Wednesday 25 September 2019

Reading in Worcester tonight (Wednesday 25th September)


I'll be reading at this month's "42" Event at Drummonds: The Swan with Two Nicks, Worcester tonight, at 7:30pm.  I'll be reading "The Hole in the Wall", the only story I wrote this Summer (yes, a pretty disastrous Summer from a creative point of view), so I'm hoping it is well received.  That would at least make my total lack of creative progress over the last few months somewhat more tolerable.

UPDATE: Well, that was encouraging!  It may have been the only story I wrote this Summer (and only 1300 words at that!) but it went down really well.  Unfortunately, as I'm now back at work I didn't have the chance to rehearse reading it and it was only when I printed it off that I realised it was 1300 words rather than sub-1000, which I knew would be pushing it for a 6 minute slot.  As such, I did race through it a bit in order to not over-run which meant I committed the cardinal sin of talking over audience laughter.  That said, there WAS at least some some audience laughter, and quite a lot more than I thought there would be.  A lot of people came up to me afterwards to say how much they enjoyed it and I had several people telling me to get it published ASAP.  Of course, that leaves the question of where I should submit it.  While it is in my usual Twilight Zone / semi-surreal / Bizarro vein, it's not quite overtly Bizarro enough to be considered by many Bizarro publishers but is too odd for many publishers of more mainstream "literary" fiction.  Also, while it does need an extra polish and round of editing, I don't see it getting below 1200 words which puts it in that awkward "longer than flash" / "shorter than a short story" category.

Still, a really fun night with a generally very high quality of poetry and prose as well as some very encouraging feedback.

Next week I will hopefully be reading at a new spoken word event, The Long and the Short of It, at Cafe Bolero in Worcester. 




This one has the unique selling point of focusing entirely on longer poetry and prose with 12 minute slots.  This will be a nice opportunity to move beyond flash fiction and read some old favourites from the Ugly Stories for Beautiful People such as "It", "BobandJane" and "Foetal Attractions."  More news once the slot has been confirmed.