Reading and Writing Catch-up
Blog: 01 June 2020: Reading and Writing Catch-up
Time for a catch-up.
Reading
I’ve read quite a few books (for me) in the last month or so.
Nick Hornby
A while back I bought a 6-book box set of Nick Hornby. It was reduced so much I just had to get it! A couple very good, a couple boring and a couple I didn’t read.
I heartily recommend High Fidelity and About A Boy, both of which have been made into movies, though the relocation of High Fidelity to Chicago from London seems to miss the point a bit.
Both these books are set in areas in and around the London I grew up in. I kept trying to remember if I ever bumped into these characters. Alas I’ve since worked out that the settings were years later than the time I was there. Nevertheless it did bring back a few vivid times I had forgotten.
The “Dead Duck Day” from About A Boy, will be forever etched in my mind as a particularly funny and frightening episode.
How to be Good was OK and Juliet Naked was a bit boring. Probably too subtle for my taste.
I only read five pages of A Long Way Down and decided reading about suicide was not for me.
Fever Pitch is pairing and comparing soccer matches with memorable points in time of Nick Hornby’s real life. Soccer is a turn off and didn’t even start this book!
Next Book
Earlier this year I read the brilliant Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I have since found out there is a sequel, Children of Ruin that won the 2020 British Science Fiction Award for best Novel, so is now on my To Be Read list. I look forward to meeting those spiders when they cross paths with humans again.
Not sure what I am going to read next until I pick it up and start reading. I have so many books on the TBR list, but none really take my fancy. There are Austen and Camus for two…
Writing
For National Flash Fiction Day (UK): I was rejected three times in the FlashFlood online journal where for twenty four hours on 6th June all the successful Flash Fiction stories will gradually published to their web site.
That same day there will be 24 prompts for Flash Fiction (The Write-In) for anyone that is interested.
On Friday 5th June there will be the start of the Australian monthly Furious Fiction prompt that is worth a look-in:
55 hours. 500 words. 500 dollars.(Aus)
A lot is happening next weekend.
Microfiction on Medium
Here are the numbers of stories tagged Microfiction on Medium,
each month over the past year or so:
— — — — — — — — Pay — -Free — —ToT
April. 2019. . . . . . . . . 66 . . . . 60 . . . . 126
May. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 . . . . 25. . . . . .66
June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 . . . . 17. . . . . .60
July. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60. . . . . 21 . . . . . 81
August . . . . . . . . . . . 106 . . . . 26 . . . . 132
September . . . . . . . . . 81 . . . . 25 . . . . 106
October. . . . . . . . . . . 150 . . . . 33 . . . . 183
November . . . . . . . . .123 . . . . 19 . . . . 142
December . . . . . . . . . . 56 . . . . 29 . . . . . 85
January 2020 . . . . . . 115. . . . 35 . . . . 150
February . . . . . . . . . . 151. . . . 22 . . . . 173
March. . . . . . . . . . . . . 171. . . . 23 . . . . 194
April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200. . . . 32 . . . . 232
May. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 . . . . 52 . . . . 380
— —— — —- — — — Pay — — Free — —ToT
In total there are now 3.1k Microfiction stories on Medium.
There were more new stories tagged Microfiction in May than during any other single month before. This is hardly surprising since some 7,600 Microfiction stories were written on 9th May for the first round of the NYC 100-word Microfiction Challenge and a lot of these are now looking for a home. For completeness round 2 is June 26–27 2020 and the final round is July 24–25, 2020.
Flash Fiction Tag
On 1st December I called to make the tag Flash Fiction into a Top Writer Tag. Since then the number of Flash Fiction stories have increased from
12.7k → 15.4k. The This Happened To Me tag increased to 19.2k.
We may have a better chance of getting tag Science Fiction Top Writer status now there are 23k stories.
Well that’s all I can think of. Stay safe,
Stevie
