Some new fiction online....

I've been away on holiday (see pictured), so that was good, and I'm also really pleased to have had two stories published online recently.

You can read "The Gordon Trask" online at Disclaimer mag, here.

You can read "Maps of Imaginary Towns" online at Litro magazine, here.

In other news, I'll be teaching a short story writing course, through Comma Press, in Leeds in the New Year. More news on that soon.

Currently reading

Uprooted Naomi Novik 

Jimmy Cauty's Aftermath Dislocation Principle: Submissions sought

This summer, Jimmy Cauty's artwork the Aftermath Dislocation Principle will be taking a RIOT! tour around the country. It will be arriving in Leeds from the 14th-21st July.

We are gathering riot stories, poetry, and narratives to publish in a newspaper / fanzine to appear as a companion piece during its time here. The newspaper will be given away free, and all authors will retain copyright to their work.

We are gathering stories and poems in response to the theme of 'riot'. Accepted pieces will be published in an accompanying newspaper which will be available, for free, when the Aftermath Dislocation Principle lands in Leeds.

Perhaps you were caught up in a riot? Perhaps you were a bystander, or your business or family were affected? Perhaps you were (or are) part of a radical community group involved in self-organising, in doing things differently, or in doing something riotously amazing. Whatever it is, we want to hear from you. We can also print black & white images, so if you want to send a photograph or image that goes with your story, please send us that, as well.

If your story is a true one, please include a year or date which tells us when your story took place.

We are also accepting creative responses - stories or poems - on related themes, too. Stories or poetry which reflect off themes of riot, disruption, destruction, uprising, community work, and radical approaches, are all welcome. A ‘riot’ doesn’t always have to be destructive: we’re also talking about riots of the mind. Radical approaches can be creative and positive - they don’t always have to be about smashing things up. We are open to receiving anything that you think matches the theme.

Please send your submissions in .doc format (2000 words or less for prose please, 30 lines or less for poetry)

When submitting your story / piece to our project, please also give us a short description of what your piece is in the 'further information' box as you submit. This will help us to keep track of things!
Submit using our Submittable portal, here

Currently reading

Liam Brown Real Monsters

Genus: Spring issue of December Magazine

"My brother was born strange. As a child, he spent hours gazing into the distance, clenching and tapping his fingers, all when he was supposed to be minding the seedlings. 

You only had to walk one end of the greenhouse to the other, taking the watering can in hand. You gave every tray a sprinkle, more if the earth was dry. Each day the seedlings grew a little; it was part of the job to keep an eye on them, see whether they had grown big enough to go out into the furrows outside. I'd been doing it myself since I was six, and tall enough just to see over the shelves. But my brother, though he had been doing it longer, did it poorly. He would put the can down at the end of the hut and look out of the window, mouthing words as if there were somebody standing on the other side – somebody none of the rest of us could see."

My story, Genus, appears in the Spring 2015 issue of December Magazine. You can buy the mag (or read the story - you have to write your name & your email address in the boxes, it's really easy) by following this link. 

As ever, it's really exciting to have a story appear in print! And particularly exciting to appear in December, which is a really long-running and very established literary magazine. It was in this magazine where the early stories of Raymond Carver & Joyce Carol Oates first appeared. It's exciting to be amongst such distinguished company! 

Currently reading

Angels Denis Johnson

The Man in the High Castle Philip K Dick

Short stories you can read for free!

The other day, I was boring on to somebody about short stories, and how there are so many great short story writers out there, doing great work.

Even better, there are even lots of magazines - high quality ones - publishing new short stories that you can read, completely FREE, online.

Electric Literature does this amazing series called "Recommended Reading" where they publish a new story, every week, recommended by a reputable organisation or writer. The best of all is, they also publish these in e-reader friendly formats, so that you can send them to your device, should you wish to.

One of my recent favourites from Recommended Reading was 'Not a Bad Bunch' by Anu Jindal:

"One time, Stigsson, a lumbering, manic Swede, leapt while climbing down from the mast. Fifteen feet, blurred blond beard and soiled bare feet flagging in the air towards the deck, where he landed in a funny way. As it happened, a stray nail had been left behind where he touched down and it entered him through his heel, paralyzing his foot permanently so that he walks always with a kind of slump now."

You can download or read the rest of it here:

There's this other publisher called Fiddleblack who specialise in what they call a 'modern literary aesthetic', specifically 'antipastorialism'. It's pretty interesting and you can read their mission statement here.

