Life, the universe and everything else that might apply to this post

Isn’t summer a perfect time to sit in the sun with a good book? I’m only mentioning that because I think I’ve finally completed Coffee & Chocolate. And I think it’s perfect sunny reading material. And with a good wind it’s going to start the printing process on Monday.

We’re now moving on to The Light That Remains & Other Short Stories and Outbox & Other Poems from containing the winners from our Open Short Story and Open Poetry Competitions. We promise to have these out in the world a little faster. We then have Derek & Other Short Short Stories to present for your pleasure.

You’ve definitely got lots of quality and entertaining bit-sized reading on the way.

Not failing mention a Sci-Fi/Fantasy-themed collection, whose contents is currently being judged and enjoyed.

On a more mundane note the usual office admin has been done, bills paid, office tidied (which had a surprisingly high amount of paper than needs correctly disposing off), and generally getting on with things.

Non-work related Matt is now an expert at Guitar Hero II and if there is a World Champion Competition I’m going to enter him in it; Ceci went to Chealsea Flower Show (though I’ve not had chance to ask her what she thought of the Dr Who Garden); Sam seems to have brought in home-made cakes but I’m not asking her about them yet incase they aren’t for us and I look greedy; and I’ve been playing with a £2000.00 camera, which is quite scary. Plus I almost managed to break a £400 lens yesterday when it landed on the floor after falling off the sofa. I don’t think I can be trusted with a £2000.00 item that can easily be dropped.

What’s your news?

Gav.

Guidelines

Good afternoon folks.

Plleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaase will you make sure your entries are anonymous? I'm not accusing you of smashing the world or anything quite like that, and much as you've all got wonderful names (some of you have ultra-wonderful names), we judge our competition entries anonymously for a very strongly-reasoned reason.

Novellas, sure, print your name on every sheet in 72 point bold Impact, if you like (don't actually), but on your delightful entries for the competitions we only require your name on the entry form/covering letter because otherwise we have to spend a massive amount of time defacing your masterpieces with permanent markers, thereby precluding their further use should you want them back and also making the databasing process a great deal more awful than it already is.

I still love you.

Matt.

Micro-Fiction Winners

Micro-Fiction 2007 Winners

Winner:

‘Derek’ by Gina Goodwin

Runners-Up:

‘You are my giraffe now’ by Jason Jackson

‘Imaginary Origami’ by Amy Mackelden

Commended:

‘Badger Play’ by Gina Goodwin

‘Backwards’ by Jason Jackson

‘Lee & Holly’ by Amy Mackelden

‘Heavy Petting’ by Amy MacKelden

‘The Crumb’ by Catherine Edmunds

‘Not a Good Idea’ by Catherine Edmunds

‘The Truth About Janet’ by Sara Benham

‘Picture Your Father Without A Picture’ by Teresa Stenson

‘The Tower’ by Su Barkla

‘Going Home’ by Cath Drake

‘And I’m Gone’ by Jo Else

‘I, Witch’ by Jo Else

‘Mountain Air Footie’ by Don Taylor

‘The Miracle’ by Stella Pierides

‘Callers’ by Sue Anderson

‘Finding faculties, fainting goats’ by Jackie Sullivan

‘The library book’ by Tania Hershman

‘The Long Not Yet’ by Chloe Richards

‘The Colour of Romance’ by Sara Browning

‘Doing Something’ by Varihi Scott

‘The silence of sleeping with him’ by Louise McErlean

‘Unfortunate Noses’ by Katy Whitehead

‘Floating is easy’ by Katy McAulay

‘When my third foot grows’ by Nancy Saunders

‘Bridged Perspective’ by David Hallett

‘We’ll Meet Again’ by Laurie Porter

‘Sailing to Valhalla’ by Michael Massey

‘Car Park’ by Caroline Adams

‘Cl²’ by Matthew Mead

‘Signalling’ by Amy Sackville

‘Looking Down’ by Alice Blake

‘Morris came in from the garden shed’ by Arvon P Whitaker

‘Queen of the Nerd Prom’ by Shaun Manning

‘Fading Footprints; Downy Flakes’ by Robin Tompkins

‘The Corn Carter’ by Jane Rusbridge

Our thanks to all who entered, and congratulations to the above. The anthology will go into production next month: we'll keep you up to date with its progress.

Gav.

No cups on MY head.

I've not made a post on this blog in something approaching 47 years. This is mostly because my computer at home, which isn't actually my computer at all but is more sort of communal, has unanimously decided I'm not to have access to blogger anymore and when I'm in the office I'm generally doing something I need to be in the office for, which isn't really blogging.

This morning, however, we are out of staples, and this has caused my work-rate to grind sufficiently to a halt that I'm able to make a post. There's an elephantine pile of databasing to my left. It is unstapled. I can't database it until it's stapled. Well, technically I could, but meddling with unstapled sheaves of paper that are much better off corralled into individual stories is practically courting catastrophe. Were I to embark on such an endeavour I fancy things would get in a pretty pickle, as the young folk say. I mostly say a ghastly mess. I don't at all. I don't know why I pretend such things.

We've judged the micro-fiction, you'll be happy to know. We wanted to have announced the results by now, but we rather dimly left the stories with the member of the team who was way too busy to get the names off the database, so we're going to have to do that within the next couple of days. Then there shall be an announcement. And it'll be almost on time. We're very close to being proud. Peculiar stuff though, micro-fiction. Don't take massive offence or anything, but I'm going to point out an area where lots of you went slightly astray. You wrote too much. Not too much for the rules or anything. Just too much for the stories you were writing. It's our fault for putting the word limit up probably, but this competition did largely lack the wonderfully concise, epigrammatic little two-sentence and single paragraph stories that were by and large our favourites in the first comp. The vast majority of these stories pushed right up to the 500 word mark, and it was either more or less wordage than they truly had in them. Which is possibly a thing to think about for next time.

Another way you can make us happy is to use tab indents for new paragraphs. We'll love you more than we love satsumas if you actually use the tab button instead of hitting the space bar four times. You don't know what joy that brings to a typesetter and an editor. Really you don't. And don't address us as 'Dear Sirs', because half of us are nothing of the sort. Thank you. I didn't mean to be telling you off.

As I say, we're out of staples. That's the kind of news you've been missing out on.

Sam.

Micro Fiction and Matt’s Head

Micro Fiction and Matt’s Head

The judging for the micro fiction is hotting up. Partly due to the fact that we have been sitting outdoors in this lovely weather in order to better enjoy the entries. Partly due to the fact that there is a finalists pile! No names to be revealed yet. Well, we don’t even know the names because we don’t look until after the stories are chosen. So, all you eager micro writers and writers of micro fiction, any moment now…

Also micro fiction is so fun that we have now opened another competition for it. This time, watch out, it is even more micro. Only 300 words. Ha, there’s a challenge for you.

Also, if you want to see just how it’s done, we have just had a further print run of ‘The Final Theory’ back from the printers. This book contains all the winners and commended entries from our first micro competition. There’s some great, impressive and very compact work in there. You can buy it straight from our site (we get more money that way) or from Amazon (they get more money that way).

Finally, Matt’s head was in no way damaged any further than it usually is by balancing all those cups on it. Could the person who promised to buy a copy of ‘The Better Craftsman’ if Matt could perform this amazing exploit please do so. Because we won.

Any further office challenges will only be taken up if the challengers promise to buy books.
Don’t tell Matt I said this, but, he claims to be able to do a headstand … that is surely worth buying a few anthologies for. Aside from which they are great to read.

Ceci.