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Mother America

 Nuala Ní Chonchúir‘s latest collection of short fiction, Mother America, was published last week. As part of her blog tour to promote the book, I was very kindly offered the chance to read the collection and interview Nuala about a story of my choice. The collection is full of great short stories, any one of which I am sure would provide insight into Nuala’s writing process if discussed, but it is the title story that I found myself thinking about, above any of the others, upon closing the book. The narrator of the story, a young hitchhiker named Chris, is picked up a few miles outside Cork city by a…

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Referentialism

 The latest fiction offering from Referential is by Lucinda Kempe and titled Children of Suicides. It refers from the word ‘tree’ in my story The Man Who Lived Like a Tree. This referencing from one creative piece to the next is what I love about Referential. You can spend hours on the site following the creative links between the many excellent pieces on the site. Kempe’s story is an emotive and imaginative tale that speaks to our need to belong. Beautiful. And well worth 5 minutes of your time today.

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100RPM out now!

 Today sees the publication of 100RPM. It’s a charity collection of 100 stories of 100 words in length all inspired by songs. It’s being sold for the bargain price of 99p for the next week, just over a third of which will go to the charity One in Four. When the price goes up in a week’s time, even more more money will go to the charity. It’s all the doing of the brilliant and talented author Caroline Smailes and she explains the whole endeavour far better than I do over on her blog today. Did I mention the book contains a foreward by THE Nik Kershaw? The real one,…

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100 RPM

 100RPM is a collection of 100 flash fiction tales, all inspired by songs on YouTube, all 100 words or fewer. Inspiring and thought-provoking, 100 RPM caters for all musical and storytelling tastes. It’s all the doing of the brilliant and talented author Caroline Smailes and she explains the whole endeavour far better than I ever could on her blog.…

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Graffiti-head published

 My latest short short story is up at 1000 Words. It’s called The Song of the Graffitihead and was written in response to this photo on the 1000 Words pinterest board. It starts like this: As Leni walked home after another day in a cubicle of a low-ceilinged office building, a graffiti head spoke to her. What surprised her most was not the voice emerging from the stencil sprayed image on the closed steel shutters of a never-open shop, but the fact that the face, an image she had seen many times on her way to and from work, seemed familiar to her in some other way she could not recall.…

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Best British Short Stories 2012 – Review

 I spent last week and some of this one wallowing in the quality short fiction between the covers of this year’s Best British Short Stories 2012. Previously on this blog I’ve made a bit of a song and dance of the fact the collection includes a story by yours truly, but after reading and falling hard for the other 19 stories I thought it was time to sing and dance about them. What stuck me about the collection as a whole was how each of the stories included by series editor Nicholas Royle could be described as a ghost story of some kind. That isn’t to say the stories are…

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Free Flowers

 Nothing But Flowers – a Literary Mix-tape anthology containing my story Driver and The Beautiful Highway is free to download on Kindle right now. The promotion runs from Wednesday 23rd until Friday 25th, US (pacific) midnight to midnight, UK 9:00am – 9:00am, Australia 6:00pm – 6:00pm. Download from Amazon.co.uk Download from Amazon.com ABOUT LITERARY MIX TAPES Inspired by the practice of recording music mix tapes, Literary Mix Tapes combines a love of music and short stories with a unique blend of creative crowd sourcing, collective submission and old-fashioned editorial grunt to create concept anthologies showcasing the freshest voices in speculative fiction. ABOUT NOTHING BUT FLOWERS In a devastated world, a voice calls out…

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#NFFD The Morning After

 Well that was National Flash Fiction Day. Not being in the UK put a limit on what I was able to take part in, but here’s what I got up to in the run up to May 16th and on the big day itself. I wrote a Shakespearean flash called Strutting and Fretting for the #NFFD flash blog My story Peekaboo was included in the National Flash Fiction Day collection Jawbreakers  – print copies available here, and the ebook available here. I was part of a FlashFlood with my story Rubik’s Cubed – lots of great flash fiction on there. I’m looking forward to going back and checking out the stories…

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Jawbreakers

 Jawbreakers, the 2012 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, includes commissioned pieces from well-known writers like Ali Smith, Ian Rankin, Tania Hershman, David Gaffney and Vanessa Gebbie, flash fiction from a number of emerging authors, and the winning entries from the National Flash Fiction Day 2012 Micro-Fictions competition. It also features my flash fiction, Peekaboo. A good number of…

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National Flash Fiction Day & Jawbreakers

 It’s National Flash Fiction Day and Jawbreakers, the official collection,  is available now. It includes commissioned pieces from well-known writers including Ali Smith, Ian Rankin, Tania Hershman, David Gaffney and Vanessa Gebbie, as well as a little story by yours truly. The anthology is edited by NFFD Director Calum Kerr and Bristol Prize 2010 winner Valerie O’Riordan. Jawbreakers can be purchased directly from the National Flash Fiction website or in ebook format from Amazon. The ebook is free to download on May 16th as part of the celebrations along with a whole host of Flash Fiction related ebooks. The full running order looks like this: Ali Smith Jen Campbell Dan Powell Vanessa Gebbie Laura Wilkinson David Gaffney…

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My Life In Short Fiction – Valerie O’Riordan

 On the first National Flash Fiction Day it is a pleasure to welcome Valerie O’Riordan to this blog. Valerie is a prize winning writer of flash fiction and has just released her debut short fiction collection Enough. She is co-editor of the #NFFD Jawbreakers collection. Ladies and gents, put your hands together for Valerie O’Riordan’s Life in Short Fiction: 1. The first short story you remember enjoying. As a kid I was familiar with Frank O’Connor’s My First Confession – I think it must have been anthologised in some primary school reader – and I loved it, though I’m not sure if I actually read it or had it read to me.…

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What can you do for National Flash Fiction Day?

