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"Nonsensically Challenged Volume 1" out now

3/6/2017

 
Further to the wildly successful Not-Entirely-Serious Wantonly-Rule-Breaking Adverb Writing Challenge, and the resulting two anthologies (Volume 1 and Volume 2), here's the next book-of-a-challenge to feature. Which, rather than adverbs, is this time principally concerned with...

... nonsense!

This anthology, Nonsensically Challenged Volume 1, is a collection of the first 100 mini-stories submitted as part of "Lesley's Nifty Nib-Nibbling Nonsensical Narrative Challenge", to give it its full stupendously silly title. In partnership with the writer Lesley Truchet, this time writers were invited to be as daft or as surreal as they like, provided the story maintained a coherent plot and satisfying conclusion.

It's available as both a paperback and an eBook for your Kindle... and all profits are in aid of The Daisy Garland, a charity whose aim is to support lives affected by drug-resistant epilepsy. Click here for the dedicated page on Chris's website for details of where to buy.

So, do buy a copy... or preferably, more than one copy... and add some nonsense to your bookshelf and e-reader, for a very worthy cause.

(PS: Volume 2 is already chugging along apace...  everybody is welcome to unleash their Inner Silly and submit here.)
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...and now "Adverbially Challenged Volume 2"!

30/3/2017

 
After the heartening success of the first "Adverbially Challenged" anthology (that's the book of the collective works of "Mike's Not-Entirely-Serious Wantonly-Rule-Breaking Adverb-Writing-Challenge", with the "Mike" in question being, somehow, me)...

...here we go again!

"Adverbially Challenged Volume 2" is now out in both paperback and as a Kindle eBook. That's 100 more adverb-packed mini-stories, this time generously donated by 72 writers, all in aid of the fabulous charity First Story.

Please do click through to the page on Chris Fielden's site and buy a paperback and/or eBook copy via any of the links available - or go direct to Amazon here - it's all in a great cause.

And if you don't already need a further reason: the stories are great, too. Who knew breaking writing "rules" could be so inventive and entertaining?

(PS: Volume 3 is already well underway! All writers are welcome to unleash their excess adverbs and submit here.)
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"Adverbially Challenged Vol 1" - out now!

18/11/2016

 
Well, I never thought we'd end up with this!

Back in April 2016, I wrote an article for Chris Fielden's website - a site chock-a-block with writing advice, competition listings, and services.

My article was imaginatively titled "How to Research, Write, and Publish a Short Story". 

About half way down, I put in something a bit daft. "You could even," I wrote, "write a story in which the majority of words are an adverb. Go on, I dare you."

(In mitigation, all I was trying to do was make a meandering point about the "consensus" of good-practice writing guidelines... but in hindsight, I do admit now it came out a bit weird.)

Anyway, such wanton-rule-breakage certainly caught writers' imaginations far and wide, because here is the result: "Adverbially Challenged Volume 1". 91 writers; 100 flash fictions; many, many adverbs.

All proceeds go to the charity First Story. Please do click through to the page on Chris Fielden's site and buy a paperback and/or eBook copy via any of the links available - or go direct to Amazon here - it's all in a great cause.

(PS: my own story, "Giving it the Adverbals", is my first - and in all likelihood, last - attempt at a pun-packed prose-poem.)

(PPS: Volume 2 is already well underway! All writers are welcome to unleash their excess adverbs and submit here.)
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"Beat the Brainbox" published in "Separations" from The Fiction Desk

19/9/2016

 
Announcing the latest of my short stories to appear in the fabulous anthology series The Fiction Desk.

My story this time, a cautionary tale about social media, is a particularly short one: at not-quite 1000 words, it came runner up last year in The Fiction Desk's flash fiction competition.

It is now published in their tenth anthology "Separations" alongside ten fabulous other stories. You can order a copy via the usual outlets, through The Fiction Desk themselves here, or better yet - subscribe.
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"Me, Robot" republished online - plus an article and a challenge...

18/4/2016

 
An unfathomably long time ago (that'll be nearly four years), the short story publisher The Fiction Desk accepted, and subsequently published, my short story "Me, Robot" in their fourth volume "Crying Just Like Anybody". It's a process I recall well: from the moment I pinged it off to them, to the immensely satisfying moment it appeared in print a few months later.

Now in 2016, the writer Chris Fielden has re-published the story in full on his website (a site chock full of magazine listings, competition listings, writing advice, and services: invaluable for both the emerging and established writer). Alongside my story, you can read my advice-for-writers article: "How to Research, Write & Publish a Short Story", using my experiences with "Me, Robot" and The Fiction Desk as case study examples.

Additionally, as an added "bonus": within my article, whilst making a somewhat meandering point about writing "rules", I inadvertently challenged the reader to write a short story consisting "mostly" of that most frowned-upon, horribly-overused, tool-of-telling-rather-than-showing, word type that, as writers, we're always being told to cut out of our work: the adverb.

Thus "Mike's Not-Entirely-Serious Wantonly-Rule-Breaking Adverb-Writing Challenge" is born. (Who knows what beast I've helped unleash upon the unsuspecting literary world.)

Having had a crack at my own challenge (you can read my effort, "Giving it the Adverbals", alongside other writers' adverb-riddled efforts on the same page), I would say that there could be a point to the exercise after all: try this once, you're not going to want to write another adverb ever again.

If you're a writer (or even if you're not) and fancy a go, please do. All efforts will be published on Chris's site.
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