New short story published

Delighted to have a new short story, Octopus's Garden, published in the excellent online journal, Catapult! Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

As she slips into her wetsuit and adjusts her tank, she decides on this week’s alphabet game. Across the Universe, she thinks as she dives. All You Need Is Love. A Hard Day’s Night. Wait, what if it’s Hard Day’s Night? Or even It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night? Her mind a blank, she heads for the riverbed....

Click here to read the rest >>

Two new stories

It's always immensely exciting when my stories find wonderful homes, and two of them have in the past few weeks - first, Also Tends, an astronomy-inspired flash story, in the excellent The View From Here. The second, There Was No Boat - a story that has taken 4 years to find a good home - is published today in the fabulous Tin House as part of their Flash Friday series! This thrill never wears off, it truly never does.

It took three years but...

Today a short story I started working on in 2006 is published! Yes, the story may "only" be 800 words, but it took me three years to get those 800 words the way I wanted them. The story, Under the Tree, was accepted by Electric Velocipede at the end of 2009 - and today it's published in Issue 24. (The story is also included in my new collection, with Electric Velocipede's permission.)

I wanted to share a few words about the story, but SPOILER ALERT stop reading now if you'd prefer to just read the story.

Okay. It started with an image in my head: a mother watching her son sitting under a tree in his own garden. And I couldn't figure out - nor could she - what he was doing there. I got very bogged down in trying to find an explanation. Then I took the story-in-progress, which was written quite traditionally at that point, to a workshop run by the wondrous and inspiring Aimee Bender in June 2007. She encouraged us not to look for direct causes for our characters' behaviour, pointing out, quite rightly I think, that we humans very rarely have one cause for our actions and we often have no idea what has spured us to do something. Let go of cause and effect. Great. This began to release something in me ...

The next step which helped me progress with the story was reading two short story collections: Roy Kesey's All Over and Paddy O'Reilly's The End of the World. Roy's was the first example I'd seen of minimalism and experimentalism and that inspired me to move away from the traditional, take some risks, make the reader work. And Paddy's collection had a story in it (completely different from mine) which was divided into sections which each had section headings - and suddenly, using this structure, my story began to fall into place. Someone said once that sometimes structure can ride in like a knight on a white horse and save a story - and that certainly was the case here. It all started to come together.

Anyway, if you'd like to, you can read the finished story, all 800 words, here. I hope you enjoy it!

New Scientist & Beat the Dust

I've been waiting years to be able to say this: New Scientist have asked me for a science-inspired short story to run in the December 24th issue! I am very very excited... it's a flash story inspired by my time in the biochemistry lab, we will see what New Scientist readers make of it! The title story of my collection, The White Road, which is inspired by an article from New Scientist, was published in New Scientist online just after the book came out and that provoked some interesting discussion....

I'm also delighted to have a flash story, Move Quickly Now, in the current issue of Beat the Dust, along with a playlist inspired by the story, which was a wonderful thing to be asked to do.  A taster:

She said, “Move quickly now and we'll go together. No, don't look behind. No, don't.” He wondered but followed, only being small and not yet ready for disagreements. Or rather, not yet ready to see if this would be what he decided to be disagreeable about. He was a small boy who chose his battles carefully ....

Read the rest here.

New stories and upcoming deadlines

Yes, yes, it's been a while, where does the time go! A quick few links to recently-published stories:

• Like Owls is published in SPECS, an annual print journal which is full of the weird and wonderful (my kind of thing). You can't read the prose poem online but you can watch a video of me reading it and read a short paragraph about how I came to write it.
• All Activity is Silent is published in Issue 15 of kill author, an online journal also filled with weird and wonderful. (You can also hear me reading it on the site.)
• And third for the weird and wonderful, The Watch My Father Wanted, in Metazen. Text only! These kinds of publications make me so happy, that there are others on my warped wavelength. They are full of gems, do check them out.

I've just had a story accepted by Beat the Dust, coming in November, and another by Metazen for December 8th Lovely, all lovely. To inspire - me and you! - here are some upcoming deadlines for story and poetry submissions:

Deadline Nov 30th:

The New Writer Poetry and Prose Prizes: for "fact, fiction and poetry" entry online or by post, open to all, prize fund £2500. Categories judged by Jon Pinnock (read my interview with him here), Sally Quilford (who produces a writing calendar) and Bill Greenwell.  

Whispered Words: 1000 words max: "welcomes fiction and non-fiction. We accept prose of all kinds: literary, science fiction, children’s, memoir, essay, creative non-fiction. Theme: Whispered Words," entry online, open to all, 1st prize  $1000.

Commonwealth Short Story Prize:Awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000 – 5000 words). Submissions must be made by the author of the short story. Regional winners receive £1,000 and the overall winner receives £5,000. Entry online only, open to Commononwealth only.

Diamond Light Reading Short Story & Flash Fic Comp: Competition by UK synchotron (don't know what that is? Here's your chance to find out!): "we’re inviting you to submit a story of up to 3,000 words inspired by Diamond – the facility, the science and the people. There’s also a Flash Fiction prize for stories under 300 words. Stories can be in any genre and there is no minimum word limit. The top three writers will receive a cash prize, and these, along with those highly commended by the judges, will be published in an anthology of short stories." £500 first prize. Entry online only, open to all.

I'll stop there for the moment... got to go do some writing. Good luck to all!