The Micro Fiction Competition – What’s Happening

There is great curiosity and anticipation with respect to our very popular recent Micro Fiction Competition. People are asking ‘When are the results out?’ ‘Have I won?’ and ‘Is the prize a trip to Las Vegas?’

What I can say for sure is the prize is still £200 and publication. Not Las Vegas, sorry.
Also we are still reading, reading, reading. There were a prolific number of good entries and thus there will be more debating than usual re who is going to get into the anthology. However be assured we are giving the Micro Fiction our full attention and are hoping to announce results soon. Beginning of May we hope. That’s if we haven’t destroyed each other in our whole-hearted attempts to defend our favourite pieces of micro fiction.

Ceci.

Better than an Easter Egg - Open Short Story Winners

For some reason Blogger isn't behaving itself for Sam so it is left to me to announce the winner, runner-up and commended writers of the Open Short Story 2006 competition. The stories listed here will be available in a Leaf anthology later in the year.

Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to all who entered for the hours of entertaining reading and the tough choices in the judging.

Open Short Story 2006 Winners:

Winner

'The Light That Remains' by Paul Currion

Runner-Up

'Natural Selection, Gaza 2004' by Robert Wilton

Commended

'Starshine' by Mark Wagstaff

'Breakfast Things' by Mark Wagstaff

'Third Person' by Michael Stewart

'Darling, You Know and I Know' by Lynne Voyce

'Treasure' by Holly Barratt

'Hide and Seek' by Jenny Jack

'Something to Write Home About' by Ian Madden

'Mid-Life Baby' by Annette Keen

'Burning' by Sue Anderson

'Standing Up on the Pedals' by Joanna Quinn

'Perhaps Birches' by Joanna Lilley

'Break, Break, Break' by Sally Douglas


Gav.

Open Poetry Competition 2006 - Results

Here followeth the long-awaited results of the 2006 Open Poetry Competition. I've been long-awaiting them myself all day, and then I was so overcome with impatience that I decided I'd better announce them.

Winner:

'Outbox' by Nicky Mesch

Runner-up:

'The Craft' by Gill Learner

Commended (in no particular order):

'The Calorific Value of Anxiety' by Gill Learner

'Window' by Benjamin Logan

'Learning Science' by Kathy Miles

'Stranger Danger' by Mark Chatterley

'Hieroglyphic Love' by Gwen Seabourne

'A Son' by Pat Borthwick

'Rats' by Tracey S Rosenberg

'Sonar' by Robert Warrington

'The Same Lover' by Hilaire Wood

'Bottle-Green' by Hilaire Wood

'do not add post' by Jason Jackson

'Endowment' by Juliette Hart

'Sandman' by Juliette Hart

'After the Funeral' by Chris Kinsey

'Levi, 2001' by Sinead Collins

'Learner Readers' by Margaret Eddershaw

'Winter Kafeneion' by Margaret Eddershaw

'The Dreamfisher' by Oz Hardwick

'A Candle for Daphne' by Gabriel Griffin

'Bedazzled' by Sue Anderson

'Things I Do' by Gwyneth Box

'Body' by Alice Blake

'Tough Love' by Claire Trevien

'Prayer' by Charles Evans

'Upside Down' by Charles Evans

'Maternal Visit' by Doreen Gray

'Sea Change' by Jenny Morris

'A Splash of Colour' by William Wood


Congratulations to all the above and our thanks to everyone who entered. As ever, an anthology containing all the winning entries will be produced in due course. It'll be called Something or the Other and Other Poems, except 'something or the other' will be replaced with proper words, like a title or what have you. It's going to be grand.

Expect an announcement about the Open Short Story competition later in the week, if you think you can take the excitement.

Sam.

Nearly news.

