Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2012

Details have been announced for the 2012 Cardiff International Poetry Competition.  The prize, for new poems of up to 50 lines, is worth £5,000 to the winner.  There's a selection of runners-up prizes available as well.  The competition is open until 2nd March 2012.  Full details may be found here. 

River Styx 2012 Micro-Fiction competition

Literary magazine River Styx has announced details of its now annual micro-fiction competition.  Original and previously unpublished stories of up to 500 words are called for (up to three may be entered by each contestant).  There's a US$ 1500 first prize.  Entries should be postmarked no later than 31st December 2011.  You can find more details here.   

Unstuck Books micro-lit competition

New imprint Unstuck Books is running a micro-lit competition - one for stories, non-fiction or poetry told in twelve tweet-sized pieces (that's twelve times 140 characters).  There's a range of prizes ans publication opportunities available.  The competition closes on 31st December 2011.  Full details are available here.   

Writing East Midlands / Lincolnshire Echo "Echo Shorts" opportunity

The Lincolnshire Echo and Writing East Midlands have teamed up in running "Echo Shorts"; new short fiction from the East Midlands is being published in the newspaper fortnightly, with a £300 prize on offer to the writer whose work is judged to be the best of those featured.  Submissions should be previously unpublished fiction up to 2,500 words.  There are monthly submission dates, with the initiative running into 2012.  Full details are available here. 

Sunpenny writing competitions

Independent publisher Sunpenny is running two competitions with a closing date of 31st January 2012.   Their open short story competition is open to works for an adult readership (adult as in grown-up, not as in erotica) of up to 4,000 words.  Their Christian short story competition, again for 4,000 words or fewer, explicitly requires the entry to have a Christian theme / message.   Both competitions offer £150 in first prize, with runners-up awards and publication opportunities also.  Full details may be found here. 

Rose and Crown New Novels Competition

Rose and Crown specialise in publishing inspirational romance with a Christian flavour.  They're currently open (until 31st January 2012) to new writers with a completed novel-length project that fits with the imprint's publishing remit.  This opportunity is running as a competition with a £100 first prize, but the organisers are open to offering publishing contacts to other entries that are suitable for publication.  Full details may be found here. 

FreeBetsFreeTips Sports Writing Competition

Sports betting website FreebetsFreeTips is running a sports writing competition.  Entrants should be 18 or over and may enter poetry, fiction prose or non-fiction up to 1500 words.  There are no other restrictions other than the content must be sports-related.  There's a £50 first prize plus runners-up awards, and winning entries will be published on the website.  You can find full details here.  The competition closes at the end of the current (11//12) UK football season.

John Lloyd and John Mitchinson: QI - The Second Book of General Ignorance

Following on from 2006's million-selling first compendium of quite interesting trivia, a second batch of counter-intuitive nuggets of info taken from the BBC quiz series.  


And that's about it, really.  Top loo reading and very jolly it is too, though there's a slight feeling of deja vu about the proceedings, partly because at least some of what's contained here is recycled from some of the TV shows (including snippets of banter from that week's contestants) and partly because of the incessant repeats that QI gets on Dave, the UK's first carbon-neutral channel.  Or BBC2+12months, as my old Dad calls it.


A nifty stocking filler, maybe, but by no means as essential a purchase as the first volume turned out to be.


Lloyd, John & John Mitchinson.  2011.  The Second Book of General Ignorance (London: Faber and Faber), 342 pages, 978-0571269686

The Woman In Black video short story competition

As part of the promotional campaign for the new film version of Susan Hill's The Woman In Black, a new short story competition's been announced.  This one's got a bit of a twist to it though: entrants will submit a video of them reading their work. Full details are here and the winner will get tickets to the film's premiere plus have their story included (being read by the film's star Daniel Radcliffe) on the DVD/Bluray release.  The competition runs until 20th December 2011. 

Rise of The Planet of The Apes (2011, directed by Rupert Wyatt)

San Francisco, present day.  Alzheimer's researcher Will Rodman (James Franco) develops a serum that he tests on chimps; there are positive/mixed results, but a lab catastrophe forces him to continue his experiments at home in secret on both chimp Caesar (Andy Serkis) and his father (John Lithgow).  When the latter dies, Rodman confesses and is given resources to continue his work; but the serum provokes self-awareness in Caesar. 


