Keeping well I hope, now that the evenings are drawing in and winter is looming over the horizon.
Here in NFFD Towers we are using the cold outside as an excuse to seclude ourselves in darkened drawing rooms and start plotting for next year's Flash-Fiction Day, and I thought I would bring you up to date on current developments.
First, just to let you know, the plan at the moment is to make it Saturday 22nd June next year, the shortest night in the northern hemisphere (yes, I know I got it wrong last time), and the shortest day in the southern. This will help us to tie the globe together to make it an international event. (And a 36 hour long one, at that!)
Speaking of which, I am in talks with the organiser of New Zealand's day to hook up with them, but we want more than just our two countries involved, so, if you are somewhere else in the world (Ireland, USA, or Australia, South Africa, France, or Peru, Portugal, Japan, Jersey or wherever) and want to join in with the 2013 day, we'd love to hear from you.
We've also been talking to the Arts Council of England about next year, and they're keen to help us out again, which is great news. It will allow us to make the day even bigger and better for 2013, improve the website and repeat some of our triumphs, like the anthology and the story cards. In order to help us with our bid to the Arts Council, it would be great if we can include some indication of our support. We don't need any definite plans at the moment, but a statement of intent to join in would be great. So, if you ran an event this year - a reading, a competition, a slam, a flash-mob, whatever - we'd love for you to join us again. If you didn't, but would like to for 2013, then we'd be delighted to have you on board too. Please get in touch so we can register your interest.
We'd also like your help to get in touch with those organisations who might be able to help, or who would like to be involved. So, if you are part of a writing community, work for or with an arts organisation, have a publisher who might be interested in promoting their flash-fiction titles, are on friendly terms with a librarian, or whatever, we'd appreciate it if you could either ask them to get in touch with us, or send us their details so we can contact them directly. We managed to reach a huge number of people this year, and spread the flash word, but we could do a lot better, and with their help we hope we can do so.
Additionally, in order to raise the money that all of this costs, we will shortly be launching a crowd-funding project, and it would be great if you could keep your eyes peeled for that and spread the word to help us reach our target.
And what are we offering in return. Well, you remember how much fun NFFD was this year, don't you? Imagine that but... you know... more!
However, we thought you might need something to jog your memory, so I'm pleased to be able to announce that we are running another of our FlashFlood pop-up journals. Submissions open today, and close next Wednesday, 10th October, at 23.59 (BST). The journal will run next Friday, 12th October, from midnight to midnight. We had a huge response to this in May, so let's see if we can do it again! Send your best flash-fictions (max. 500 words, limit of 3 stories per author) to flashfloodjournal@gmail.com
And, if that's not enough, here are some other things you need to know about:
- There's a flash-slam in Warwick tomorrow (4th October) so do go along if you can: http://warwickwords.co.
uk/index.php/whats-on/events/ 444-flash-slam
- A display of flash-fiction books is working its way around South Glos libraries as part of the Discover festival: www.southglos.gov.
uk/discover.
- Spry is a new journal in the USA with a flash-fiction only section is looking for your stories: http://sprylit.
submittable.com/submit
- The successors to my flash365 project, Mrs Flash365 (Kath Kerr) and Son of Flash365 (Chris Bissette) are over the 150-story mark and will hit the halfway point at the end of the month. Please have a read, leave some comments, follow, share, like the Facebook page or follow them on Twitter. Your support is what keeps them going.
- The NFFD anthologies, Jawbreakers and Kissing Frankenstein are still available, and if you haven't got them already, why not? They're great!
- NFFD projects 1000 words and Flashpoints are still up and running, and looking for your work.
And finally, on a sadder note, we heard last week that Brian George, whose story 'Chemoids' was included in Jawbreakers, passed away at on the 23rd September. I'm sure you'd like to join us in sending out condolences to his wife, Chris, and to his family and friends, and to express our thanks for the pleasure his writing brought while he was with us.
So, that's it for this time. Lots for you to think about, get involved with, and lots of 'yes, I want to join in and so do all of my friends' emails to send us. We'll be waiting!
Until next time, take care.
Calum
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Calum Kerr
Director, National Flash-Fiction Day
