Go Away on Every Day Fiction

Just a quick note to say that my story, Go Away, is Every Day Fiction's story of the day today. Comments welcome!

Also, I was delighted to receive an email last week from Riptide, a new UK literary magazine, saying that they'd like to publish my story North Cold. The UK short fiction scene is really hotting up, and I am thrilled to be part of it. Riptide is one of four new Uk lit mags, the others being Short FICTION, Brand magazine and White Chimney. From what I have seen they are a great read, and really worthy of support.

The Sunday Salon

I have just had my first experience of joining in with The Sunday Salon, which sounds like a wonderful idea - bloggers blogging about what they are reading while they are reading! I have joined in from The Short Review blog, since that seemed appropriate, and blogged about the latest short story collection I am reading. Pop in and have a read of my blog post, and you can read the others here .

Saving energy while Googling

I just stumbled across this, I think it's fantastic:

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

Great idea!

The Big Day! Nanowrimo and The Short Review

I can't quite believe this day has come. I've had trouble sleeping all week. Who would have thought November 1st would be so auspicious? First, Nanowrimo kicks off today, and all those of us around the world who signed up begin our 2000-words a day towards that 50,000-word target at the end of the month. I got up this morning and didn't do any of the things I usually do. No email, no switching cell phone on. I made tea, I turned the radio to the classical channel, I started up my laptop, and for an hour, I wrote. 2051 words. And NOT a short story. I think I might just be able to do this.

Then, and only then, did I allow myself to do the other Big Thing for today: I launched my new venture, The Short Review. The website is live, it's up now, exposed to the world. What is it? It's my small attempt to redress the balance, and give short story collections the spotlight they deserve - and bringing you something good to read. The site dedicated to reviewing story collections and anthologies. Every month we'll publish original reviews, and much more. Go over there and have a look, and pop into the blog and tell me what you think. I am so excited!

There is a little downside to today. J is going away for 8 weeks, a long, long time. I'll miss him terribly. I will try and keep busy. And I've got a lovely load of friends who will look after me. I hope it will be an interesting month.