Africa - BBC trailer

Don't forget this when you're angry with other parts of the BBC!

Signs of the times

Empty bookshop, empty bellies?

Duelling planning applications:
one to redevelop "the piazza",
the other to designate it "a village green"

Can't wait for the Chilcot report?

Life and War with MF Delgado

"Before Hutton, before Butler, before Chilcot, Mikey Fatboy Delgado was looking into the matter... In the spring of 2003 the Iraq war is underway and Mikey is almost all in favour of it. It makes for good television and is improving his sex life. If only the BBC would sort out those green pictures of fighting in the dark he might even be prepared to cough up for a licence. And if only corrupt policing and the amount that Blair grins weren't so unsettling he would be able to relax and enjoy watching the highlights of the fighting more."

Last call for short stories

Don't know if the world will end tomorrow but it's the closing date for entries to the annual short story gala. If you want the one-off mug, inscribed "The Willesden Short Story Prize 2013", plus money, publication and last but least, immortality, here is how to enter.

Live music!!!

Robyn Hitchcock and friends encore "All The Young Dudes" at the Three Kings pub

Friday evening

Harlesden Road

Competition update, end of November 2012

Jenny Barden's novel Mistress of the Sea has been published by Ebury Press in hardback, with the paperback to follow. The word is it has been a runaway success in bookstores, including at Heathrow airport. Jenny's story "Propitiation" in New Short Stories 3 was an excerpt from her then work in progress.

Brian Coleman, whose emotional story The Bedroom was included in New Short Stories 5, has published a collection of his stories called Bright Ripples in a Dark Pool for Amazon Kindle.

Steve Moran has done an interview for Duotrope's listing of the Willesden Herald competition. You might not be able to read it after December, as they have announced that starting from January 2013, there will be a membership fee to access their literary markets database in full.

The rate of entries coming in has gathered pace but we still need a lot more, so please round them up, haul them in, keep them doggies rolling. And. That.