Why am I doing this, you may ask? Well, I wanted to know, partly for my own selfish reasons. I had heard mutterings about the lack of lit mags in this area compared to the US, but then I started hearing about new lit mags and more new lit mags.... and then I started doing a bit of research. And since I am living in the UK now, I want to know about everything that's going on. I want to know if it's true that the "short fiction scene" is dozing. Well, I think you'll see from what I gathered below that that is far from true.

I should qualify: when I say "lit mags", my definition is a magazine that publishes fiction, or fiction and poetry. There are a wealth of poetry-only magazines, see The Poetry Library for listings of poetry mags. I am not including them here because I wanted to keep this list to those which publish short stories. I also included the few live lit events I know about - since these are also "publication" opportunities for short story writers. Where possible, I have lifted the description from Duotrope, the essential writer's resource, and done my best to say if the magazine pays contributors - although "paying" could mean a monetary reward that is very very small!......................

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A first glance at the magazine discounts some of the literary events straight away – too far; too posh; too expensive; too crowded. I don’t want a gala dinner. I don’t want to hear the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire talking to David Blunkett. Too many places feature Margaret Drabble and/or Gervase Phinn. The dedicated-to-one-author ones look good, and likely to attract enthusiasts instead of poseurs – Dickens at Broadstairs, Grahame Greene at Berkhamstead, My top favourite would be the Harrogate Crimewriting Festival, except it’s in one (at least) of the discounted categories .


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Something’s happened to me over the last couple of months. I am no longer an aspiring Women’s Fiction novelist with simply four unpublished books under my bed. Now I’m an aspiring writer.

What’s changed? It started when I saw the movie Twilight and was captivated by the characters and plot. I scribbled down the first three chapters to a young teen book which eventually morphed into one for young adults. And yes, *chuckle*, there was a werewolf.

Then, suddenly, I thought of a story for a competition I’d been meaning to enter. 1000 words was the limit. Never, in five years of concentrated writing, have I been able to complete a short story as I always failed to come up with of a satisfactory ending. Since completing and entering that tale, however, I have submitted another to Fiction Feast. I am also about to take part in another competition with a limit of 1500 words.


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(full blog includes a gory pic of my wound!)

(okay, it's not that gory)

I haven’t written much for a few days due to a slight mishap at the beginning of the week.

We were making fruit salads at school. But as knives are dangerous, a responsible adult was needed to prepare the fruit into sizeable chunks...

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In A New Use for An Old Christmas Tree I was thinking of how I'd explain, to someone who doesn't understand, how I can be celebrating that the work-in-progress is finished, when it isn't finished. And the more I thought about the image of having built a house, the more I found that the 'snag-list' metaphor fits beautifully.

I have two friends who routinely use the phrase: one is an architect, and as I said before, I realise that what I've done is build the house. It exists, standing four-square on the ground, with walls and roof, foundations and floors, doors and windows. What I haven't done yet is sort out the socket which doesn't work, the light which needs moving and the draughty bit in the corner of the drawing room. In doing so, I'll probably discover that one of the carpets is the wrong colour, and I know the paint in a couple of the bedrooms needs another coat. I do hope I haven't put the kitchen on the wrong side of the house, but if I realise I have, I'll just have to get out the lump hammer and the wrecking bar, and do some rebuilding. And after that, it'll need a builder's clean: scrubbing windows and washing down skirtings so that everything sparkles, except for the nicely distressed ironwork which I got from an architectural salvage yard. And then I'll put it on the market.

This is, if you like, what our readers want to buy: a whole, small world. I suspect that it's why it's so incredibly difficult to get short stories published as a collection. On the whole, readers - maybe wrongly - feel that reading a short story is like being given a table in a delightful restaurant for an evening; a novel is like moving into someone's house for a week.

The other friend who knows all about snagging is a TV drama set designer, and that's a different kind of creating for a different kind of purpose.

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I’m in a relationship.

It’s very new indeed – only a matter of months - though we spent about a year eyeing one another and plucking up the courage to approach. There was a lot of faffing about, of blowing hot and cold, of agreeing to meet and then standing one another up. Nothing new there, then.

Now, two months in, we spend time together almost every day. I feel more and more attached – and more afraid. I find myself wondering if this can possibly be The One?

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Watching the BBC's 'Survivors' last night brought tears to my eyes. Not because it's an especially brilliant drama; but because of the eerie timing. The dispossessed, teaming up to free victims of a collapsed building; the injured, buried alive under rubble. It was painful to realise that the very same scenes I was watching on screen, the terror, despair and grief, were being played out almost identically, for real, at the very same moment in Haiti.

Inevitably, I felt guilt - what kind of heartless voyeur was I to find entertainment in a catastrophe at the very same time it was being mirrored in reality? - and it caused me to think about the role of fiction and drama in mediating reality. Fiction provides a safe place in which to experience the horrors and the joys of human existence, the extreme emotions and unlikely behaviours that we may never encounter in our own humdrum lives.

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Perhaps it was the Champagne or perhaps because my friend had introduced me as a psychologist, but she started to tell me stuff. How her boyfriend, who she had been with for about a year suddenly left her. That was more than six months ago. How he’d got involved in some quasi-political or educational group, attending their courses more and more frequently. How upset she had been that this organisation swayed him. How she was just starting to get over the guy. She questioned the psychology of someone who could just do that – just up and leave her and leave London at no notice. I was intrigued: there was a story in there and it was mine, mine, mine.


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