| It's "It's Hulloween", so that must mean only one thing... (OK, two things, but for the purposes of this entry, one.) It's the publication of Chris Fielden's annual "To Hull and Back" anthology! Now in its fifth year, "To Hull and Back" remains one of the only opportunities to reward, and specifically publish, comedy short fiction - certainly in the UK, if not the world. Once again, I was fortunate to be on the judging panel, where the standard (to coin a cliché), really does seem to increase year on year. Special front-cover congratulations this year goes to the overall winner, John Holland, with his poignantly funny story "Lips". The other nineteen shortlisted stories are well worth a read too... Take a look at Chris's page for the various links on Amazon, to buy as a paperbook book, Kindle file, or PDF. |  |
This month, I've been online, via a variety of media... Firstly, here's the resulting video of Chris Fielden's "To Hull and Back" competition, which I won last year. Can a literary award get any cooler than this? Then came a Tweet-length story I sent to Shirley Golden (@shirl1001), which I was pleased to see she marked as one of her favourites. The remit was to place Thor, the Norse god of thunder, in an unusual setting. (This was part of the intriguing "Nine Realms", a Viking-themed collaborative project combining art, poetry, and stories, which is well worth a look.) My tweet is below, but you can read all the very entertaining efforts at the Artipeeps website.  Finally, I wrote an article entitled "What Makes a Good Short Story?" for the online literary magazine The Red Line. I'm not entirely sure I succeeded in addressing the question, but I did manage to shoehorn in references to pies, Ferraris and ninjas. So that's OK.
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