News and Features

Cell Phone Novels, the Biology Behind ‘The Tortured Genius’ and How Yawning Can Up Your Creativity

I came across a few interesting things in my reading this week – not least of which was an article in the Huffington post this week exploring a new reading phenomenon in Japan – Cell Phone Novels . Sound weird? They certainly are – they sit somewhere between the poetic concision of a haiku and the manic social gracelessness of a tweet – but that said the most popular text novel, It's Your Fault ( Kimi no Sei ) by Sakura Imo, has been read 17...

Interview with Julian Jordan of Write Out Loud

Last week I had the good fortune to speak with Julian Jordan, the co-founder of Write Out Loud , a grassroots organisation dedicated to encouraging poetry in the UK – mainly through a very extensive and very user-friendly gig guide, though they also host their own events and feature reviews, poet profiles and literary news. They’re the UK’s largest live poetry resource, and if you’ve any interest in poetry at all, the site is very worth...

Writing in the Digital Age, Saltwater and My Baby Shot Me Down

I sat down to write a blog last week in Tunisia, under the creaking ceiling fan hung over my hotel’s solitary computer terminal (wifi has yet to take off in North Africa), and though I baffled my way through the Arabic keyboard the internet flickered off just as I hit post, a setback redoubled by the autonomous reboot of the system and a user-lockout, which left me sitting there scratching my head. And now that I’m back in the land of the...

My Baby Shot Me Down - An Anthology by Women Writers

Last week, Blinding Books (run by ABC's very own Richard Penny, aka Blighter's Rock ) published an anthology by ten excellent women writers, many of them from ABC, called My Baby Shot Me Down . It's quite easily the ABC publishing event of the year. No breakfast nook, den or garden is worth sitting in without a copy in your hands. You'll find a lot of familiar names inside - the book features Clarissa Angus, Katherine Black, Maggy van Eijk,...

Nibfest, Tunisia, and Cork-Lined Rooms

For a moment there it looked like spring had sprung, but today the famed English weather has returned to London. Is it harder or easier to write when the sun is in? I am torn between the inspiration of the solitary, introverted winter's morning, seeing the cold dawn in with a steaming cup of coffee and my notebook before setting off for the office - and that totally different sort of pleasure when the mind is freed to dream up narratives while...

Editing in the Hills, A New Competition and Easter

Happy Easter, all. I hope you’ve been enjoying the sun and a little extra time to your own devices. I’ve taken a few kilos of writing up into the Cumbrian hills with me, and have been alternating between editing other people’s work and trying to get my own notes and jottings and half-formed scenes into some kind of order. It’s a good weekend for resurrections. Michelangelo's take on an age-old theme If you haven’t heard the news, we’ve just made...

100 Years On – An ABCtales Competition

I’m glad to make a call for entries to ABCtales’ latest prose and poetry competition, 100 Years On . 2014 marks the centennial of the First World War — and ABCtales will mark that occasion by inviting writers to incorporate the event into their work. There’s no set way that the war should be treated - pieces do not even need to be directly related to the war in any way - but we do ask that there is at least some mention made, however...

Prizes, Publication, and Member-Only ABC Stories

This week I’m glad to announce a new feature on ABCtales – which is the option to make pieces accessible only to other logged-in members of ABCtales. We’ve had a lot of discussions about what counts as digital publishing in the past, and how that works with ABC. Many users have asked me how they could avoid getting notes saying there work was already published on ABC when submission time rolls around. Having a piece available to ABC members only...

Luigi Pagano on Self-Publishing

Every now and then I get a query about self-publishing: how to go about it, who to approach, what to look out for. So I asked Luigi Pagano, a fantastic ABCtales poet who has published half a dozen collections with different presses over the past ten years, if he might share some of his experiences with the ABC community. And he happily obliged: I’m Luigi – some of you may know me already – but for those who don’t I’ve been an ABCtales member for...

04.04.14 Story, Poem and Inspiration Point of the Week

Before I get in to this week’s picks I wanted to let you all know that the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2014 is now open for submissions in three categories: poetry, fiction and life writing. Wasafiri is a fantastic magazine with an international bent, and the competition is open to anyone worldwide who has not published a complete book in their chosen category. The deadline is July 2014, word limit is 3000 for fiction and life writing entries and...

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