Rise holds itself together for the first two acts; it plays as a serious-ish medical research drama, with an affecting backstory in the Franco/Lithgow relationship and something like a cutesy version of Hollow Man between Franco and the impressively motion captured/CG amalgam of Caesar.  Part of the film's success is that you accept the visual aesthetic from the beginning rather than querying the animated primates.  Along the way we get plenty of neat pleasures (including a couple of underplayed setups for possible sequel avenues and multiple nods to the original five film series) plus some deft corporate nastiness and down-home villainy from experienced players like Wyatt alumnus Brian Cox.


The film loses its cool in the last act when it becomes the action-spectacular it promised that it wouldn't wimp out and become (an ape/human standoff on the Golden Gate Bridge, of all places), but for the most part, this is a smart, respectful movie that pays its dues to its predecessors.  Director Wyatt displays a clever visual sensibility and a deft sense of action movie editing.  There's a nicely inconclusive ending and the script doesn't have any real bad guys, preferring to give plausible motivations to all; the end result is a worthy revisiting, albeit one that feels forced into histrionics towards the end. 

Derren Brown: Confessions of a Conjuror

Confessions of a Conjuror is part autobiography of a professional journey, part insight into a particular mindset, part self-help book, part work of personal philosophy, part guidebook to the world of illusion.  It's structured like a magic trick; Brown remembers his younger self performing close-up card magic in a restaurant and as he follows himself through one evening's work, concentrating on one card trick performed at one table, we're navigated backwards and forwards in time, often digressing, often branching into footnotes, often misdirecting.  


Along the way we're treated to glimpses into a personality (the mix of OCD and loneliness that would seem logical to the nascent performer is foregrounded here) being formed, into the mechanics of forcing cards, into misdirection, into the influences on Brown as a performer and, more generously, the ones who helped him along the way towards being arguably the UK's premier performer in magic and its related disciplines.  It's a hugely fun book, and one rather more novelistic than it may seem at first.  Brown's keen to privilege the importance of narrative to a trick (or an effect, as we're taught to term such a thing).  


Ultimately, even though there may be no real confessions here (persona is very much part and parcel of the effectiveness of such a performer), this is a metanarrative, a story about the importance of stories, and there's never anything wrong with that, especially if along the way, it piques interest in some readers in key figures in magic such as Dai Vernon as well as performers like Jerry Sadowitz (a phenomenal card magician as well as a primal force in stand-up comedy), Tom Mullica, Chan Canasta and the now-unfashionable if never less than technically perfect Paul Daniels.  Maybe Brown will return to mainstream professional card magic at some point, even if only to provide a change of pace from the mentalism he's firmly associated with.      


Brown, Derren.  2011.  Confessions of a Conjuror (London: Transworld Books), 327 pages, 978-1905026593

Red Planet Prize 2011

Details for this year's Red Planet scriptwriting prize have been announced.   UK writers are invited to submit a synopsis and the first ten pages of script for either an original 60 minute one-off or an original series idea.  The deadline for entries is 16th December 2011.  There's a £5000 cash prize plus access to a mentoring scheme.  Full details may be found here. 

Mark Kermode: The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex

Rather than the more straightforward autobiographical approach of its predecessor It's Only A Movie, radio and TV presenter / film journalist / academic / broadcaster / skiffle purveyor Kermode's second volume of personalised non-fiction is a rather more film-focused and rewarding affair.  Here, Kermode gets to rant, cajole, persuade, plead and eulogise on a range of pertinent and up-to-the-moment topics: customer service in multiplex cinemas, 3D, the dying art of the cinema projectionist, the films of Michael Bay, the star quality of Zac Efron, nitrate film stock, cinema's roots in theatre, the British cinema industry and the social and cultural functions of the independent picture-house.  


Its an enjoyable, hectoring, impassioned read; Kermode's love of cinema bleeds off every page and crucially, it leaves you wanting for more detail, as he occupies a place in populist film writing that's been vacant since perhaps Joe Queenan's Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler.  Somewhere there's an academic book that makes similar points but backs itself up with rigour, some hard facts and a cooler head.  Maybe Kermode'll knuckle down and write one just like it.  Until then, this volume of stand-up film discussion will do just nicely as a cheery and impassioned stopgap.   


