One Sentence Story
The excellent Monkeybicycle has published my one sentence story, Catchin’ Out, along with a whole host of other top fiction nuggets. Read the latest batch of One Sentence Stories, mine included here.Read more
50 Word Review – Intimacy
Unflinching dissection of a failing marriage seen through the filter of the husband as narrator, a character equally unreliable in both roles. The married reader will find the stresses and strains of marriage with kids easy to relate to, while the narrator’s pretentiously selfish responses make sympathy for him impossible.Read more
50 Word Review – Today
David Miller’s novella exposes a family dealing with sudden bereavement. While it creaks a little under the weight of so many characters, the book shines when focusing on the grief and confusion of the youngest, most sympathetic son, John, as he struggles to support his family following his father’s death.Read more
Prize Season.
It’s that time of year again, For some reason a lot of short fiction prizes seem to think the end of May through to June is a good time to hold a story prize. For anyone planning to enter it can be a bit daunting to have most of the prize deadlines in the same six or so weeks. At least the brilliant Bristol Prize has the good sense to have its deadline in March. The longlist for the 2011 Bristol Prize will be announced later today. As for the next 45 days or so, we have deadlines for: The Winchester Writers Conference Competitions – a great set of competitions…Read more
Mittelaltermarkt
Just spent a cool afternoon at the Mittelaltermarkt that set up down the road from us. We cycled down with the kids, ate genuine Medieval crepes, the boys bought wooden daggers with belt hanging scabbards and rode on a Medieval merry go round. There was also some top live theatre with a genuine fire-breathing dragon that mesmerised the kids. Probably impossible to see such a thing up close in the UK due to Health and Safety nonsense, but the boys loved having the dragon spit fire at them. Also got chatting with a rather cool German chap (dressed in full costume) who told me all about paper/book manufacturing in the…Read more
Really the best judge?
Heads up, short fiction scribes: The Guardian has announced this year’s Guardian Weekend Summer Fiction competition. Details: The theme of this year’s fiction special is “journeys”, and to enter all you need to do is send us a story of no more than 2,000 words by 13 June. The work must be previously unpublished and we can accept only one story per entrant. Reading through the full announcement got me thinking though, particularly the reference to the judges. Top novelists judge the entries, and they will be looking for the most original, gripping and well-crafted pieces of writing. Are top novelists really the best judges of short fiction. Many top novelists are able to write short fiction well, yes, but lets face it,…Read more
Newman and Perring in The Collection Giveaway Adventure
May is Short Story Month. To celebrate, I’ve decided to take part in The Collection Giveaway Project being run by Fiction Writers Review. The basic idea is that I (1) Post an entry on your blog recommending a recently published short story collection (or two, or three). (2) Offer a copy of the book (or each book) as a giveaway to one lucky person who comments on your blog. (3) Announce the winner(s) on May 31, 2011, and arrange to send out copies of any books you are giving away. I am pleased to be able to offer two books, both of which I have enjoyed over the last twelve…Read more
Beautiful & Unique Snowflakes
I’m over at Write Anything today with my monthly columnist hat on. This time I bang on about how characters are not beautiful and unique snowflakes. Except when they are. To read more, head over to my post Writing beautiful and unique snowflakes @ Write Anything. Image: Sketch of snow crystals by René Descartes.Read more
58 Word Review – Sawn Off Tales
Second review in and I’m already breaking my 50 words exactly rule with a 58 word review. I do have a good reason for this. David Gaffney’s collection, Sawn Off Tales contains 58 perfectly formed little bullets of fiction, each story little more than a page in length. This review is composed of one word from each of them to give you a sense of what these stories are about or how they feel. Whole. Tiny. Full. Music. English. Life. Mirror. Bits. Laughter. Collision. Doors. Killer. Spyhole. Play. Listen. Whisper. Sign. Shite. Blooms. Robotics. TopShop. Silence. Special. Kidnapped. TIme-tunnel. Floating. Dressed. Rentaghost. Skills. Tears. Community. Smokers. Ketchup. Structures. Happy. Crying.…Read more
My Life in Short Fiction – Sara Crowley
