Tuesday 30 September 2014

Publication for shortlisted "Climbing"

It seems that all of the shortlisted stories from the recent Room to Write competition are to be published, initially online, with a view to print publication at a later date.

It'll be good to see the story published, in whatever form.

Near Miss at Liars' League New York

My story 'Fingers'  narrowly missed out on inclusion for the October theme night at Liars' League New York, but they sent me a nice email saying how the story was ' wonderfully Twilight Zone' - high praise indeed - and asked if they could keep the story for inclusion in a future event.

So, success of a sort.

Liars' League is a wonderful thing - it's great to watch (on youtube) as an American actor performs your story to an American audience, and it's more than a little surreal. I've had stories performed in London, Hong Kong and New York thanks to Liars' League (see the sidebar) and I've attended a couple of the London evenings.

Haven't quite cracked Leicester yet, though...

Sunday 21 September 2014

Bootcamp blast

Over at Alex Keegan's Bootcamp - the online writing community I'm a member of - we're having a 'blast' - a period of time, usually a month, where we try to write a complete piece every day and offer it up to our peers for constructive criticism.

This 'forces' us to write, and often pushes us into writing pieces which become fully realised stories (or poems) and find publication or competition success.

We're three days in, and I've only written two pieces...but there are still a couple of hours of Sunday left.

"Climbing" misses out at Room To Write

The results of the Room To Write" short story competition were announced yesterday, and "Climbing" - which had made the ten-strong shortlist - failed to place.

Congratulations to the winners, and I look forward to hearing the judges' comments on all of the stories on the shortlist.

As always with a piece that I rate, I'll be sending "Climbing" elsewhere as soon as a suitable competition comes up.

Tuesday 9 September 2014

"Climbing" makes the RoomtoWrite shortlist

My story "Climbing" has made the shortlist for the 2014 RoomtoWrite short story competition.

Judges are David Almond and Pat Barker.

Results are announced 20th September.

Silver Apples publishes "Shroomaloumi"

New on-line writing magazine Silver Apples has published my story "Shroomaloumi".

The PDF of the magazine is available from the link on the right hand side of the page.

a word about the blog

I got tired of the way the blog was going, so I had a rethink.

I deleted all the old posts, and from now on the blog will focus on competitions entered, failures suffered, and successes to celebrate.