Kermode, Mark.  2011.  The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex (London: Random House), 336 pages, 978-1847946034

Cars 2 (2011, directed by John Lasseter & Brad Lewis)

Whereas 2006's Cars spliced the Michael J Fox vehicle Doc Hollywood with Roary The Racing Car, the sequel takes the vain-young-buck-learns-humility-and-real-world-values storyline of the first movie and chucks it, and its lead (the Owen Wilson-voiced Lightning McQueen) into the bin.  McQueen's still here, though this time round he's strictly second banana to the first movie's comedy foil, the rusty towtruck Mater (Larry The Cable Guy - presumably not his given name).  The first film was a slow-paced, predictable but well-meaning small town romantic comedy interspersed with glossy racing sequences.  The follow-up is a jet-setting spy comedy-drama interspersed with glossy racing sequences.  


Two narratives intertwine.  In one, McQueen is pressured into taking his gauche chum Mater on tour in a tri-race tournament sponsored by an eco-fuel evangelist; simultaneously there's a corporate espionage storyline involving Bondish British agent Finn McMissile (Michael Caine channelling his Austin Powers character).  There's no central mystery and the gormless hick Mater wins the day through dogged well-meaning stupidity, rather like the lead character of the Ernest movies.     


The first film's failings (and good points) are repeated; the animation is stunning and the racing is well-realised with realistic physics, but the story is hackneyed and the characters are resistible.  As first time around, there's a reliance on borderline racist characterisation plus too much simply makes no sense - the Cars world just isn't logically consistent.  Ultimately, this is a good-looking but shallow misfire like its predecessor, and a film that simply not even fails to reach the sublime heights of the very best Pixar efforts: Toy Story, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Wall-E but knows in its heart that it isn't even trying.   

Chudleigh Phoenix 2012 short story competition

Community magazine The Chudleigh Phoenix has announced its 2012 short story competition.  Entries (there's no set theme) should be up to 1,500 words.  The competition closing date is 31st January 2012.  There's a first prize of publication and £100 plus a selection of runners-up awards.  Full details may be found on their website. 

Author Essentials "Winter" Short Story competition

Author Essentials is running a short story competition on the theme of "winter".  Entries should be no longer than 2,500 words, be previously unpublished and be sent in no later than 31st January 2012.  There's a range of prizes including a £100 first prize.   The top 25 entries will be anthologised.  Full details may be found here. 

Chapter One Promotions international short story competition

Chapter One Promotions run a range of writing competitions.  Their international short story competition, for fiction up to 2,500 words, is open until 31st January 2012.  There's no set theme.  There's a first prize of £2,500 and a range of runners-up prizes, including publication opportunities.  Full details are over at the Chapter One website.  

Red Telephone Young Adult Novel Competition

Red Telephone Books is running a competition for writers of novels aimed at the young adult (YA) market.  Entrants should submit the first 5,000 words of the piece, plus a 500 word synopsis of the entire book and a 50 word author biography no later than 31st December 2011.  The winning novel will be published by Red Telephone.  Full details are available over at the Red Telephone website.  

John Maclachlan Grey: The Fiend in Human

London, 1852.   Journalist Edward Whitty has been instrumental in drumming up fear through his newspaper articles charting a series of murders of women; a strangler he dubbed “Chokee Bill”. An arrest is made and Whitty becomes increasingly convinced that the man arrested, William Ryan, is not behind the killings.  Then Ryan escapes jail and the murders resume. Whitty decides to do two things; find Ryan himself and bring the real killer to justice.   

This is an exuberant, swaggering beast of a novel, confident and rich in the extreme.  Grey relishes the speech and the written language of the period and packs the narrative with relevant detail into the daily lives of several strata of Victorian society.  The emphasis here is on the street, from beggars and prostitutes to toffs seeking sexual adventure, on the prevalence of drink and drugs and of the often precarious existence lived by many. 

There’s a clear sense of immersion into the era which, at times, threatens to overwhelm the narrative, though this never quite happens.  This isn’t a pleasant world by any means; violent, disease-ridden, mendacious.   The storyline falters a little at the last (there’s one reveal too many, perhaps) but that’s perhaps missing the point.  The narrative is used here to get us into this world, so that we can understand more of it by example.

