Sitting alone in a room writing is one thing, having people read your work later can be nerve-wracking enough, but reading it out loud can be exhilarating and terrifying all in one.

At the recent launch of gorse #8 I was delighted to be asked to read part of my story, Cinq à Sept, and was full of confidence on the night, all the way up until two feet from the microphone. However, nerves or not I think I managed to get through it without cocking it all up, which is nice.

What’s more, there’s now a podcast of the readings on the night which you can listen to here (my own reading starts at about the 36 minute mark, but I strongly urge you to listen to the whole podcast, there was some really outstanding work on show that night, and I was humbled to be a part of it all)

After trying for many years I’m delighted to have a short story ‘Lying on a beach’ published in the Summer 2017 edition of The Stinging Fly.

The journal itself is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year and I’m really happy to have made the cut.

The journal is, as they say, available in all good bookshops, or through the journal website. I really hope as many of you as possible can pick up a copy of the journal and read my story, it’s one that really means a lot to me

I came across an interesting online journal recently, Dog-Ear, which publishes in an unusual way.

They take short pieces, prose or poetry, and publish them online. Then, every three months or so, they pick their favourite pieces and publish them as a fold-up sheet, a bookmark, which is sold directly through their site, or included in other literary journals as they are sold. A really nice way of marking your page and having something to read at the same time.

Anyway, they very kindly accepted my piece of short fiction, Part, which is currently online, I won’t know for a few months whether it’ll make the physical insert, but fingers crossed.

Enjoy, and enjoy reading the other contributors too.

http://dogear.co.uk/