“Now you’ll stay in at night,” Joe told Houdini, the big, orange, cantankerous-looking tabby he was trying to stuff into a carrier. Not flippin’ likely, said Houdini, although of course he didn’t because he was a cat … On Every Day Fiction today. Continue reading ‘Cat Nav’ flash fiction on EDF
When I started my degree, I had every intention of going back to nursing, once I’d absorbed this stuff called psychology that would make it possible to handle problems sparked by inexplicable aversions to red underwear. I applied for the Diploma in Advanced Nursing which pre-dated the degree and for which a Sister’s post was required. Kings offered me that post, should I get on the course. I also applied for PhD places, encouraged by a seismic shift in the third year when I suddenly ‘got it’ and a post graduate life seemed possible. Chelsea college offered me one of its first Doctoral places … Continue reading After the bedpan years
‘Jesus loves her, Jesus loves her, Jesus loves the murdering bitch.’ Emmy chuckles to herself in that private way only people whose heads are somewhere else can do. She hunches up on the bed and grabs her knees; pulling them up to her chin, and hugging them like babies. ‘Pretty boys,’ she says; and bites into her knee cap. On Ether Books September 2012 Continue reading ‘The Justice Box’
Well, you know the rest. October 12th is a watershed date: my last as a paid NHS employee, and my first as a pensioner/student with aspirations to hang out in cafes, writing and wearing odd-looking hats. I have projects to finish – an online training package for capacity interviewing, and a working virtual clinical area for researchers, clinicians, and service users – so I have honorary contracts in place to keep professional links with Sussex Partnership & Brighton university. About the same time, it’s back to school with a new satchel and pencil case, on the tail of an MA in … Continue reading So long, and thanks for …
The third EscapePod flash fiction competition opens to voting on September 20th. There are ninety-six SF stories (two of them mine, and no I can’t tell you!) all 750 words or under, competing in ten preliminary rounds. The first three of each go to the semi finals, and the top two from each of these, to the final. Join EP forums (free) to vote, then stick around for some quality podcasts – three of which you might have chosen yourself! http://escapepod.org/ Obviously, it helps if you like science fiction so if you don’t, while the rest of us put our critic hats on, you … Continue reading Escape Pod flash competition
‘I keep thinking we should have left it to die, you know, rather than do what we did …’ on Read Short Fiction today. A tale of a personal road to hell paved with the best of intentions. What choices would you have made? Continue reading ‘Baby Bird’: new SF short story
Anyone who writes short stories, flash, or essays knows about the hunt for a market and the cycle of amendment and revision that goes on each time a piece comes back. Then eventually, (when the moon is blue, all the planets are aligned, and you remembered to bury a raw steak at the end of the garden), that wonderful, beautiful acceptance from the most discerning of editors (obviously) pops into the inbox. You landed one! Selection of a market, in my experience, goes from aspirational to ‘that’ll do’, with ‘that’ll do’ becoming increasingly aspirational as the rejections mount up. Sooner or later, anything with a permalink … Continue reading Student Publishers: what are their responsibilities to authors?
This is experimental, it is a conversation between a psychiatrist and her patient, but they are not quite alone. The experiment is in the instruction at the end, if you would be so kind as to read on: Please come in, Phil. Take a seat take a seat very neat over here look at him he’s walking funny lame bastard Phil, talk to me, what brings you here today? Piss off! What do you care? in her lair you walked in Walking. Walking, Phil? Talk walk you’re an orc ha-fucking-ha What are you looking at? You’re all the same, think … Continue reading ‘Silent Noise’: a dialogue-only experiment
Promotion Fliss compressed her short, squat frame further into the burned out hollow of the hull, shoving Hennessey’s evacuated carcass aside and flicking indeterminate debris casually off her weapons harness. She holed up to consider strategy. Fliss was a soldier; a grunt on the peri-solar defence ring where killing aliens, not caring platitudes, got you through a shift. She looked down at her uniform, or what passed for one after this morning’s skirmish, and scraped off the residue it had collected from the blast that took out her unit’s communications array. Most of her squad had gone with it and … Continue reading ‘Promotion’
Not mine, necessarily, but I’m very pleased to have been there with the Facebook commenters, the tweeters, the social commentators who raised a storm and blew away discriminatory thinking. Last week, I was passed a tweet that suggested our Paralympic gold medallists would not be honoured with individual Royal Mail stamps as the Olympians had been. I re-tweeted, inviting Royal Mail to tell us this wasn’t true. After all, who could think that was reasonable? Who would put forward a proposal that acknowledged the outstanding efforts of one group and sidelined those of another? But it was true – Royal Mail, in a massive gesture of celebration, had been delivering individualised sets … Continue reading When writing makes a difference: Royal Mail & the Paralympians
Dr Suzanne Conboy-Hill 