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Short Story Challenge – Day 95-111

 Nik Perring – Not So Perfect ‘Not so Perfect’ is a collection of 22 short short fictions presented in a beautifully small square volume. While the package and the stories are small in size, the same cannot be said of the content, each of the 22 stories packing in more character, charm and emotion than many authors manage in much longer works. Absence is a key theme in many of the stories (Sobs, Say My Name, The Angel In The Car Park, Number 14 most notably) with characters yearning for some sort of connection (Watching/Listening, Bare and Naked in Siberia, My Heart’s in a Box, The Mechanical Woman) but these…

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Hat draw and upset tums.

 Thanks to those of you who posted comments about which short fiction author I should be reading. I’ve ordered a Tim Winton anthology and a Nick Earls collection so looking forward to those. I will be trying the other names suggested soon too. I entered the names into the previously mentioned hat, actually my eldest’s baseball cap and he drew out the winning name…….drum roll……..the winner is…… India Drummond. I’ll post the book out soonest. Enjoy. The delay for the draw was caused by a nasty tummy bug that has seen three out of four of my family dropping like dominoes, very sick dominoes. Everyone is finally feeling better so…

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Short Story Month – you should be reading Amy Hempel

 Longtime readers of this blog will know that last year I feel head over heels in love with Amy Hempel’s short fiction. She is a master of the short form, publishing four collections, one including a novella, over the course of her career. Her output could never be described as prolific but for writing of Hempel’s calibre the wait is more than worth it. Her collected fiction contains so many gems; ‘The Man in Bogota,’ one of the finest pieces of flash fiction ever written, ‘When It’s Human Instead Of When It’s Dog,’ my favourite from her debut collection, featuring the most subtly beautiful fictional relationships I have ever read,…

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Happy Birthday #fridayflash

 #fridayflash, the twitter hashtag started by Jon Strother, is one year old. Over the last twelve months 246 individual writers have posted flash fiction on their blogs on a friday and tweeted a link to their work. Starting with a modest ten or so authors back in May of last year, these days an average #fridayflash roundup features sixty or seventy flash fictions. What began as a simple idea has grown organically into a broad and welcoming community of authors sharing work in various stages of development with a growing community of readers. It’s been a great twelve months and I am proud to have been there back in May…

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Ripple – #fridayflash #WAG

 There’s a man dancing on the petrol station forecourt. He’s wearing jeans and a tweed jacket and some sort of loafers and his straight out of the eighties fringe flops left and right and left again with every pop and lunge. A line of people stares out through the glass, watching and waiting for their turn at the checkout. Out front, two guys posing with scooters point and grin and dancing man sees them and waves and just keeps on dancing. There’s no sound but the traffic raring down the dual carriageways and the hushed gush gulp and chug of the diesel pump pumping and the tank of my Multipla…

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My new favourite band

 Just got the excellent Avi Buffalo album after downloading their iTunes single of the week, ‘The Truth Sets In.’ I’d recommend downloading it and if you like it get a copy of the album, it just gets better. Deserves to be a big summer hit.

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Busy Busy

 Sorry things have been a bit quiet here. The last fortnight has been dominated by a combination of a looming ECA assessment for my OU Creative Writing Diploma and getting the spare room ready for the imminent arrival of our new little girl. In amongst all this the following has happened or is about to happen: I’ve made it through to the third round of judging for the Brit Writers’ Awards, so fingers crossed my work makes it through to the final stage. I received rapid and very pleasing acceptances from Eclectic Flash and The View From Here. What Precise Moment will appear in the September issue of Eclectic Flash.…

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The Taste Of Youth – #fridayflash

 Chloe hates working the late shift.  ‘The residents seem so much older at night,’ she says. ‘Really, Lucas, all this doesn’t scare you.’  She waves to indicate the whole of Spring Vale Rest Home, the very idea of old age. I smile and say, ‘It used to. Then I spoke to Mrs Holden.’ ‘Mrs Holden?’ I walk her to the old lady’s room. ‘Go sit with her,’ I say She reaches the bed and I gesture for her to sit in the chair beside it. Mrs Holden opens her eyes as Chloe sits and for a moment our friendship nearly has me scream a warning. ‘Oh, a visitor. Hello dear.…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 61-94

 ‘What we Talk About When We Talk About Love’ Vs ‘Beginners.’ Over the month or so from 15th April – 18th May, I have been reading Raymond Carver’s ‘What We Talk about When We Talk About Love,’ and the original unedited versions of the stories published two decades after Carver’s death in the collection ‘Beginners.’ The level of editing of Carver’s stories undertaken by Gordon Lish has long been the subject of literary debate, but it isn’t until you read the stories in tandem that the effect of the changes truly becomes apparent. The end notes of ‘Beginners’ reveal the extent to which Lish cut the original texts with anything…

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100 Stories for Haiti – highlights video

 Greg McQueen, the heart behind the 100 Stories for Haiti book project, has released a video compiling key moments in the production of the charity anthology. If you haven’t already bought a copy please think about taking the time to do so. The anthology is packed with one hundred pieces of hope-filled flash fiction by established and emerging authors. You can buy it from the website direct (which means about 80% of the cover price goes to help the Red Cross relief effort in Haiti) or Amazon if you prefer (though the percentage going to charity will be less using this method). There is even an audio version of the…

