Come all ye

6th annual Willesden Herald international short story competition

Competition entries are now coming in at a rate of about eight per day and rising. I look forward to finding stories with real attack, humour, a distinct and compelling voice, sense of adventure, landscape, time passing, engagement beyond solipsism, perhaps themes that rise a little above the problem of which fork to use for the starter and which for the main, which is not to say that nothing of any interest ever takes place in a tearoom. Didn't the boy eat oysters, shell and all in a Moscow café, and did we hear anything about their annoying neighbours or disgusting spouse? No. Give me something that matters, something that makes me pace like that boy's father. What is it that makes you angry, where is the love, the satire, travel, conflict? I'm sick of the tinkling of teacups and the swimming with waterwings. Do you read Hemingway, Chekhov, D. H. Lawrence, Denis Johnson, David Means, Annie Proulx, George Saunders, Maile Meloy, Hanif Kureishi, James Lasdun, Angela Carter, Lorrie Moore, Bernard MacLaverty, Arthur Shnitzler, Arthur Miller or Arthur Askey and Arthur Guinness? Aim high to allow for the trajectory of the narrative curving towards the target. Or something like that.

Steve Moran

Protest outside Bertie Ahern's office today

On a day of mass protest in Dublin a lone picketer makes his verdict clear outside Bertie Ahern's constituency office.

Burn the bonds

Defend security of tenure, fight evictions. Don't let the ruling class pull up the ladder. They had free education and inherited wealth. Now their bank accounts are in jeopardy after decades of robbery, graft and corruption. Let those who benefited from the bonanza pay to clean up their own mess. Burn the bonds. Let the banks bury the banks.

If they should lose their fortunes who have destroyed our home industries by dumping their goods produced by cheap labour, prison slave labour, child labour, oppression of unions,  expropriation of workers and peasants, good. Let the money stay with us and let us say to them now it wasn't cheap labour after all.

Feargal

Facebook heresiarch carpeted

Church of England bishop suspended over royal wedding comments | World news | The Guardian

The suffragan bishop of Willesden has been heretical on Facebook and got himself set to Hidden by all his friends.

Willesden High Road

The fall of Capitalism

Every day brings news of more financial collapses. It started with Lehman Brothers in the US and at present there is no knowing where it will end. The ominous metaphor that comes to mind is the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers. At present we are in the phase after the initial plane impacts, equivalent to the multiple financial shocks (that money is heir to). The economic collapse that follows might be as far beyond anything we have imagined as the collapse of the towers on that day. It could mean starvation, destitution and disintegration of the civilisation we have known in recent centuries and the advent of a new dark age. We saw the fall of Communism with the Berlin Wall in 1989; are we now seeing the fall of Capitalism?

Feargal

Fogbound

1: Willesden Library Centre. 2: St Mary Magdalene's. 3: Harlesden Road.
Copyright © Craig Moran 2010

Craig

Fog - visibility about 50 metres

On a clear day you can see Gladstone Park but last night's fog is still here on a windless morning, 11:40 am, with visibility only as far as the next garden or two.

More better stories please

The short story competition closes on December 17th. So far I have one story for the short list. The problem is not quantity but quality. To you the very good writers out there this means an open goal. So send in your best story. You will be joining a very good list, look at how well writers from the previous short lists have done: Norman Mailer Award, BBC Book At Bedtime, Asham Award, books published by many different publishers. The aim of this competition is to encourage the creation of excellent new short stories. You don't have to be young, you don't have to be published, you don't have to be resident in any country, you don't have to write to any theme. There are no copyright problems and the entry fee is a nominal amount. If you have a fine story, this is your chance to find recognition, get it in a book, win a prize. Link

Steve Moran

50 Stories for Pakistan

Big Bad Media | 50 Stories for Pakistan

Includes stories by New Short Stories authors Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Jarred McGinnis and Vanessa Gebbie who also wrote the introduction. There is also a rare story by Willesden Green Writers' Group founder Anne Mullane. "Proceeds go to helping the victims of the Pakistan floods."

Stormy weather

Northolt, November. Photo by Anne Mullane copyright © 2010

Of course, autumn

King Edward VII park