Things happening at the end of March

1/ The Brand New Cheltenham Poetry Festival
The good folk of Cheltenham have stabled their Gold Cup horses for another year and turned their minds to more literary pursuits. The first ever Cheltenham Poetry Festival runs from 31st March-3rd April - check the website for details.






2/ Bristol Short Story Prize Deadline
Get your entries for the Bristol Short Story Prize in by midnight on 31st march.

"The 2011 Bristol Short Story Prize is now open and this year's writing competition introduces some exciting new developments.

The prize money has doubled for 2011 - the winning writer will receive £1,000 and all 20 writers whose stories are published in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 4 will receive at least £100. The winning story will, also, be published in Bristol Review of Books and Venue magazine. And short story fans can look forward to ShortStoryVille- a day-long festival celebrating short stories, to be held next July. The 2011 BSSP awards ceremony will be the final event of the festival.

The 2011 judging panel is Maia Bristol (former UK Sales Manager at Faber & Faber), award-wining short story writer Tania Hershman (highly commended in the 2009 Orange Prize for her collection 'The White Road and other stories') author, illustrator and cartoonist Joe Berger and writer and publisher Helen Hart. Chair of the judging panel, writer, performer and publisher Bertel Martin, says: “I’m really looking forward to judging this year’s competition. BSSP attracts really strong, diverse and exciting submissions from all over the world.”

3/ Fish Publishing International Poetry Contest Deadline
In less South Westerly-based news, the deadline for the Fish Publishing International Poetry Contest is looming - get your entries in by 30th March 2011.

Inkspill Magazine and 3LBE Reviews

I recently received my Real Paper Format copy of Inkspill Magazine issue 3, which is looking every bit as beautiful as the first two issues. You can download the pdf of Inkspill 3 for free or order your copy through their website.


My poem, Kirkstone Pass Inn, (p.39) is inspired by the wonderful and dramatic inn that sits atop Kirkstone Pass in Cumbria, UK. I have just sent them a copy of the magazine - I hope they like the poem!



I have just been reading a couple of reviews of Three Lobed Burning Eye issue 20 and my story, The Birdstories of Jaywalker.

Rise Reviews says,
Issue #20 begins with the short tale, “The Birdstories of Jaywalker” by Jennifer Stakes, wherein a bird-man by the name of Jay attends a story telling festival in order to collect stories to bring to his masters who use them as a form of currency. Stakes sensory language is well deployed and we get a sense of the festival being a kind of sustenance to those to attend. We are left intrigued by the metaphor of language as currency and what kind of higher level beings are responsible for this system. “Birdstories” is a strong lead off to the issue.

I got a particular kick out of being called 'Stakes', like a Real Writer, or else someone in a boarding school who has just stolen a biscuit from the tuck shop.

Locus Online writes,
Jay, who does not seem to be a bird, is a wandering storyteller. He has a mystery. It is not clear why his stories are bird, or capitalized. Some nice prose. Although the author tells us that “He moved with the rhythmic patience of those who never get to where they are going, and are not sad when they don’t arrive,” in fact he is quite urgent about reaching his final destination in time.

The story was inspired by the Welsh Storytelling Festival, Beyond the Border, which I went to a few years ago, and the old myth that Jays take stories and news down to the underworld. It is still one of my favourites.

100 Stories for Queensland

Greg McQueen and his team have responded to the devastating flooding in Queensland, Australia by doing what they do best - launching an appeal for upbeat stories for 100 Stories for Queensland.

From their website:
100 Stories for Queensland is headed by Brisbane resident and co-owner of eMergent Publishing, Jodi Cleghorn, and UK author, Trevor Belshaw. The management team is made up of Maureen Vincent-Northam, David W Robinson and Nick Daws who all worked on the Haiti and Pakistan anthologies with McQueen. They are assisted by a growing band of 20 volunteer readers and editors from across the globe. McQueen is working behind the scenes, organising the audio book and podcasts in conjunction with UK author and podcaster Em Newman.
100% of the profit from the sale of the anthology will be donated to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal.

