Well, October 31st has been and gone, during which something very earnest and important in the UK political landscape should have apparently happened but did not, BUT, something of a great deal more importance in the UK literary scene very much DID happen. Indeed, not even a mad squadron of a thousand flaming hogs could have prevented it from doing so.

I refer, of course, to Chris Fieden's To Hull & Back competition anthology for humorous short fiction.

Again I was asked to be on the judging panel, and ever, putting the shortlist of 20 into any semblance of order was super, super tough. The team got there in the end though, and it with congratulations we welcome Alan MacGlas, with his story "Casandra's Week", as this year's overall winner.

Here's the link for Chris's page where you can choose how and where to buy this year's collection, including the first time in print of one of my own early stories, "Poverty Gap", first published by the sport fiction website Strange Bounce.

Earlier this year I had the honour of attending the legendary Bristol-based, Stokes Croft Writers-run, spoken-word, storytelling event, Talking Tales, where I read out of my stories to a large and appreciative audience.

I'm pleased to say I will be making my return, on the 20th August to be precise, where I will be reading my contributions to the two most recent "Challenged" anthologies (this one and this one), and will also be introducing other contributors to read from these fab books.

As well as acting as the launch party for these two anthologies, the line-up also includes many other authors (reading their stories which may or may not necessarily adhere strictly to the 'no adverbs/no purple prose' so-called 'rule' that we've broken so elegantly in our anthology series - but who knows, unless you go along to find out?) As ever, it'll be a great night.

All details are on the Facebook event page, here. Hope to see you there!

The series of "Challenged" anthologies have now reached their 9th, no less... this one, the second "Sensorially Challenged" collection, is a collection of 100 stories by 100 authors, after they were encouraged to be as florid and as purple as possible in their prose.

Pretty rule-breaking stuff, huh? But that, as ever, is the idea.

​All proceeds are donated to The National Literacy Trust. Click through here to Chris Fielden's site, for details of where to buy in either paperback, or for your Kindle.