Bother. I think perhaps I accidentally changed the font size. NEVER MIND. Good morning. We seem to have gone an awfully long time without blogging. I say 'We seem' as if I didn't know perfectly well it'd been eons and the like since we last put up a post. We're not wholly lacking excuses. The office building in which we currently reside lost its internet connection for a week or so, so that threw us all into a bit of a confusion. And I've tried a couple of times to update from home, but my computer there won't much be having it. Windows ME, you know. Doesn't let me do most things. But I think the primary reason was that we actually had very little in the way of news because we're pretty much tied up with judging the most recently closed poetry and short story competitions. It's a bit epic. The emphasis, I suppose, being on 'bit'. But it's quite a lot of judging all right and I gather the website implies that it might be over by the end of this month, and that's not really going to be the case. But we do hope to announce the poetry results within about a week or possibly two, and the short stories shortly after that. As ever, the results will go up here, on this blog, when they're ripe for the announcing. You shan't miss them if you keep checking. We don't meanly sneak out competition results when people aren't looking.

We do have a smear of news today. The Better Craftsman and Other Stories has been emailed off to the printer and should hopefully be back with us in whatever amount of time these things usually take. And then you can buy it for £6.99, which will make us inordinately happy. It's a grand little collection and it has ten entirely spiffing stories in it, and also quite an exciting cover.

And I really do plan on getting up to speed with the novellas today. Really I do.

Sam.

Oh. Yes. Also.

A quick note to those awaiting responses to their novella submissions... the first round - the ones who submitted approximately three months ago - are being dealt with right now and hopefully if you're one of those people you should hear from us within the next fortnight or so. Not quite three months, but absolutely as close as we can manage: it's been a very busy few weeks of late and we're getting on top of things gradually, but we do ask for a mite more of your patience. Many thanks.

Sam.

Data protection and the dehydrating effects thereof.

There's a seminar on data protection going on behind me. It's going on right in the office doorway, meaning I'm very excited at the prospect of its coming to a happy close and enabling me to visit the drinking water, because nothing about my lips is currently correct. Gav and Ceci are in attendance at this seminar. Every so often I hear one of them ask a clever question. I am not so much attending the seminar as I am hiding behind the partition and sending out information about our two competitions ('Spring 2007 Poetry Competition' and 'Science Fiction and Fantasy', lest you've forgotten, details of which remain very much available on the website) and trying to research the intricacies of getting real live bookshops to stock our anthologies, which obviously are entirely worthy of being stocked by real live bookshops.

Mostly I was writing because I noticed in February, when we announced the winners of the Coffee and Chocolate themed competitions, we said that The Better Craftsman and Other Stories was on course to be out and about by the end of 'this month', which is obviously pretty much a fib on account of that month's having ended. I think probably my intention was to say 'next month' anyway, because that was generally understood to be the plan. It still is the plan. Barring any printing mishaps or delays or what have yous, the anthology should be available for purchase by the end of this month, which is March. Apologies for any confusion and the like.

Oh. Well. Sigh. Water. They must be finished soon though, the data protection bods. The sandwich man who comes along daily in his sandwich van will be here any minute now, and no way will Gav and Ceci sit quietly and listen to people talking about data protection if it means risking the absence of sandwiches. It's not that we don't care enormously about protecting your data, but the sandwich man is our hero and 11.30am-ish is generally a very exciting time of the morning. I'm sure you'll understand. Especially you, Mr Ephraim Gadsby of the Nasturtiums, Jubilee Road, Streatham Common.

Joke, obviously. But an approving nod to anyone who can tell me from which author I lifted Mr Ephraim Gadsby.

Sam.

Guidelines and paper clips.

