Thursday 5 September 2013

Looking Ahead

As promised in the previous post, in this post I'll look ahead to the coming weeks and months. Starting with tonight.

I'm going to the (re)launch of the North Bristol Creative Writing Group, which kicks off tonight. Although I don't know how often I'll be able to attend in future, it's closer than Bristol Parkway station — the most common reason I pass through Filton — and promises to be significantly more interesting.

In a couple of weeks time, on Wednesday 18th September, I'll be doing a reading in Winterbourne as part of the South Gloucestershire Discover Festival. I'll be reading along with Philip Douch, Louise Gethin, Sarah Hilary and Pauline Masurel. Three of the five of us read at BristolFlash, but this time the focus will be on not-quite-so-short short stories.

The week following, on the other hand, will be flashier. I'm taking part in a flash slam in Brighton at the FlashLit Fiction evening event on Thursday 26th September. Careful readers will note that the similarity between Bristol and Brighton is limited to a few letters, and they are somewhat geographically separated. As it happens I'll be in Oxfordshire, which is also not close to Brighton, but has the virtue of being not quite so far away. A rush-hour drive around the M25 should add to the intensity of my reading. There are three rounds in the slam, with the numbers whittled down in each round, each flash piece restricted to a maximum of 300 words. Whatever happens, the evening promises to be a good one.

The Bristol Festival of Literature is happening in October. I'm hoping to attend a couple of things, including a one-day writing event, "The Kraken Rises!", and an open mic, "Word Karaoke". There's more that I would like to attend than I can, but I was lucky enough to see a kind of dry run of the Bristol Writers' Group planned "Fear: tales in the caves" last night at Word of Mouth. As with last year, the last Saturday of the festival — 26th October — coincides/collides/cohabits a space in time with BristolCon. I plan to spend most of the day at the con, ducking out to go to one or two litfest events.

Speaking of BristolCon, and following on from the previous post about BristolCon Fringe, I'll be reading at the fringe on Monday 16th December with Joanne Hall. In the pipeline for April we're planning a flash fiction version of the fringe, a kind of BristolFlash SF&F mashup. Watch this space and this space for more news.

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