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Caffeine Addiction – #fridayflash

 After her bitch of a morning, Cally needed a coffee. She scanned the monolithic product board covering the wall behind the counter, looking for something simple. ‘Welcome to ‘The Fresh Cup. I’m Merv. How may I serve you today?’ Merv wore a staff waistcoat at least a size too small. The buttons appeared about to fire off at any moment under the strain. He pushed his horn rimmed glasses up his nose and smiled. ‘Just a coffee, thanks.’ Cally just needed a burst of caffeine. ‘I can recommend the Mint Chip Choca Cappucino, or perhaps, considering the weather, you’d prefer that as a Frappacino.’ Taking his glasses from his nose,…

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Happy Birthday Blog!

 This blog was officially 12 months old at the weekend. My first post, dated May 1st 2009, looked like this: After a long Easter break it is time to get cracking. With my current OU course about to end, things are ramping up. I have a TMA (Teacher Marked Assessment) due soon and my ECA (End of Course Assessment) to finish in seven weeks or so. Add to that my urge to send out short fiction manuscripts to literary journals, magazines and websites to see what sticks and it is easy to see that the run to the summer will be busy. Last week, as a first step on the…

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The Eleventh Doctor

 I’ve waited till now to post about the latest incarnation of everyone’s favourite Timelord, the idea being to give Matt Smith time to find his feet and get going before passing comment. I always knew I was going to enjoy the writing on the new series of Doctor Who. Steven Moffat’s episodes were easily the best episodes of the Russell T. Davis era so his taking over as lead writer when Davis left was always going to be a good thing. So here we are, four episodes into a new regeneration of the show, hanging by our fingertips from last week’s cliffhanger, and there’s lots to like. Here’s a list…

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Oddly beautiful and terrifying at the same time

 I recently saw this visualisation of the northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to the volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajokull. I was struck at first by how oddly beautiful the lines of light zipping about were. Then I was struck by how terrifying the idea is of all that metal and all those people flinging across the sky. It also brought home the environmental impact of air traffic. Then I realised that this was just the area of northern Europe and glimpses of its neigbours. Add in the rest of the world and the scale of what is zipping about up there beggars belief. Watch and be…

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Iron and Wine are far better than we deserve.

 Spent this morning writing my OU assignment, a draft of the first 4,000 words of a novel, listening to the playlist I had created for this project mentioned in my recent post on character themes. So many gems in this list from the likes of Fleet Foxes, J. Tillman, Anthony & The Johnsons, The Shins, Spiritualized, Sam Amidon, and Marvin Gaye. One song brought me up quick though, hitting just as I started writing the key part of the chapter. This song never fails to have me in tears. Easily some of the best words to ever be put to music. I defy you to press play and not fall…

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Bones of Light – #fridayflash

 ‘He doesn’t appear to have broken anything,’ the doctor says. I look at the x-ray’s delicate image of my boy’s foot and ankle bones and they look for all the world as if they are made of light, delicate and powerful all at the same time. ‘Now perhaps you could tell me again how the injury occurred?’ The doctor whips the plate down off of the light-box as he says this, like he thinks he’s on some detective drama or something. ‘Like I told the nurse,’ I say. ‘He was messing about with his brother on the big bench in our garden and it fell and landed smack on his…

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Physical stationery and virtual typewriters

 I’ve been buying a fair bit of stationary this last few weeks. Folders, notebooks. I’ve even ordered a space pen to allow me to write more comfortably while sprawled on the sofa. This recent post from Icy Sedgwick got me thinking about what was driving all this impulse buying. The last few weeks, when I have had a block of time, I have disappeared off to the local library with my macbook and writing. I haven’t bothered to get a voucher for the wireless internet there and have found myself freed up to write without the lure of twitter or email or the dreaded facebook (which some of you will…

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Marlon Flutter and the free gift of death – #fridayflash

 The cheap movie tie-in toy promised on the cereal box wasn’t what Marlon found when he sunk his hand into the new Honey Puff packet and groped about, the sticky puffs of wheat clinging softly to his skin like insect eggs. His hand rising out of the cereal box like an amusement park claw clutched a small set of cards wrapped in cellophane. Marlon brushed the last tenacious puffs from his forearm and set about tearing the wrapper from the cards. He flipped through the deck of four and his brow furrowed. Scanned them again to check they were what he thought they were. He laid them out on the…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 54-60

 Short Science-Fiction from the pages of Interzone. I always find it surprising that I don’t read more science fiction as it is a genre I read avidly in my teens and love in movies. Perhaps it is just that I read more selectively in the genre now, rather than gorging on books in a series or by particular authors. I have spent this week of the Short Story Challenge catching up on my Interzone subscription. This was as much a recon of the magazine prior to my drafting and submitting the three sci-fi stories I have bubbling away in my notebooks as it was reading for enjoyment. Having said that,…

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