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Thursday 31 January 2013
Hello there!

Today I have two pieces of news. I know, two! Very exciting. Ordinarily, this would be a sarcastic statement. If you read it with that tone, I wouldn't be surprised at all. But actually I think it's genuinely exciting this time, as both of these news are related to publishing.

Now don't get too excited and ruin your favourite computer chair (I'm thinking more from jumping up and down on it than anything else, but I'll leave the finer details of the image up to you). This is not me announcing a publishing deal with We Make Good Books and a Caribbean book tour that will last for years and years and years until finally the world's paper supply runs out from the millions of billions of copies sold. We're not there yet. That kind of good fortune won't come around for another two years at least. I imagine.

Exciting, But Not So Exciting That Your Mother Will Care, Although My Mother Does, Don't You Deny It, News #1:

I've been recently included in the Brisbane edition of what I call an experimental multi-author poetry improvisation. The project is called #gibberese, and has been created, designed and facilitated by the crazy angela rawlings. Essentially, it was a live Twitter event which fed into a live show in the small town of Brisbane. The theme (intentionally broad, but not in the ridiculous "write a short story from this stimulus" way that teachers love to make us do) was the Language of Here (ie. Brisbane at the time). The actual collaboration took place back in August '12, and I'm only just mentioning it now because I'm slack. But now the feed has been published online!

It can be found here:
http://cordite.org.au/poetry/transpacific/gibberese/

So that's kind of cool.


Just As Exciting But Maybe Only As Much, Mostly In The Interest Of Not Playing Favourites, News #2:

One of my flash fiction stories is being published on Valentine's Day, 2013. I've been selected along with 11 other (wonderful, I'm sure) Brisbane writers who will have their stories printed onto napkins in restaurants and cafĂ©s across the city. The theme: the almighty LOVE!

Below is a list of the sixteen locations that are hosting this event, run by the lovely Tiny Owl Workshop:
http://tinyowlworkshop.com/2013/01/21/fabulous-places-youll-find-napkin-stories-on-14-feb/

My story is called To You, but that's all I'd really like to say at this stage. Of course, later down the track I will try to post the story on the blog for those who weren't able to get there (you'll just have to imagine it's Valentine's Day and talk of romance isn't sickening, and you'll have to pretend to drink coffee and do all the things you'd otherwise have to have done to get the napkin... but we'll deal with that when it comes to it).

To those who live in Brisbane and won't be busy, make sure to plan for lunch at one of those locations. I'm sure it will be lots of fun if you do. Remember, February 14th! That's two weeks from today, people!


If you'd like to know more about angela rawlings and/or the wider Gibber project, here's a handy link:
http://earknowsthroat.wordpress.com/

Friday 25 January 2013
This could be a really awkward moment where the skies open up to reveal the lazy, unreliable male that I am. But let's not!

As you may have noticed (those who have been around for a while, that is), I'm trialling a few different things for the blog. At the moment, I'm looking for a new design and figuring out how to add extra pages to give you guys some stories/poems to read. Writers tend to avoid posting their work on blogs, etc. There are a few good reasons for that. However, I've basically decided that none of them are relevant to me as a start-up writer, so I'm totally willing to put a few things up with absolutely no monetary reward. So look forward to that!

Hopefully it will only take me a few weeks to figure it all out. In the meantime, I'll try to blog more regularly... although that requires me to figure out what the purpose of this blog is... and that's not particularly easy right now... Onwards!

Cheers,
John Back, the stranger