Mostly I think I was tinkering with a database and listening to two of the other three talking for five straight minutes about underpants and thinking about all the issues I'd have fun raising if we had a union when I noticed several things were very wrong with the submission guidelines, primarily the fact that not many people are adhering to them. This'll be our fault. We're going to make them a bit more obvious and accessible and link them up properly from the various upload forms, and we'll be adding a few new ones as well for larks and that, and also it's finally occurred to me that I can tell the hardcopy newsletter receivers to contact us for full guidelines rather than just letting them guess, but in the meantime I shall kindly direct your attention to a), the relevant page on the website and b), the following points about the online entry process:

- If you enter online and make a payment by PayPal using a different name and/or email address to the one you used to upload your competition entry, please make that clear in the comments section of the upload form, stating the name/email address/what have you of the PayPal account. Otherwise we get confused and fail to match up entry and payment (they come to us in two separate emails, for those inexplicably interested in the minutae of our working day) and end up emailing you and then waiting for a reply and it's all a bit upsetting. Not massively upsetting, obviously. I wouldn't let it trouble you personally. But doing the above would be really more than great.

- Sometimes... not often... things go wrong with some element of the process and we get entries without payments and payments without entries and entries without words and other permutations of the above. We deal with these issues via email. We'd advise you to look out for such emails from us in the days after you've entered just in case something's gone astray. As I say, far and away the majority of online entries reach us with no problems whatsoever, but sometimes mishaps are a tad unavoidable, and I'm pointing this out because, even more occasionally, the entrants don't respond to our queries about what became of the entry that should correspond to this payment and what have you. We still have a couple of problematic half-entries outstanding from the recently closed micro-fiction competition, and we can't wait indefinitely. We don't much want you to miss out on the whole entering business, so do try and be electronically available in the couple of days after submitting your work.

- Not to be putting any contact information on the entries themselves, please. This is quite important and often sadly overlooked. We do delete all the errant info prior to printing the entries out, but this does slow down the whole process and makes us a little bit jittery. It's not a question of our not loving you regardless, but we'll love you even more if you don't put your name on your entry.

That's about it. As I say, we'll be tweaking the guidelines appropriately in the near future. There's a website update going on as we speak, in fact. Mostly that'll be Gav's taking down the now closed Micro-fiction competition (which, numbers wise, was even more of a rip-roaring success than the previous one, so hurrah for that) and putting up the new Spring Poetry Competition 2007 (or possibly Spring 2007 Poetry Competition) instead. If you ask nicely in comments, and I'm not saying that we're in any sense desperate for comments, perhaps he'll put the links in this post when the pages are complete. Or you can just keep refreshing the website, which is also fun. Root Books - our new branch (we are SUCH wits) that's all about giving new authors a bit of a boost and the like, with the print-readying and subsequent printing of any manuscripts they might want printing and, you know, more besides, has its own page on the website. We've written a new newsletter and made an amusing advert with Venus on it. And I am unamused to discover that my favourite paper clip has escaped. My second favourite paper clip, which is circular, honours us still with its presence, but the triangular one is AWOL.

You can post sitings here if you so wish. In comments. And don't go thinking we care about comments.

Sam.

HA

To Emma, whose wonderful envelope brightened a dull morning; thank you.

Matt. (Who is alive.)

Cracking on

The front page of the website has been given a little re-refresh - sorry about that. I was trying to keep the stocking up until next year but got over-ruled - boo!

We're very much enjoying micro-fiction entries. There is less than two weeks left to enter but I'm sure you've already marked that in your calendar.

Production on the Better Craftsman (containing the results of the Summer Short Story Competition) is progressing marvelously and I think Matt is looking for a 70s revival with the cover. Very stripey and pretty. And production of the yet unnamed Chocolate and Coffee anthology is starting this week.

Reading/judging of the Open Short Story and Open Poetry is well underway.

Root Creations first self-published collection (The Red Book) is doing well. We've also re-introduced our critiquing service to the website for anyone looking for positive and practical feedback from our editor and team of readers.

And that ends this blog posting.

Gav.

We Aren'tn't Dead

Which title, technically, is plagiarism, but we're going to call it intertextuality today. Mostly we're wanting to apologise for the slightly defunct and unchanging appearance of the front page of the website. You may have noticed that certain other pages have been going up and that we're not being wholly neglectful or anything of the sort, but the front page does have something of a deceased competition mentioned thereon and does also sort of have a bit of a Christmas stocking theme in the offing. Never mind. It will be updated very shortly and is pretty much top of the list after all the other terribly important things. There is a slightly frightful lot on a moment, but we're pretty much getting there. Don't think we're any description of a time warp. We're really not.

