Because I edit an awful lot of short stories, I don’t tend to enter competitions (I think I’ve entered two in my whole writing career – one, happily, resulted in this – thank you, Fiction Desk – you can buy the book here). It was a very easy decision to make because, ethically, if I’m helping someone who I know is going to enter a competition then I can’t enter anything myself because then I would be in competition with the very person I’m supposed to be helping and there ends up being (however unintentional) a conflict of interests. As I said, it’s a no brainer.
So, I am very happy that my short story, Carmine’s Fruit, has been shortlisted over at the Artificium Short Story Prize. They do good things over there. Check them out. And it makes me happy, too, that it’s slightly longer than the average Nik Perring story and very much a fairy tale type affair. Congrats to the rest of the shortlistees. I am looking forward to the big announcement.
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And in other news…
If anyone knows anyone aged 14-19 in South Yorkshire who writes, would like to write, might fancy trying, enjoys words, stories, poems, free verse, spoken word, – anything then do send them this way. All abilities are welcome, of course.
I’ve worked with a couple of these groups, courtesy of Writing Yorkshire, and I’ve seen what happens first hand, and I couldn’t recommend them highly enough. The environment’s perfect, the teaching’s spot on, and the groups are fab and the members friendly and talented. (And, shush, I’ll be doing at least a little bit again with them soon too. What’s not to like?)
Do please spread the word.