Haiku

I haven't been in the best of writing moods lately... But it does please me when something of mine is finally published, even if it's a tiny little haiku, like this one that's just appeared in 7 x 20.

Here it is.

Miracle

Wow! I'm in LITRO's Climate Issue. I submitted without having any high hopes, in fact without any hope whatsoever... and there I am, together with the brilliant Tania Hershman and other talented writers. Thank you to the editors of this great publication: you really made my day, my month, my year...

It's a small miracle.

Y is for Youth

Metazen is preparing an e-book of Male + Female stories, written by men and women. You have to choose a word from a list of words each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet... and write a story of up to 5 paragraphs.

So I chose Y for Youth. It includes a Brazilian and a favela. It includes a dream.

It brought tears to somebody's eyes.

I'm (sort of) Back... with Big News

Well, what a hectic few weeks! Had a couple of acceptances, a few "maybe"s, and I think a "no".

but the Really Big News is...

... a chapbook of my "fairy-tale" related short stories is going to be published by Folded Word in 2011!

I'm really excited. Big thanks to Jessi Graustein for encouraging me from the word "go".

The Secret Goldfish

A lot on my mind lately. Good things, mostly, which keep me busy. It's good to have deadlines to work towards, and I've done some writing, editing and sending off this weekend.

Now I'm going to relax a little, before starting to worry about my next big deadline for what I think could be my biggest challenge yet.

Sorry I'm being a little secretive here, but I'll let you know more when I have more details myself.

I realised a couple of days ago that I have a used bilingual Russian-English copy of "Catcher in the Rye" bought at a book stall a few years ago. (Moscow Progress Publishers 1979)

"... He wrote this terrific book of short stories The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me..."

From The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger

Cheque Republic

You think I can't spell?

Actually, spelling has always been one of my strong points.

Well, here is my story Cheque Republic, inspired by a visit to --yes, Czech Republic.

Up in LITnIMAGE, with other great writing by Eric Beeny, David Erlewine, Greg Gerke, Tom Mahony, Glenn Vanstrum, Jared Ward and Kate Wyer.

Happy New Writing

I've been on holiday. Or more truthfully, I've been a bit lazy.
It's already the 10th of January, and it's time to think about new writing. But before I do that, here is my lovely, lucky story for 2010: Elephant in the City. It was written in 2009 but only recently published at Curly Red Stories.