Sam.

Strangest thing.

This place where we work. It's gone all pretty.

The trains are running fine, which is unsporting of them (too many folk are damnably ungrateful for a country that breaks massively on the rare days when there's sledding to be had), but that's not going to prevent my using (and that, I believe, was a gerund) the weather as an excuse to knock off really very early and walk to a quite different station for no reason other than my rather liking (and that, I believe, was another gerund) walking in the snow.

And also because the station here has no departure boards so if there was no train due till October I wouldn't really know it.

Sam.

Why is the internet called the web?

Because it's full of threads that connect lots of things to lots of other things, and it can quite easily get mind-blowingly confusing.

This might just be my opinion. I’m in the middle of a complicated website update and so threads are very much on my mind. For example I’m trying to make easier to use our critiquing service by adding an ‘upload and pay via Paypal option’, which is relatively straightforward, but I also want it make it easy to request a critique and make an online entry. This I’m finding isn’t so easy. I have a solution it just takes a little longer to do.

The main bits of the update should be done over the next couple of days; where I’ll be adding the Root Creations wing. Though for balance we do have a Brief Leaf wing under construction on the other side. I’m just waiting for the plaster to dry.

Please mind the wet paint on your way round.

gav.

I shot the database. I didn't really.

Well, I don't know. You veritably prostrate yourself all over our inbox in your desperation to hear the results of the Coffee and Chocolate competitions, and then we give them to you and you say nothing. Whatsoever. Not a whoop or a boo or an about time too. I don't know.

Mostly this weekend I engaged in a staring competition with the online entries folder, which contained pretty much a hundred emails, all of which needed printing off and databasing come Monday. I stared at it in the hope that it would turn away first, but it didn't. It very much won, and it gave me my customary Monday headache a day early out of pure vicious spite. Then we all databased it this afternoon, which is by and large what it wanted. But don't ever try and make our lots easier by not entering our competitions, because frankly we'd much rather you did than otherwise. I'm only saying. Also I came in half an hour early today with a view to getting started on it, and nobody knows except me, and now everybody. I don't think there's much reward in coming in half an hour early of your own volition unless you subsequently make a spot of noise about it.

Next comes the judging of the Open Short Story and Poetry competitions, which we hope will be concluded by whatever date we said we hoped they'd be concluded by on the website. You'll have to go and look for yourselves really. See how clever? And the Coffee/Chocolate winners are in the process of being edited. Or tomorrow they will be. And 'The Better Craftsman' is being formatted mostly and will be being bookified inordinately soon, about which we're all massively excited. I fancy it's going to have a faintly intruiging spine. Two competitions remain open - Science Fiction and Micro-Fiction - as does the open submission call for novella(e)(s). Which is yielding lots of novellas, essentially, and that's about all you can ask of it. Bravo.

The loos here, by the way, smell faintly of aniseed. Things could be worse.

Sam.

Coffee and Chocolate

Dear eager ones. We thank you for your patience, or alternatively your dogged persistence, but you shan't be needing either of them anymore. The results of the Coffee and Chocolate Competitions are published beneath.

Coffee:

Winner:

‘Aged 3, an Italian coffee bar, Pembrokeshire… ’ by Simone Mansell Broome

Runners up:

‘Coffee Haiku’ by Anna Caddy

‘Culture’ by L M Myles

Commended:

‘Time Tunnel’ by Sue Anderson

‘The Latté Literalist’ by Kenneth Shand

‘Nice’ by Peter Rolls

‘Filtered’ by Lynne Taylor

‘Stained’ by Sally Flint

‘Coffee to Go’ by Jan Petersen

‘Coffee, Kahwas and Orchids’ by Waldo Gemio

‘Morning Coffee’ by Angelina Ayers

‘Coffee Culture’ by David Miah

‘On It’ by Philip Taylor

‘That Which Prevents Sleep’ by Gertrud Gustafsson

‘Last Sunday’ by Ben Barton


Chocolate

Winner:

