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Flash 500 results

 The results for this quarter’s Flash 500 competition are up. While neither of my two entries placed, Half-mown Lawn did make the shortlist. You can read the winners and check out the shortlist here. Congratulations to the winners.

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Short Story Challenge Day 40-53

 The Instruction Manual for Swallowing by Adam Marek I spent the fortnight of the challenge between March 25th – April 7th in the company of the often excellent and always interesting debut collection from Adam Marek. There are some absolutely blinding stories here, featuring such disparate subjects as robot wasps, a woman pregnant with 37 babies, a restaurant for zombies, and a pet shop where every pet is measured by volume. The collection has many high points and largely manages to maintain this level of work, though, inevitably, a few stories fall short in the face of the truly exceptional ones. I suppose it says a lot about me as…

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Being Jodi Cleghorn.

 Today I have stepped into the Monday writer slot over at the ever excellent ‘Write Anything’ blog while regular Monday writer Jod Cleghorn is away from keyboard. Click on the link to check out my post on Writing Music.

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Saturday Stuff

 This week I have been….. …….writing my first draft for the Chinese Whisperings Yang book (due to be published later this year); but more on that whole process in a future post. …….reading a lot of intresting stuff about Andy Devine’s Words. Looking at the site and the ‘story’ “As Day Same That the the Was Year” confused me at first. It seemed all a bit arty and irritating if I’m honest. Having thought about it a bit more and read through the elimae interview I am warming to the concept. This video is as intriguing as the work itself and swayed me more than anything else I have seen.…

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The Lady with the Dog – #fridayflash

 Something a little different this week. This was my entry to the Verb’s Chekhov competition. I thought I would post it here for #fridayflash. Please forgive the paraphrasing of Chekhov’s great story in the opening and closing. And maybe the story would have done better had I listened to Jodi Cleghorn’s comments about the ending. I should know by now that editor knows best. The Lady with the Dog A lady with a bull terrier moved into the repossessed house at the end of the terrace. Each morning Sebastian sat in his chair, just to the side of his front room window, and watched the houses opposite his, their lights…

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Unbelievably top song.

 Been sorting through my music after a busy couple of days writing for the Chinese Whisperings Yang Anthology. Finally got round to putting all my Unbelievable Truth albums and EPs onto iTunes. Listening to this stuff takes me right back to 2000 and seeing them Live @ the legendary Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms. Having just come out of two disastrous relationships, one after another, this spoke to my then twenty-something over-emotional mind in ways I can’t describe. A truly great song from a truly great and sadly short- lived band. Thankfully Andy Yorke’s recent solo album is an Unbelievable Truth recording in all but name.

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Chinese Whisperings – Writing Day 1.

 The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed the neat button in my sidebar announcing my involvement with this year’s Chinese Whisperings short fiction anthologies. Long term readers of this blog will be already be aware of CW’s unique brand of short fiction from my review of the first anthology, The Red Book, published late last year. For those not already in the know, Chinese Whisperings is a series of short fiction collections with a twist. Each of the stories published in a Chinese Whisperings anthology is part of a larger tapestry, with stories inter-weaving and over-lapping in a myriad of ways, as each successive writer takes a minor character or…

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It’s a couple of coats colder up there – #fridayflash

 I built the house on the mountain for just that reason. The cold sweeps across the flank of land I picked up at auction for a song, chilling anything standing on it, making warm blood run cold. Not that yours needed help. You suffered in even the slightest chill. Layers of clothing, thrown on to combat the cold, would hide you away, yet in some perverse diminishing return the more physically cold you were the less physically remote you became. Your fingers, daggers of ice in cold weather, would seek me out, your hands shoving under my fleece, under my t-shirt, until shivering palms were nestled on the curvature of…

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Women & Writing.

 My post in response to the announcement of the 2010 Orange Prize longlist sparked a great deal of debate in the comments section. Across the blogosphere there have been a number of posts concerning the issues surrounding women’s writing, particularly following the controversial comments made by Orange Prize judge, Daisy Goodwin. One thing is clear from the debate, this is not a simple issue. The most laughable criticism of women’s writing is that it is becoming/has always been too domestic. Jo Case over at Kill Your Darlings explained why domesticity is a wholly fitting subject for literature: ‘some of the best writing – in my subjective opinion – is that…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 36-39

 March 21st – March 24th – four more stories from David Gaffney’s ‘Aromabingo’. Of the last four stories I read from this collection (Who Reads This Will Not Sin, Special Pudding, Guided By Voices and Gossamer), two stand out as particularly striking. Special Pudding is a lovely bit of magical realism with just a dash of malevolence thrown in to spice things up. It would spoil the story to give away the central idea so I won’t. Suffice to say this was another example of the excellence Gaffney is capable of, an excellence, while not maintained in every single story in the collection, that does permeate the majority of the…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 34 & 35

