Higgs Bosons, The Verb, and ShortStoryVille

It's been a very busy week - a wonderful event at the West Meon Festival on Sunday, talking short stories with Zoe Fairbairns, whose excellent new book, Write Short Stories and Get Them Published, is now available. Then Monday, interviewed on the Love & Science show on BCFM (see previous post).

Then a call, on Monday, from Radio 3's The Verb. Would I be able to write a Higgs-boson and quantum-physics inspired flash story by Wednesday morning to read and chat about on this week's show? Would I? Oh yes! I did, (and the very tight deadline definitely brought out something new, something I'd never done before) and then yesterday morning at the BBC here in Bristol I was recorded reading it and chatting to the fantastic host of the show, Ian McMillan, about physics & fiction, flash fiction and the wonderful words of science. It will be broadcast tomorrow night, Friday 13th, at 10pm UK time, and should be available as a podcast for 7 days after that. Find out more here>> 


As well as all that excitement, Tues and Wednesday I was running two school writing workshops at Fairfield High School in honour of ShortStoryVille, which is Bristol's short story festival, taking place here this Saturday, at Arnolfini! The first event, at 12pm, will be me introducing some of the Fairfield pupils reading their stories, I can't wait! Here, to whet our appetite, is the ShortStoryVille trailer, made by my partner, James, and his team:





The events of the day include discussions about Angela Carter's short stories, about digital publishing and readings from several of Bloomsbury's newly-published short story authors - as well, of course, as the awarding, in the evening, of the Bristol Short Story Prize! Find out how to book tickets here.

Hope to see you there. And for me, next week is looking, well, a little quieter... but then again, who knows what might come up?!