novels set for this terms Contemporary Novels II unit, having completed Everything’s Illuminated (some excellent bits punctuated with some not so much – short verdict: funny and touching in places but for the most part a bit Emperor’s New Clothes) and Going Out (nice enough but feels a bit like a short story/novella spun out to novel size because people don’t buy short stories and novellas apparently – short verdict: story starts far to early, plods for a bit, but not bad once it gets going),…

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Best Of Net Awards nomination

 Found out yesterday that my story The Man Who Lived Like A Tree has been nominated by the good folks over at Referential for this year’s Best Of The Net Awards. This is, of course, very pleasing news. Referential is a unique literary magazine in that each and every piece of writing and art on the site refers to one previously published, creating a kind of literary social network of writing and authors. The Man Who Lived Like A Tree is a story I am very fond of. Looking back at my draft files, I can tell you that the story went through 12 drafts between May 2010 and November 2011, with the first draft…

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Conversations with S. Teri O’Type Blog Tour: Interview with author Christopher Allen

 Christopher Allen’s short fiction has appeared all over the internet. In 2010 his story “Red Toy Soldier” won The Smoking Poet’s short story contest. In 2011 he was a finalist at Glimmer Train, a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the “Best Ezine Editor” title in the Preditors & Editors Readers Poll for his role as editor to two litanies. This month, today in fact, his ‘plovel’ Conversations with S. Teri O’Type is published. Curt Child is a man who just can’t seem to get gay, so he’s enlisted the help of his oldest–and gayest–friend S. Teri O’Type to drag him a few inches down The Road to Greater Gayness. What’s a plovel…

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Struggling with Structure

 It has been quiet here for a few weeks due to my being on holiday here: That’s not the only reason I have had little time for blogging though. I have, after all been back for over a week now, and the schools reopened last week, giving me my writing mornings back. So why haven’t I been posting? Because I have been using my writing mornings for just that, writing. Or more precisely, editing. Anticipating the impact starting my MA might have on my short fiction writing, I wrote a whole clutch of stories at full pelt in the summer and autumn of 2011, the plan being to give them…

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