 Well, there’s less than week to go but you could: submit a 500 word story to Flashflood take a walk and create a Flashpoint buy a copy of the official NFFD collection Jawbreakers like the NFFD Facebook page and check out the latest on how to get involved over on the NFFD blog What will I be doing? I’ll have done all of the above and to celebrate the big day (May 16th) on this blog, I will be hosting two special installments of My Life in Short Fiction with NFFD Director Calum Kerr and his co-editor of Jaw Breakers, Valerie O’Riordan.

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Acts of Violence – 300 Word Review

 From the blurb: Katrina Marino is about to become America’s most infamous murder victim. This is Katrina’s story, and the story of her killer. It is also the story of Katrina’s neighbours, those who witnessed her murder and did nothing. Shocking and compassionate, angry and gripping, ACTS OF VIOLENCE is a sprawling, cinematic tour-de-force, a terrifying crime novel unlike any other. I clicked up the Kindle version of this book back when it was on special offer for 99p. The premise intrigued me, not least as it resonates with the subject of my own WIP which is all about the impact of single violent act. My book is not a crime…

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Sunday Viewing

 4 videos I stumbled across this week. First up, a great little animated text video of Ira Glass’s key advice for storytellers. This is the advice I paraphrased recently when interviewed by Nuala Ní Chonchúir. It’s the advice I wish someone had given me when I was trapped in the cycle of negatively comparing my early writing efforts to the polished drafts of writers I love. It’s possibly the most important advice a novice author could receive. * This video to promote the Penguin English Library is a little slice of lovely. The books themselves don’t look bad either. * Found this short film by filmmaker Dan Powell (not me) via…

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The ordinary and the sinister: New Nightjars by Claire Massey

 Claire Massey’s story Feather Girls in The Best British Short Stories 2012 was, for my money, one of the highlights of the collection. Which is why I snapped up a copy of each of the two new Nightjar titles, published in March, both of which are short stories by Massey; a first for the publisher. I fell for the air of dark fantasy that permeated Feather Girls, itself grounded in a fully realised and realistic backdrop and I was not disappointed to see the theme of transformation continues to be a focus for her in these two new tales. Into the Penny Arcade is a suspenseful tale of a teenage…

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I’m….

 ….feeling rather good this evening. Here’s why. Firstly, my copy of this turned up. Great to have a copy I can hold and smell and read: And how’s this for a contents page to be on: Secondly, I found out my submission to 1000 Words has been accepted and will apear sometime this month. 1000 words is celebrating National Flash Fiction Day by, over the course of May and early June,  posting the best of stories written in response to the images on their Pinterest board. At the time of writing, two stories have already appeared and it’s already shaping up to be something quite special. If how I’m feeling…

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Another Fantastic Mike Leigh Film.

 Watched Another Year over the weekend: which gave me a whole new reason to love the work of Mike Leigh. It’s a deeply moving, compassionate view of growing old and the isolation that can follow. Once again, Leigh relies on a cast of what must be some of his favourite actors, most notably Jim Broadbent, Ruth Sheen, Peter Wight and Lesley Manville and, as ever, he manages to capture some truly marvellous performances. The story focuses on the passing of the seasons over the course of a single year, each season presented through a single meal that takes place sometime within it. The main characters Tom and Gerri (genius), played…

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A retreat is as good as a rest

 The recent residential I attended at Arvon’s John Osbourne Centre at the Hurst, though organised as part of my MA Creative Writing course, followed the standard Arvon format; morning workshops followed by free time in which to write in the afternoon and evening readings from the tutors on the Tuesday, a guest reader Wednesday and the group on the Friday. Like most people attending an intensive writing week, I had a bought of nerves, mine hitting when I was an hour or so from the venue. They quickly passed though and I arrived, after a long drive from Germany, at the Hurst. The three 18th century buildings that compose the…

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Jawbreakers available to pre-order.

 Jawbreakers, the National Flash Fiction Day anthology, is available to pre-order in advance of its release in time for the big day on May 16th. The image above is the rather superb cover. Jawbreakers will be published in early May 2012, and available from the NFFD website and from Amazon in both book and Kindle formats. It includes commissioned pieces from well-known writers including Ali Smith, Ian Rankin, Tania Hershman, David Gaffney and Vanessa Gebbie, pieces from experienced writers, some from writers for whom this is their first publication, as well as the winning entries from the National Flash Fiction Day Micro-Fictions competition. The anthology has been edited by NFFD Director Calum Kerr…

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Happy Birthday Shakespeare.

 It’s Shakespeare’s birthday. World Book Day. There’s all sorts going on. The National Flash Fiction Day flashes site is up and running in advance of the May 16th celebrations, with a whole load of great Shakespeare inspired flash fiction in celebration of old Will being posted today. My story, Strutting and Fretting, went live at 5pm Uk time. The Short Review has posted a blog with a list of all the short story collections and anthologies in translation they’ve reviewed over the years, with links to the reviews. A great way to discover writing from around the world. Mark Forsyth aka The Inky Fool and author of The Entymylogicon has a neat…

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