Check out the website to find out more about the submissions process. Please follow their guidelines and submissions manager rather than emailing them your story.

Queensland is particularly dear to my heart as I spent around five months there back in 2002 doing conservation work with Conservation Volunteers Australia. I lived out in the bush in a tent during the week and spent my days clearing invasive species from the rainforest, planting trees, mulching and making paths for wheelchair users to access the parks. I fell in love with the stunning scenery and was even filmed by the Australian version of The Really Wild Show teaching children how to plant trees.
If you happened to be watching on Christmas Eve, 2002, that was me in the bright blue CVA t-shirt, looking a bit embarrassed.
I have so many happy, wonderful memories of my time in Australia, especially in Queensland. My thoughts are with all the friends I met there.

I am in the middle of writing a tale set in a cinema to submit to 100 Stories for Queensland. I love being made to write upbeat stories as it doesn't come naturally. I still remember the rush of feeling I had as I wrote the ending to my 50 Stories for Pakistan tale, Lines, and it was so vastly better than any dreary conclusion I would have brought if I hadn't been prompted to finish it on a high note.

You have until midnight (Aussie time) Friday 28th January to submit a story of between 500 and 1000 words. Do it! Do it now!

Snow Ho Ho Horror

Heathrow Airport this week. They also have snowploughs, they assure us. (Photo: theaustralian.com.au)









Passengers camped out on the floor, sometimes for 4 days or more. These people look remarkably chipper. (Photo: BBC News)

Because of scenes like this, I am still very much in the USA, where it is cold but sunny. The country has that well-practiced look of hunkering down for weeks of sub-zero temperatures and blizzards. We have all drained our outside pipes and have the snow shovels ready. Many people own their own snow blowers and plough attachments for their all-terrain vehicles. No waiting for the council to come around here.

I may not be at London Heathrow Airport, but at least I am not at London Heathrow Airport, if you see what I mean. It could be worse. We have delayed our trip home to the UK, our first in 18 months, by a week to let the snow chaos die down. There were several frustrating days of sitting on hold to airline companies when flight after flight was cancelled. We are now due back on Christmas Day and I am very much hoping Father Christmas will be coming round the plane with treats for all the good boys and girls.

Good luck with all your travel plans, wherever you may be.

So I am catching up on my duties as Assistant Editor at MicroHorror, reading through submissions. I have been on board for a couple of weeks now and it is very interesting being on the other end of the submissions process. This sort of Horror is preferable to sitting in snow drifts on the M6 motorway for 12 hours.

I get excited about the ones with strong openings, imaginative language or plot devices and good characterisation. I really want them to live up to their promise and end satisfyingly. (We don't get a lot of happy endings in Horror, but I do love a satisfying ending).

Generally I try to write something positive about the ones I send rejections for. Often stories are well written but are let down by their ending. I see a lot of cliched endings. Many have good language but are descriptions rather than stories, or the beginning of a story.

Anyway, I am learning a lot about what makes a good piece of flash fiction.

So Happy Christmas! I'll see you all in the New Year, when I hope to be well fed on mince pies, Yorkshire puddings, Cadburys chocolate, Christmas pudding and all the other seasonal goodies we miss. Not to mention the Doctor Who Christmas Special. I am very excited.










Even the Doctor has problems in the snow.
(news.thedoctorwhosite.co.uk)

Story Comments

There is a blog called Story Comments that delivers intriguing little eggcups of quotes and observations from books, films and other media.

Their post, Other Story Commentators, on 11th December was taken from me talking about flash fiction, here on Writer In The Wilderness.

Universities and education

I really, really wanted to write a post about the government's decision to slash the teaching and research grants to universities and shift the cost onto students. I have been too unspeakably angry so far to write anything coherent. I understand that saving money at the moment is essential, given the country's finances, though I fail to see how allowing the super rich to get out of paying taxes is justifiable, given the current climate. There seems to still be money sloshing around in the upper echelons.

