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Last Minute Reminder: Short Fuse’s Nouvelle Noir tonight

I've had a lovely few days relaxing with family in Derbyshire but I need to head back to Brighton today. While the journey up here takes three hours, the return is a five hour epic – and that's without any replacement bus services. Fortunately my copy of Short Circuit arrived yesterday, so I'll have plenty of time to read that.

This evening I'll be appearing in Brighton at Short Fuse's Nouvelle Noir night:

A line-up of contemporary noir fiction, rooted in Series Noir, film noir and the pulp novels of the 40s and 50s, this Short Fuse special will see local crime writer Danny Hogan headlining. Danny will read from his pulp novel 'Killer Tease' a novella set in Brighton,where a psychopathic burlesque dancer takes her violent revenge on a string of venal males who discover they have bitten off more than they can chew. Hogan is the man behind Pulp Press, a publishing company which delivers the best and newest in pulp fiction. "From hard boiled crime to rockabilly sleaze via a few Westerns and tales of delinquency." Also featuring Brian Bell aka Charlie McQuaker, A.K.Benedict, James Burt and Tara Gould.

Doors open 8pm at the Komedia Studio Bar, and entry is £5. As I've said before, it going to be a good night with an interesting line-up. You should come! Meanwhile I'm off to East Midlands Parkway to begin my epic journey home.

Clearing tabs and catching up

The last few weeks have seemed very busy, and I’ve not had chance to post everything I meant to. So, here are some links from the last few weeks:

Last Tuesday was the sixth sparks night. There were some great stories, including my old friend @LaGirafa‘s first reading, and a couple of stories from Vanessa Gebbie (who blogged about the night here). It was also good to see Jonathan Pinnock (blog post here) who I met at London’s Liar’s league last year. Sparks Night is a friendly, well-curated evening – submissions are being accepted for Sparks 7 until November 14th.
I had some good responses to my Literature network post on seven ways to be a great writer, but my favourite was this one: “a better description would be Seven Tips for Becoming a Great Poser“. I will have to email the chap when my next post is online.
I’ve been submitting interesting snippets of overheard conversation to the Evening Argus Overheard in Brighton blog – here and here. The entry deemed unsuitable for a family newspaper was this one: “It’s like Allen Ginsberg had this magic penis and every poet that touched it became famous“
Lovely six-word-story from exmosis: “Our last photograph together. We smiled.“
Wise advice from Hawker’s pot:
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so do be careful.“

Some photos from Fear of the Dark

The last couple of weeks have felt very busy but, after a tiresome journey on East Midlands Trains, I’m now recuperating at my sister’s rural compound. I’m currently working at the kitchen table, watching the chickens while catching up on things – like posting photos from last Thursday’s Fear of the Dark event.

Things seemed to go very well. I spent most of the performance backstage, so didn’t see many of the acts, but I enjoyed what I heard. Bernadette Cremin did a fantastic series of poems about a woman called Patsy; Kay Sexton did a couple of stories, one of which she dressed as a scary old lady for; Strawberries and a Peach did two lovely musical interludes; and Glue Gun ’91 produced a fantastic imitation of a dying swan, and a poem about Ruth Ellis that featured a staged hanging.

The final section of the night was performed in complete darkness. It seemed to work well (apart from one poor member of the audience who suffered an attack of the giggles). The evening was rounded off with serving cake to the audience. I’m not sure what everyone made of it, but I was pleased with what we produced: a spoken word evening like no other.

Another accounts is here (from performance poet/novelist Lou-Ice) and there are some morning-after tweets from @eldevri and @badgermind. The photos below show: Rufus Moonshine and Ruth Ellis relaxing before the show; a view of backstage; Ruth Ellis after the performance; and Gimley Whipple, serving cake, with an axe.

Thank you to everyone who came, and everyone who performed.

Reading at Short Fuse, November 8th

I'm reading at Short Fuse at the Brighton Komedia on November 8th. The theme for the night is Nouvelle Noir and it should be an excellent evening. Also reading is AK Benedict who I saw read a fantastic story at Short Fuse Hastings earlier this year (she has a great blog-post about seagulls here).

Headlining the night is Danny Hogan from Pulp Press. I blogged about his book, Killer Tease, back in March. It's one of the most exciting books I've read all year – partly because I liked the aim of Pulp Press, to produce straightforward literature that can be enjoyed quickly and cleanly. I think the world has a need for decently-written uncomplicated fiction. I'm looking forward to seeing Danny read.

I'm also appearing, with a story called Laurence Holloway's Cartoon Babylon. It's a secret history of Hollywood, about an English actor who used to go drinking with Bugs Bunny. The current version includes an over-researched extended joke about Apocalypse Now, which I need to review before Sunday. Wikipedia makes ornate research too easy.

Doors open at 7:30pm, and entry are £5.

Axecake!

The aim of Fear of the Dark was to put on a spoken word event like no-one had seen before. As you can see from the picture, last night's event wasn't your usual spoken-word night. Thank you to Kay Sexton, Bernadette Cremin, Glue Gun '91, Strawberries & A Peach and the Marlborough Theatre for helping make it such a great night. I am going to write a proper post, but that can wait tomorrow. My plans for tonight involve watching House and soaking in the bath.