 March 19th & 20th – Best of Friday Flash stories and ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ by Jodi Cleghorn. My reading of short fiction for the last two days has consisted of stories sent to me to edit, five pieces of flash fiction due to appear in the Best of Friday Flash anthology later this year, and a short story by one of the editorial masterminds behind the Chinese Whisperings anthologies, Jodie Cleghorn. Having spent two days reading through work by emerging authors, I am amazed that so many of these people are unpublished outside small online journals and self-published collections. Reading these stories has proved, if there were any doubt, that…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 32 & 33

 More from David Gaffney’s ‘Aromabingo.’ March 17th – You And You Alone I don’t hesitate to put this in the ranks of stories I wished I had written. It has everything. Love. Murder. Jealousy. More murder and possible, the end of the universe. Angela and Rowan are a lovely, disturbing, heart warming and frightening couple. What really makes me happy is how all this fits into just a smidge over two pages of David Gaffney’s seemingly effortless prose. If you need proof that short shorts can tell a full and remarkable story then look no further. March 18th – Only The Stones Remain This story, while full of neat ideas…

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Are women only lit prizes really necessary in 2010?

 Today’s announcement of the Orange Prize long list got me thinking about the relevance of gender specific prizes and publications in the 21st Century. I realise these prizes and publications are supposed to counteract years of male domination in publishing, but looking back at a list of the Booker shortlists for the last thirty years there have been many shortlists where women writers dominated and plenty of female winners. Will there be a point when publications and prizes based on segregating writing by gender will not be necessary? While googling about the female only prize, it was refreshing to read Sadie Jones’ thoughts on the matter, when shortlisted for the…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 30 & 31

 Decided to focus on completing the collections dipped into thus far, starting with David Gaffney’s ‘Aromabingo.’ March 15th – The Happiness Well An exercise in inventiveness. The well of the title is a fascinating creation and the focus of the story is on the contamination of the well and the imminent effects on the community served by it. Gaffney creates the world without ever spoon-feeding the reader more than they need to inhabit it. The glimpse we get is, for me, a tiny utopia under threat. The frantic reading and playing of the main character at the end could be seen as fiddling while Rome burns or simply using these…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 29

 March 14th – The Lie – Raymond Carver Strange one this. A domestic argument that morphs part way through into a discussion of Tolstoy. Made me think I should read some Tolstoy as if I had I might have got more from the second part of the story. Even with my probably missing some of the references in the text, the story has the descriptive clarity Carver is famous for. You can read ’The Lie’ in Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories, which incidentally has the excellent Carver essay ‘On Writing;’ recommended reading for all writers struggling with the demands of a young family. Thoughts on the challenge: Coming to the end…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 27 & 28

 March 12th – The Time Machine – T. J. Cooper This story can be found in the first issue of Electric Literature. It is a first person narrated study in jealousy that features a great use of texts within the story. Lists, letters and text messages ground the reader firmly in the narrator’s mindset. An engaging, emotional story that is another good example of varying structure to control the pace of the reader’s progress. March 13th – Mean Picking – David Gaffney Another short short from Aromabingo. Great premise, a family that doesn’t age. The family’s condition even affects those around them, friends and family within the community. It’s an…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 26

 March 11th – Human Error – Jay Lake (Interzone #226) Another science fiction story, this one revolving around a female deep space miner and the discovery of a possibly alien artifact on a large asteroid rock. The world creation in this story is consistent and detailed. A really good example of how to give the reader just enough information to build the setting as the story unfolds. The tensions between the three person mining crew create a solid emotional core to the deep space drama. Excellent ending as well. The whole thing put me in mind of the superb ‘Moon’ directed by Duncan Jones, which is about the best compliment…

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Character Themes

 A couple of years ago, the tutor on my writing course suggested selecting theme tunes for characters as a way of getting into the character. Since then, I have compiled playlists for major writing projects, adding songs that share the tone I am aiming to create or whose lyrics say something that I feel my characters would respond to. I’ve found it a great way of inhabiting the world of my story, getting to know my characters. Some have even come alive enough to demand songs I wouldn’t normally bother listening to. I have even gone so far as to link songs to key scenes, in an effort to have…

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Short Story Challenge – Day 25

 March 10th – The Massive Rat – David Mitchell I’m a big fan of David Mitchell and am looking forward to his new book later this year. I was excited to find a couple of his short stories on the Guardian’s website. ’The Massive Rat’ features an adult Nicholas Briar, a pupil at the same school as Jason Taylor in David Mitchell’s novel ‘Black Swan Green,’ as his marriage falls apart. While bickering with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Nicholas attempts to remove a rat from where it is stuck behind his fireplace, all while the prospect of losing contact with his young son plays heavily on his mind. ‘The Massive Rat’ is…

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