Personally, I believe that people should be encouraged to reach their full potential irrespective of financial circumstances. I believe that the country as a whole benefits from providing well-funded education that is accessible to all. I also believe that the value of education extends far beyond an individual's earning power and that the value of a university education is greater than the degree obtained at the end of the course.

Here is a wonderfully comprehensive breakdown of the current situation, written by an American who is studying for his post-doc at the London School of Economics. It is a far more thorough analysis of the situation than anything I could have written.

The blogger commented under his first post on the subject, As one of the Lords said last night, the government’s plan appears to take all the worst parts of the American system without adding any of the things that mitigate those deficiencies.

The picture above is of me at my graduation ceremony in 2006, when I received my Masters in medieval and early modern history. I fear we medievalists are a dying breed.

First Draft Completed

Just finished the first draft of my dystopian novel set in an alternative present where government has been privatised and society run as a business.
A troublesome underclass is making themselves felt.

111,000 words. Editing begins...

'Shitty First Drafts'

That road ahead can seem to go on forever. This one actually does, as it was taken in North Dakota (check out the squashed bug on the windscreen) and no-one has ever driven all the way across North Dakota.*

So it is with writing a novel, and this is where we come to the idea of 'Shitty First drafts'. The term is in inverted commas because a) my mum reads this and I used a Bad Word, and b) because it is a much-cited quotation taken from Anne Lamott's book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

It is a hugely helpful concept. Basically, all those elegant, eloquent, finely-plotted, wonderfully characterised novels you read start out as shitty first drafts, much as cakes start out as a pile of ingredients and mixing bowls on the sideboard you haven't washed down yet and still has a half-chewed cat toy on it.

In this day and age we have such things as computers and, unlike JRR Tolkien, who couldn't afford a typist and could only re-type the completed draft with no mistakes once to send to his publisher (I think I am remembering that correctly, please feel free to tell me off if it isn't true), we can edit to our hearts' content.

Whatever we write can be taken out, re-written, expanded, contracted and deleted from history. Essentially, it doesn't matter that your first draft is awful, vomit-inducing nonsense, somewhere in there are the rough diamonds that can be polished once the extraneous dirt and bobbly bits have been cleaned off. And it isn't just us, everyone writes shitty first drafts. (Almost everyone, but we're not interested in those people today as perfection is unspeakably dull).

My experimentation with NaNoWriMo enforced this Just Write! idea. I found myself able to write over difficult hurdles that I might previously have stumbled on because there, as a prop under my typing hands, was the idea that I can always change it if it doesn't work. No-one will know, it's ok. (Don't worry about future PhD students who might be doing their thesis on you after you've won the Nobel Prize for Literature. For one, all your notes will be on the computer, which you'll have upgraded several times by then, and for another, no-one will be able to afford to do arts and humanities subjects in the future and PhDs in English will be obsolete.)

How did NaNo go? I wrote 30,000 words in November, well below the winning magic number of 50,000. But I don't feel like a loser. Currently the novel stands at 110,000 words. I am finishing off the final chapters and am planning to write THE END by Friday next week, which is when I am going home to Blighty for Christmas. Then the Slightly Better But Still Shoddy Second Draft begins.

*They have.

Announcement!

I am delighted to announce that I am the new Assistant Editor at MicroHorror!

I am coming aboard Nathan Rosen's terrifying little ship to give him a hand working through submissions, helping to get your tales up, swabbing the virtual decks and other dastardly duties.


So send in your stories and scare us!

Click here to see my photo of my new boss, taken at the Piratz Tavern a few weeks ago.

Three-lobed Burning Eye Annual - vol. V

It's here! Light the fire, close the curtains, pour a glass of mulled wine and settle down with some speculative weirdness from the Three-Lobed Burning Eye Annual volume five.
It contains thirty stories of horror, suspense, dark fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism.
Perfect for those dark winter evenings.
Look out for my story, The Birdstories of Jaywalker.