‘The Conspiracy of Thinness’ by Sarah Evans

Runners up:

‘Friction and Fondue’ by Amy Mackelden

‘The First’ by Carmen Ali

Commended:

‘Just a Ride’ by Janet Thomas

‘Chocolate’ by Kate Noakes

‘Just One More’ by Bethan Hole

‘Wagonwheel’ by Maire Cooney

‘Leave to Cool then Cut into Squares’ by Juliette Hart

‘The Halstead Chocolatier’ by Jeremy Dixon

‘Chocolate Super-Woman’ by Naomi Carter

‘Substitute’ by Dianna Robin Dennis

‘Hot Chocolate’ by Emma Hardy

‘Choc Talk’ by James Nelson

‘Zucci’s’ by Marie Gallagher

‘The Memory Box’ by Beverley Clarke

***

Well. There we go. Congratulations to all who entered and especially to all the above types. The listed entries will be published in a Coffee and Chocolate themed anthology that we're hoping will be available by the end of April. 'The Better Craftsman and Other Stories', by the way, which is the next anthology in the offing, remains on course to be out by the end of this month.

Next I need to put this jolly info on the website, but the editing device is a tad bust. It refuses to connect to the server. Mostly I'm saying this out loud here so you know it isn't my fault, but also in the hope that the very much offline-at-present Gav might hear me and fix it.

Sam.

Typots.

Dear Readers. I know there is a typo in the addendum to the newsletter. I know this because two people have... kindly... written to tell us. And to offer their proofreading services. An Unnamed Member of the Team has... thoughtfully... passed on my name to them as the one responsible, which is nothing more than the truth. I know also that it's fairly important that, being a publishing company, we try reasonably hard not to come off as unduly illiterate. I apologise, therefore, and grovel, and primarily acknowledge my abject failure. At life. At copywriting anyway. Though also, admittedly, at life. Other people - if you're better qualified for my job than I myself am, and quite frankly, you patently are... go for it. It will lessen my ALMIGHTY SHAME. Seriously though. I'm genuinely debating whether or not to bank my next paycheque.

If I'd been The Guardian, probably I would've misspelled all the names in the dog breeds chart that they somehow managed to get right.

Anyway. Mostly what I'm saying is, though I'm appreciative of the learnin' and that, please don't write to tell me about it ever, ever again. Not never.

There's good fellows.

Sam.

Databasing. How we love it.

And actually (cf. Gav's post beneath, which you ought to read if you're desperate to hear the results of the Chocolate and Coffee comps - not that it contains them), I was writing a post at the same time that Gav was fundamentally altering the means in which we make posts to this blog.

The post:

During vast swathes of yesterday, I databased. Gav also databased. Today, Ceci is databasing and reports that her brain is somewhat dying. It's a thing that each member of the Leaf Team is obliged to do at least once a week, but we do it, I think, with good cheer. And a merry heart. And sometimes we say slightly rude words about it.

It's not beyond our powers to use the whole databasing experience, what is fundamentally integral to our working lives, as a sort of a learning process. Life-enhancing. No less. I, par example, have been learning that some people write their telephone numbers in a format quite alien to me, namely 0123 456 7890 as opposed to 01234 567 890. I was under the impression that regional codes consisted of five numbers and then the personal bit was essentially the remaining six, but this seems to suggest more of a four-seven split. For a while I assumed you were all being contrary and remade your telephonic choices for you. But I've got over that. I guess you all know what you're doing.

(Please staple your manuscripts together, but not to the entry form. Thank you. I hope that was sufficiently sublimin(ab)al.)

Also I have a favourite postal addres, but you're not to hear of it. I'm not one to be loose about the data protection act. But if you've written to us and have an amusing (and faintly ironic) postal address, I'm probably talking about you.