I wasn't planning to organise another night in the near future, but I had an idea for an event this afternoon…

Fear of the Dark: final preparations

The final preparations are being made for tomorrow night's Fear of the Dark event. We had a meeting last night to plan the last few details and I'm very excited. When we started work on the event we wanted to do something special and I think we've managed that – tomorrow will be different to any spoken word night you've seen.

I'd love to say more, but I have a couple more things to do before bed. The night starts 8pm at the Marlborough Theatre. For more information look here.

Write Club Fiction Workshop

Tonight I hosted a flash fiction workshop at the Skiff with Ellen de Vries as part of Write Club. The evening was something of an experiment, but it seems to have worked very well.

The night was divided into four rounds. In each round we projected a creative commons photo from flickr on a screen. Everyone in the group then wrote a story inspired by the photo. Afterwards each person took turns to read what they'd written. Apologies were banned – you read what you wrote and let it stand or fall on its merits. In the first round people spent fifteen minutes writing; after that came rounds of ten, five and finally two minutes.

I'd expected the finished work to be scrappy, sometimes left unfinished when the time expired. I also expected a few squibs, where the story hadn't worked and there was no time left to salvage anything. I thought it would be interesting to acknowledge the part played by dissatisfaction and failure in the creative process.

For me, the biggest surprise of the evening was how good the work was. I heard 35 stories (one person arrived after the first round) and each of them was strong and more-or-less complete. Any of them could be developed into a complete piece, given time and polishing. I'd expected the evening to produce some interesting lessons about writing; instead it produced some exciting and entertaining work that I loved listening to.

We're definitely going to do another session soon. Tonight has been the most fun I've had writing in ages. And, to quote Mr. Hume: "first rule of write club was: you don't make any fight club references when talking about write club". Mercifully, I kept to that rule.

The picture below is from exmosis, and was the image used in the 10-minute round:

White Night 2009

I've been meaning to blog various things recently, but they'll have to wait until after next week. Tomorrow I'm running a writing workshop and on Thursday we have Fear of the Dark. It's going to be a busy week but I'm as excited as I am nervous.

I took time off last night for White Night. I'd slept through Saturday afternoon (I have a weekend napping problem) so it took me a while to get into things. I wandered around loving the pianos placed in the street and accidentally finding a singer on a North Street balcony doing the famous bit from Carmina Burana.

I met up with Kay Sexton and went to Fabrica. There was a fantastic atmosphere at the gallery, with a cafe and lots of drawing activities.

Nobody likes a stick-in-the-mud, so I tried drawing one of the faces in the gallery. Drawing fascinates me as, like writing, you aim to represent a reality by favouring certain aspects of a thing. Extracting significant visual information from a face was fascinating. The more I tried to sketch the faces in the gallery, the more I noticed shapes and curves, becoming more sensitive to the way the faces were composed, how different they looked when their angle shifted. While the faces might not have been recognisable as the ones I was sketching, they did at least look like faces, which was a pleasant surprise.

White Night was fun but, like a summer festival, it was as much about walking around and queueing as anything else. Still, it was lovely to see so many people out and to bump into old friends. I didn't have the stamina to stay up till the end (a dawn choral work on the beach near the fortune of war) and went home fairly early.

(Sadly I couldn't get in to Jake Spicer's Drawing Cards from the Deck session – preparations pictured below – but I think I will go along to the Brighton Life Drawing Sessions soon and try some more drawing)

I also went to see AK/DK on Friday night at the Leisure Sports Discotheque, where they played with :Kinema: and Trance Farmer. It was a great night and I stayed out longer than I should have done. Here is a photograph of AK/DK:

Two drummers! Two drummers! And synths.

Fear of the dark: an addition to the bill

I'm very excited about Fear of the Dark next Thursday, but putting on a night is also a little nervewracking. There are so many things to remember and I occasionally find myself worrying, just before falling asleep. What if I've forgotten something? What if nobody comes, and we're forced to perform to an empty theatre?

But there are some wonderful things about organising a night, one of which is watching a series of performers you think are great. I've just made the final addition to the bill, which is a musician, Strawberries and a Peach (you can listen to some tracks of her tracks on the myspace page).

Meanwhile, I'm continuing preparations with the other performers. I think this is going to be an exciting night, and will certainly be different to anything you've seen before. Tickets are available in advance from the Marlborough or, with paypal, from fearofthedark.eventbrite.com. You must come!

Reading at Sparks 5

Last Tuesday I read at the 5th Sparks night, a flash-fiction evening held at Brighton's Three-and-ten. I opened the night with my story 'meat', a tale of vegetarians, bondage and Internet pornography. At Sparks each of the stories is accompanied by a specially commissioned photograph and I read in front of an image that included a bare-chested Burt Reynolds.

The night had a well-chosen mix of stories. Sadly Nik Perring could not attend, but I enjoyed his story 'Sharkboy', which was read by Jo Mortimer in his absence. The night also featured poet Tim Wells, whose new collection, Rougher Yet, is fantastic. The only blemish on the night was my decision to go for a meal in Buddies afterwards.

Some exciting things are on the horizon for Sparks, including talk of an anthology in the near future. The next night is on November 3rd and submissions are currently open. You'll have to be quick though, as they close on Thursday 15th. The guidelines are: '1000 words or fewer, any theme. Send in the body of an e-mail to sparksbrighton@hotmail.co.uk and if accepted, come and read.' Sparks is a lovely, friendly night and well worth submitting to.

Me in action, photographed by Nikki Acott