I had hoped to memorise my story for last night's Short Fuse, but that didn't happen in the end. Learning things by heart is much more difficult than I remembered. I am, however, going to try again with something shorter as I want to see how not having pages in front of me affects the reading.
I've been a little ill this week so I wasn't as enthusiastic about reading as I normally am, but the story seemed to go across well. I didn't know how well spooky stories would work in a live environment but I found myself quite spooked during Tara's story. At one point I turned round from where we were sitting to see the whole audience listening with total rapt attention. I also loved Tanya Murray's story 'Lamia, dressed in all of Mary' (available in pdf here) which had a brilliant sense of impending doom.
The only downside of Short Fuse last night was that it clashed with the launch of Ros Barber's new collection, Material. I dropped by to buy a copy but left before the readings, rather than disturb everything by sneaking out early. Having read some of the poems, I'm very excited about this collection, but it probably deserves a post of its own.