"Dear Willesden, what's your Christmas wish?"

Food For Thought café, Willesden High Road

Merry Christmas and Hanukkah!

Red, Feargal, Mona, Steve, Simon, Carmencita, Kronk, Mavis, Malachy, Noël, Harry, SJ, Zoz, Nick, Ossian, Bartell, Jacintha and all the gang.

Competition update, December 2011

There are over 380 entries. I'm miles behind with the reading but looking forward to catching up over the holidays. Thanks to everyone who entered. The art of the short story is alive and well.

More news of former finalists

Jenny Barden's novel Mistress of the Sea is set to be published by Ebury Press in September 2012.

A.N. Wilson, writing in The Financial Times, named The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie as his novel of the year for 2011. Vanessa was also photographed and interviewed in this week's Telegraph.

James Lawless, whose story "Jolt" was a highlight of New Short Stories 1, and who has published the novels "The Avenue", "For Love of Anna" and "Peeling Oranges" is also a poet. His poem "Christmas Eve" is in this week's Sunday Independent (Ireland).

Steve

While we sail the ship that never goes to sea...

In memory of Zoltan (1998-2011), the guard dog of Herald House

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 2011)

The sounds of London mapped

London Sound Survey featuring London maps, sound recordings, sound maps, local history, London wildlife

Short story competition deadline Friday 16th

A reminder that the closing date for entries to the short story competition is this Friday December 16th, 2011. Please send your best.

MissElayneous

Real Dublin

Saturday evening

London Plane

Silver Birch

Willesden Stadium

plane tree and willow

one bedizened with baubles

one with no eyebrows

--
Stephen Moran

Vera Magpie

Vera Magpie eBook: Laura Solomon

Continuing to bring you news of new publications and achievements by past Willesden Herald competition finalists. This time it's a new novel by Laura Solomon, for Kindle, and it sounds quite an intricate and dramatic story.

A magnificent new library centre

"...it's genuinely one in the eye for the Big Society..." (diamond geezer: Canada Water library)

Well done Southark Council. Shame about Brent.

Handy dog snack

How the Greek bailout will work, in very simple terms

Letters (email)

It is a slow day in a little Greek village.
On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks and food bill at the taverna.

The tavern owner slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit.

The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.

The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the bailout package works!!

Anon.

Update on the Kickstarter project

Publish Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 6 » Backers

Thanks to everyone backing this project, we will now have the funding to publish the anthology more effectively. There is still time for more backers to pitch in and choose one of the four rewards. The more the merrier. :)

Update 18:30 GMT 27/11/2011 - good news!:
65 HOURS TO GO
31 BACKERS
$1000 PLEDGED OF $1,000 GOAL

Update 16:00 GMT 27/11/2011:
67 HOURS TO GO
27 BACKERS
$896 PLEDGED OF $1,000 GOAL

THIS PROJECT WILL ONLY BE FUNDED IF AT LEAST $1,000 IS PLEDGED BY WEDNESDAY NOV 30, 7:03AM EST.

Update 19:00 GMT 26/11/2011: We now have a taker for the $100 reward and we can add the most excellent writer Jill Widner to the list of supporters as well, taking us to $766.

25/11/2011: Thanks to everyone who has come forward so far to back this project. There are only four days left to reach the $1,000 goal and the total has now reached $666 [There should be a joke here. Ed]. Among the backers are New Short Stories contributors including Wena Poon, Margot Taylor, Arthur Allan, Nuala Ní Chonchúir and Toby Litt (yes, the one and only - all the ones and onlys).

We have four different rewards on offer. Nobody has opted for the $100 one yet*, though somebody did on the last attempt, which failed. Unless the funding target is met by the end date, none of the funding comes through. In that event, nothing is debited and of course similarly with the rewards.

The objective is to help us publish the next anthology more effectively. You can read all the details by following the link.

Nightfall

The real Irish presidential debate

...as seen by Steve Moran

A solar flare causes massive disruption to mobile phone networks, and widespread chaos. Among side effects that people have little time to worry about, the seven candidates in the Irish presidential election 2011 are stranded in a blacked out TV studio where they were preparing for a debate... (Continue)

More stories from Museum of Illusions:

Pain and the Stars: Robert Mitchum's expression says, I have a little pain but it's nothing I can't handle... (Continue)

Watching the Defectives - GOP foreign policy debate: "It's worth listening to the logic of people like Gingrich, absolute moral bankruptcy: covert operations 'all deniable'. Deniable - why? A big question..." (Continue)

This evening

The view from Herald House

November short story news

Continuing to report back good news about Willesden Herald finalists and prizewinners, but where to start? We have received word this month of no less than three Hawthornden Castle Fellowships winners for 2012 (Jill Widner, Vanessa Gebbie and Henrietta Rose-Innes), a debut short story collection, two novels, a poetry collection and more.