Sam.

Well we are getting there

Our extreme apologies to all the coffee and chocolate entrants waiting to hear if they’ve won. We’ve almost arrived at a long list and hopefully a final meeting on Monday will result in the decision of a couple of winners.

In other news:

Production of The Better Craftsman and Other Stories is well underway.

Umm Matt or Sam is much better at writing these things. Once they emerge from their computer induced trances I’ll get them to write a better post.

gav.

When we are not blogging we are making books. That's a good thing.

Hello. Yes. Hello. And it's undeniably a sign of neglect when you have to start a post with hello, especially twice. It's not entirely that I've nothing to say. Mostly you should interpret a lack of blogging as a sign of immense in-office productivity. Oh, the things we've been doing.

- I've been editing the contents of the upcoming short story anthology, which we've decided is to be called The Better Craftsman and Other Stories. I have been reading entries. I also have a couple of short-story critiques on t' boil.
- Matt has been editing my edits and will shortly be making a book.
- Gav has been reading novellas and doing website things.
- Both Matt and Gav have been working most hard on the launching of... secret, special things. I don't know if I'm allowed to say. Probably not. You shall have to await their own blog posts for further info, which is always good because it means you might come back.
- Ceci has been doing EVERYTHING, including accounts and organising our entire working lives and restocking the office with paper and right now she's sending some books to Trinidad. And Tobago.

Also we had a pleasant meeting. Ceci made a very good joke about Brazil nuts.

Sam.

New Year's Resolutions

As far as I'm aware, we have none.

Actually that was a massive lie, because now that I'm telling everybody the whole office is chirping up:

- Sam vaguely thinks she'll do more writing this year. And will possibly buy a camel.

- Gav has decided to lose weight and do things with his chest hair, involving the colour pink. Which frankly disturbs me, because Gav is not only hairier than me by far, but also a real man with a beard and things like that.

- Ceci is frightened by the organisation of her handbag. This is to be remedied. Her head-hair is to be dyed, because presumably she doesn't have chest-hair, and is mostly remembering to write 2007 on things.

- Me, which is Matt, had you not already guessed... well. Did you know that it took me twenty minutes of concentrating very tersely to work out why everybody was having a Bond-themed party this new year? Yes. Well. This year I will become a steel magnate, own six airlines, forcibly eject several governments and stop eating Bounties at lunch time, for they are ill-meaning.

Also Leaf Books have slashed the price of all of our titles by half, meaning that - save for the Big Books - all of our titles are now £1.

£1!

That even justifies an exclamation mark.

Happy New Year to all then. I hope your resolutions are both brilliant and workable, and that during the festive period did not forget that we've OPENED SUBMISSIONS TO NOVELLAS and have LAUNCHED A SF & FANTASY COMPETITION.

The latter is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.

[Fanfare] Summer Short Story Competition Results [/Fanfare]

Hear this, or alternatively read it. The much-awaited results of the Summer Short Story Competition 2006.

Winner:

'The Better Craftsman' by Martin Tyrell.

Runners up:

'Crater Beelines' by Robert Ewing.

'The Space Between' by Jo Cannon.

Commended:

'Viento' by Angela Dodson.

'Everything She Touches' by Chris Williams.

'The Gordon Highlanders' Farewell to Helpmakaar' by Steve Connolly.

'White and Red' by Graham Dickson.

'Ghost Fishing' by Simon Lake.

'Maiden Voyage' by Lynne Voyce.

'Jam' by Jo Cannon.

***

Congratulations to all who entered and most especially to the good people above. All of these names are quite new to us here at Leaf. And lots of them are men, we notice, which is faintly notable. Well done to them. All of the above stories will be published in a Short Story Anthology to be produced at the start of the new year: do keep checking for further announcements about that, because there will very much be some.

That aside, the next point of major interest should be the results of the Coffee and Chocolate competitions, to be announced jointly, hopefully some time in January. That's the plan. Hurrah.

Sam.