Grey, John Maclachlan.  2004.  The Fiend in Human (London: Arrow), 432 pages, 978-0099421450       

Dark Tales short story competition

The fine folks over at Dark Tales run a series of spooky short and flash fiction competitions.   Their current short story competition, for speculative fiction up to 5,000 words, is open until 31st March 2012.  There's a first prize of £500 and a selection of runners-up prizes on offer.  Full details may be found at the Dark Tales website.  

St Andrew's Day short story competition

The Scottish Association of Writers is running a short story competition for St Andrew's Day.  Stories should be between 1,500 and 2,000 words in length and be on the theme of "education".  There's a range of prizes including £300 for the competition winner.  Entries should be with the competition organisers no later than 30th November 2011.  Full details may be found here. 

Jo Fletcher Books 140 word SF / horror / fantasy short short story competition

A quickie for National Short Story Week: write a speculative fiction story in less than 140 words!  Full details at Jo Fletcher Books here.  The three best stories each win a copy of the Stephen Jones-edited compilation "A Book of Horrors".

Anonymous (2011, directed by Roland Emmerich)

London, the reign of Elizabeth I.  Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), feeds plays he's secretly written to Ben Jonson; Jonson will arrange to have the plays produced anonymously.  Oxford has implanted seditious ideas into his writing; in part he wishes to destabilise the influence the Queen's close advisors William and Henry Cecil have over her, in part he wishes his writing to gain an audience.  The authorship of the plays is hijacked by William Shakespeare, a drunk actor and colleague of Jonson.  Jonson and Oxford's fates intertwine as the plays become a cause celebre, and as both men are drawn into conspiracies over the line of succession from the childless and ageing Elizabeth.


Roland Emmerich has spent much of the last twenty years destroying the world, and especially America.  Independence Day, Godzilla, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow; he's become the latter-day Irwin Allen, never happier then when blowing stuff up good, and to find him change gears and come up with a period literary thriller is quite something.   Some of the old Emmerich remains; there's some effective use of CG to give a sense of scale to the production and the evocation of 16th century London is quite something.  


There's a similarly impressive cast assembled, from Derek Jacobi as a present-day Greek chorus bookending the movie to Mark Rylance as actor Richard Burbage, to the likes of Rafe Spall as a splendidly oafish Shakespeare.  Best of all is Vanessa Redgrave, playing the decaying Elizabeth as a version of Dickens' Miss Haversham.  In all of this Ifans gets a bit lost, seemingly in a more bombastic film than the others around him, and saddled with the most liberal use of male eyeliner in the movies since Gary Sinise in Mission To Mars. 


The film can't make its mind up what it wants to be: a succession thriller, a literary conspiracy movie, a period romance between Queen and Earl, a riff on Chinatown, an action spectacular.  Emmerich sidesteps this to some extent by doing a bit of everything.  This yields a film of parts.  Some is very good, particularly the recreations of 16th century theatre, and some is plain daft.  It feels like Shekar Kapur's two Elizabeth movies shunted together, except with the best elements of the first film and the worst excesses of the second.   


Ultimately a complicated storyline and convoluted explication (involving multiple flashbacks to different actors playing the same roles) and an implausible final reveal regarding De Vere/Oxford's true identity make Anonymous a very mixed bag indeed.  There's plenty to enjoy in the moment while it's on, but there's enough awkwardness in the telling of its tale to mark Anonymous down as an interesting failure rather than as a decent film with something to say.

BBC Birmingham "Heartlands" scriptwriting opportunity / new talent search

From BBC Writersroom: BBC Birmingham is searching for exceptional new and emerging writers from the Midlands who want to write drama for television.  

This new talent search, Heartlands, will provide industry training and development opportunities with experienced producers. A shortlist will be invited to a masterclass day. Selected writers will then be chosen to take part in an intensive three-day mini-academy, and/or receive mentoring on their original script from an established writer.

To apply, you need to send a calling card script - an original drama for TV, film, radio or theatre of at least 30 pages in length and a one page idea for an original TV drama (series, serial or single).

You can find full details here.  Submission deadline is 9th December 2011.  Applicants should be resident in the Heartlands (defined by the BBC as: Shropshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, West Midlands, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire).