There is an embarrassment of riches really, looking back over the year. We have not even mentioned prodigiously successful author, Toby Litt, whose alphabetical novel series continued this year with the stylish, black-edged edition of King Death, and other publications and productions too numerous to mention.

The new short story collection is Somewhere Else, or Even Here (Salt Publishing) by AJ Ashworth, whose Overnight Miracles was a great hit in New Short Stories 5.

This month also saw the launch of Vanessa Gebbie's The Coward's Tale (Bloomsbury), which we have mentioned before, and it is set to be published in America next year too.

Prolific New Zealand author Laura Solomon has another novel Hilary and David (Proverse) which will no doubt continue her pageturner storytelling combined with a light humorous touch.

Late breaking news: Peggy Riley, another of the talented Americans we're holding hostage here in Britain has just been highly commended in the Bridport prize 2011. Peggy Riley's story Pearl, which mixed poetry and prose was one of the highlights of New Short Stories 4.

We're not monomaniacs, you'll be relieved to learn, (why do I keep saying "we", it's only me!) and we like poetry as much as the next man, so it is a delight to report another launch this month for a New Short Stories contributor. The Juno Charm (Salmon) is the latest collection of poetry from acclaimed Irish poet and novelist Nuala Ní Chonchúir. So there.

Congratulations to all concerned. If I have missed any out, please let me know. (Steve)

Where are your bards, oh youth of 2011? (repost)

Your forefathers could describe a forest in one twig, could perform their deadly thunder feats without appearing to move a muscle, could split a metaphor head to crotch with the blow of a single phrase. Do ye lie abed pleasuring yourselves while armies of creeping mumblers invade our ancient fields? Rise and send forth your magic incantations before the whole world sinks under the dreary wave. www.willesdenherald.com

Ossian

Chalk another one up for the local writing group!

Antony Wootten’s debut novel, A Tiger Too Many, is a dramatic and powerful page-turner for the 9-12 age range. Set in London Zoo during World War II, it is a tense tale of a young girl’s desperate struggle to save her beloved tiger-cub. Despite the traumas of air-raids and evacuation, and her older brother going missing in action, Jill never gives up, even when the zoo itself is bombed and she finds herself amongst the burning debris...

TheBookbag.co.uk called it “real edge-of-the-seat-stuff”.

Read the entire first chapter - click here!

Outtake from first draft of The Da Vinci Code

My first is Balaam but not in ass
My second is in Noah but not in flood
My third is in Virgil but not Catullus
My fourth is in very but never in good
In my pelt through the desert I fly
Who the hairy hell am I?

--
Stephen Moran

Carys Davies wins V.S. Pritchett Prize 2011

Short Story News | THRESHOLDS

"Congratulations to Carys Davies, winner of this year’s V.S. Pritchett Memorial Prize. Davies was presented with a cheque for £1000 at last night’s awards ceremony at Somerset House in recognition of her story 'The Redemption of Galen Pike'."

Twice short-listed for the Willesden Herald short story prize, Carys Davies has also won the 2010 two-yearly Olive Cook prize from the Society of Authors.

The GOP candidates introduce themselves

My name is Michele Bachmann. They call me the Tea Party candidate.

Hello, my name is Ron Paul. They call me the Libertarian candidate.

My name is Newt Gingrich. They call me Mr Speaker.

[Laughter. Applause.]

Hi, my name is Rick Perry, they call me, uh, Rick Perry.

Hi...Hi. Herman? Herman Cain right? Yeh, that's me, I think.

Hello, I'm Rick Sa--

[Presenter: I'm sorry we've got a system here.]

Hi, my name is mhhd Romney.

[Presenter: Sorry, did you say "Mid"?]

No, haha, mhd Romney.

[Second presenter: That's Mitt, right?]

[First Presenter: Haha, let's try and keep it serious now. Ok, moving along...]

Charlie bit my finger

Possibly the most popular YouTube video ever, with getting on for 380 million views. It's very funny. You might not think it's going to be but wait till Charlie gets going - brilliant.