First Half of 2012

Thought I’d do a round-up of my writing year so far …

As well as my stories in the Jawbreakers and 100RPM anthologies I mentioned in this previous post, my story ‘Rooftops’ was in the shortlist for Short Fiction’s 6th Annual Short Story Competition  and a flash, ‘Waiting in the Window’ was longlisted for the Flashbang
competition. Quite a challenge for me to write a crime flash in 150 words. This competition produced some great winners. Amazing what you can do in so few words.

My reading-vids for the two 100RPM stories Here and My Boy are now on youtube and a handful of people have actually watched them!

I also had another six stories published online ...

Cat and Dog and Her Name were the result of writing to prompts in the run up to National Flash Fiction Day. I don’t usually like themes and prompts as I generally have lots of story ideas to work on but I did enjoy the challenge of writing these and the 'joining in' aspect. I had another story in Flashflood on the day itself. ‘Maybe’ is my answer to Hemmingway’s famous six word story, I got great comments, on the site and through twitter, and also posted it on the blog here.

'Ivy', my 1000 word long-for-a-flash-short-for-a-short story about a fast food addicted young man getting over the death of his grandmother appeared in Issue 3 of Eclat Fiction and Boiling Mad can be found on 330words and was inspired by a work colleague asking why we call a sandwich a sandwich. I would love to do a reading of this one day. Very very angrily.

Last but not least, Machine Number Five was a favourite of the two writer friends who read it initially, got highly commended in the Creative Writing the Artist's Way Take a Leap Competition (in which my friend Stella Turner 's story 'The Daily Echo and 20 Bensons'  was one of the ten chosen for the Take a leap anthology) then  received lovely comments from strangers on The Pygmy Giant where it now appears, got commented on, with a link on Dan Powell ’s The Long and the Short of It and ... even my mother said she liked it …  twice!

‘Machine Number Five’ is the story of a washing machine that’s had enough of washeteria life and sets off on an adventure. The consensus seems that I’ve been successful at getting into the mind of a machine, making the reader feel empathy and that they're rooting for it. This pleases me so much but really it’s my story; of being brave and leaving my job and home town to go to university in another part of the country.

I have also just received feedback from the first person to read the whole of my novel. I now know that I have a novel and the few things have to do (including the possible removal of a character or the fusing of two characters together) before it's finally ready to send somewhere ... but that is another story.