A recent favourite from their publishing series was Sharpening the Sickle to Shame the Scythe by Matthew Jabukowski:

"IN THE HOURS BEFORE Lauren Hunter-Aikens got the news she was stuck trying to revise a story she had written in her creative therapy group.

In the story, the narrator imagined that the news of her son’s death would come by phone. She would be at work drinking coffee, clicking with intense focus through documents on her computer screen. Her phone would buzz in her purse. Not wanting to disturb the office silence, she would answer right away and keep her voice low out of respect for her colleagues on the other sides of her cube.

The voice would ask if she were sitting down. She’d say yes, why?"

You can read the rest of the story on the Fiddleblack website.

More soon. 

Currently reading

Thirst Andrei Gelasimov

Norwood Charles Portis

Appearance in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal

I'm really excited to announce that my story Top Dog will appear in the December issue of US lit journal Toasted Cheese. The issue will go online in the first week of December, I believe.

Really exciting news & I'm grateful to the editors of Toasted Cheese for taking an interest in my work.

Currently reading

The Blindfold Siri Hustvedt
Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You Alice Munro

Untitled Books - August 2011 issue

Too excited about it to post in detail just now, but my short story Things that are Lost, and things that are Broken has just been published in the August 2011 issue of Untitled Books. Last night, on my way back from holiday I received a lovely text from them to say that they thought my story was excellent and that they would like to include it in the next issue. Would I mind terribly? No I would not. In fact, only being cased in the steel body of a car stopped me jumping all over the place in excitement. Click the link above to read it.

A Stranger Came: Out Shortly!

A close up of those bound edges

'Tis nearly finished! After months of labour, A Stranger Came is now (almost) completely bound, cut and ready to go. It will be out later on this week. Two things remain to be done: the pages trimmed, and for each copy to be numbered. I am sure I won't get writer's cramp doing the second one.

Let's have a look at those different-coloured covers in full.



L-R: White with ltd edition silver binding; cream; brown; pale yellow




Pale yellow; cream; brown; white with ltd edition silver binding

Currently reading

Trust me, I'm a junior doctor Max Pemberton
The Crystal World JG Ballard

Letterpress errors [ " Letterprerrors " ]

Regular readers of my blog might know that I've been learning to Letterpress over the past few months. Letterpress printing is an old technique which involves setting lines of metal type, putting them in a printing press, and then imprinting and inking the whole shebang onto paper. It produces beautiful results quite unlike any other - the metal type often leaves a slight imprint into the paper, so that you can 'feel' the text with your hands. It's a lengthy and laborious process that used to form the mainstay of printing, but with the advent of computers, has fallen into disuse. These days it is mainly used by enthusiasts and diehards, and wordy nerds like me.

Currently I'm in the process of setting and printing a short story I wrote last year entitled 'A Stranger Came'. Letterpress seemed to be the ideal way to present this story - I'm doing a short run of about 90, which I will then bind myself once all the pages are printed. I expect the books to be finished some time in early May.

It's been an interesting few months, and I've learned loads. Here, in this blog post, I'm going to post a few of the mistakes I've made while printing, so that you can avoid making the same mistakes yourself - if you're going to try and operate a printing press, that is.

This is what happens when your lovely, expensive paper falls off the press and into the rollers.



And this is what happens when skin from the ink gets onto your typeset.



This is what happens when you don't line the paper up properly....



...and this is what it looks like when you do it right.



Currently reading

A Mercy Toni Morrison
The Hell of it All Charlie Brooker
Travels in the Scriptorium Paul Auster

Even More Tonto Short Stories

Here is a book called Even More Tonto Short Stories. It features one of my very own short stories, and it comes out on August the 5th. It features not only stories from new writers, but more established ones too. You can buy it off Tonto Books, or you can buy it from Amazon.

As you can imagine, this is very exciting news not just for me, but also for my long-suffering boyfriend who I would like to thank for all his patience and help (like that time when he built me a writing desk in the corner of our living room, using just pieces of wood and his BARE HANDS, and I never used it very much, but did long-suffering boyfriend complain? No he did not. No, I don't know why he puts up with it either). Also I would like to thank Pig Destroyer who likes to 'help' with the typing sometim55555555555555es.

Good news, everyone!

Right, I'm going to throw superstition to the wind, and just go ahead and announce it: one of my short stories is to appear in the forthcoming Even More Tonto Short Stories collection. Tonto is a small independent publisher that has been publishing a short story anthology annually since its inception in 2005.

The book isn't out yet, but when it is you'll be able to buy it in the Tonto Shop.

Whoop whoop!