Sara Crowley is a writer whose work has appeared in loads of places right across the internet. and she is easily one of my favourite authors. Sara has written many great stories, the best of which have left me wishing I had written them. Especially this one. There are links to a selection of her fiction in the sidebar of her blog. Seriously, if you haven’t read anything by Sara, head over there and have click through her work. Done that? Good. Now sit back, relax. Comfortable? Then it is with great pleasure that I present to you, Sara Crowley’s Life in Short Fiction: 1. The first short story you…Read more
50 Word Review – An Awfully Big Adventure
I’ve wanted to review more books here for a while but don’t have a great deal of time to write them and I’m fairly sure you lot don’t have a great deal of time to read them. So here’s the first post featuring my latest bright idea, 50 Word Review. It does exactly what it says on the tin. Bittersweet depiction of naivety adrift in the sea of cynicism that is the Liverpool Rep in the 1950s. The slightness of the volume belies its depth; sentences packed with meaning reveal the adult world slowly opening its tragic secrets to new cast member Stella. Heartbreak with a dash of snide.Read more
The Collection Giveaway Project
Yesterday, over on The Short Review blog I read about this new intiative for Short Story Month 2011, in May. Anything that promotes the reading of short fiction can only be a good thing. The details from the website are as follows: Inspired last year by the Emerging Writers Network—who inaugurated May as Short Story Month three years ago—and the Big Poetry Giveaway for National Poetry Month, Fiction Writers Review is excited to launch our second year of The Collection Giveaway Project: a community effort by lit bloggers to raise attention for short story collections. Warm thanks to FWR Contributing Editor Erika Dreifus, who suggested FWR as a home for…Read more
The truth about writers and writing.
Saw these while browsing the web today. Liking them a lot.Read more
Talking Writing Crap.
My monthly post is up at Write Anything. This month the theme is ‘The Writer’s Life.’ My post is about that most annoying of things a writer must deal with, reading your own work and thinking it’s shit. In my post, with the help of the Ira Glass’s brilliant vlogs on storytelling I discuss the idea that it’s okay for your work to be shit sometimes. Read my post, Writing Through The Crap, here. Watch Ira Glass’s excellent storytelling vlogs here. Image from The Onion 2007 – found googling the words WRITING and SHIT. I thought it captured that feeling when you read back the crap you just wrote.Read more
Writers Blocked
Over on How To Be A Retronaut there’s an excellent post showcasing the custom Lego Historical Mini Figures of Morgan190. There are some brilliant creations on the list but, unsurprisingly, it’s the writers that have done it for me. How cool are these?Read more
My Life in Short Fiction – Emma Newman
I would like to welcome Emma Newman to the blog. Emma is currently in the throes of launching her debut short fiction collection From Dark Places, while her debut novel 20 Years Later is due for release in July this year. As you can see, 2011 is a big year for Emma and it’s great to have her here as my second guest on MLiSF. Ladies and gents, put your hands together for Emma Newman’s Life in Short Fiction: 1. The first short story you remember enjoying. That was one by Enid Blyton! It was in a collection of fairy stories that I had as a young child. I can’t…Read more
The short story is a threatened species?
Earlier this week I found this collection in my local second hand bookshop: I haven’t tried any of the stories yet but am looking forward to digging in. I have had a blast through the preface though and the sentiment in it struck a chord. It opens with the statement I used as the title of this post: ‘The short story is a threatened species’ The short preface goes on to wring its hands over the vanishing of literary magazines and the barren publishing landscape remaining in which that most misguided of literary creatures, the short fiction writer, will surely perish. This was written and published in 1979. Since then…Read more
My inheritance classic.
A week or so ago The Guardian published an interesting article about inheritance classics, itself ‘inspired by the Orange prize for fiction having joined forces with Vintage Classics to ask 100 people to name the one book they would pass on to the next generation – their so-called inheritance classic.’ In the article, along with general observations about the books chosen, various literary celebrities state their choice and the reasons for it. All this got me thinking about which single book I would want to pass on to successive generations and why. So here is my inheritance classic: Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy I first read Jude in my…Read more
Dan Powell 