C J Sansom: Heartstone

London, 1545.  Lawyer Matthew Shardlake is commissioned by the new queen, Catherine Parr, to investigate allegations of wrongdoing concerning a wardship in Kent; a former tutor has killed himself, leaving assertions that the young man being cared for under the wardship agreement is being mistreated.  Shardlake agrees, in part because the trip to Kent will allow him to pursue an enquiry of his own, into the circumstances behind a friend, Ellen Fettisplace, being driven mad and then taken to the Bedlam hospital, where she has lived for almost twenty years. 

The fifth Shardlake novel is again a different beast from its predecessors; one of the pleasures the series offers is enjoying the variety of adventures in which Shardlake and his clerk Jack Barak may be embroiled.  Other pleasures lie in the way in which storylines stretch over novels, and in which there are a series of subplots playing out and paying off, and in which seemingly disparate plot threads entwine.  

The technical expertise extends to the writing too.  Sansom is clear and straightforward throughout, explaining without lecturing on a range of mid-sixteenth century topics (medicine, archery, the role of the purser on board ship, legal specifics across different specialisms).  The novel is never less than entertaining and at some points becomes quite exhilarating.  Standout sequences include a well-realised hunt and a splendid negotiation/standoff between Shardlake and nemesis Sir Richard Rich.  There are a couple of neat set-ups for potential plotlines for future novels  too. 

Despite its length, Heartstone never feels laboured or as though it is treading water.  Some may wince a little at one of the central plot reveals being a little weak, but taken as a whole, this fifth exploit is up there with the very best of the series to date, Dark Fire, as being an exemplary historical thriller. 

Sansom, C J.  2011.  Heartstone (London: Pan), 730 pages, 978-033044711-9     

Mookychick Feminist Flash Fiction Competition

To promote feminism in writing, the good folks over at Mookychick have inaugurated an annual flash fiction competition.  Entries should be no more than 200 words and may be poetry or prose fiction.  Entries should be related to an aspect of feminism.  First prize is £100 (or your local currency equivalent) plus online publication and a year's subscription to online magazine BUST.  There's a range of runners-up prizes too.  The competition closing date is 30th November 2011.  Full details on how to enter, plus some examples, are on Mookychick's website.

BBC Jesting About 2 call for comedy writers

BBC Comedy, together with BBC North, BBC Newcastle and BBC Tees plus Northern Film and Media have announced details of Jesting About 2, a fresh call for new writers of radio and TV sketches and sitcoms to come forward.   Full details on what they're looking for are available here.  The closing date for submissions is 28th November 2011, so get cracking!

Labello Press submissions / Leonard A Kobel Memorial Prize

New independent publishers Labello Press are now open to submissions of short fiction for the Leonard A Kobel Memorial Prize.  Stories of up to 12,000 words may be submitted (no SF, horror or children's fiction).  There are prizes of €275 down to €50 on offer to winning, placed and otherwise selected stories, each of which will be published in an anthology entitled "Gem Street" in 2012.  The closing date for submissions is 31st December 2011, and winners will be announced at the end of February 2012.  Full details are available here.      

J L Carrell: The Shakespeare Secret

London, present day.  Academic-turned-theatre director Kate Stanley is preparing a production of Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe on the South Bank.  There’s a fire at the theatre in which her friend and fellow Shakespeare scholor Roz is killed.  A message from Roz indicates that she had an important secret to tell Kate.  Kate teams up with English theatrical knight Sir Henry Lee and Roz’s investigator nephew Ben to try to find out who killed Roz and why.  A conspiracy is slowly revealed involving the true identity of Shakespeare and the whereabouts of  a manuscript of one of his lost plays, Cardenio. 

With Roland Emmerich’s movie Anonymous currently in UK cinemas, which (albeit in very different ways) plays with the notion that “William Shakespeare” was a pen-name for an as yet unidentified other, one of the oldest historical conspiracy theories of them all is getting a fresh airing.  In this take, a globetrotting thrilller (the action shifts from London to Harvard, New Mexico, back to London, Stratford-on-Avon, Spain, then back to the US) unfolds as our heroine both chases the clues and tries to outrun the mystery baddies that are offing Shakespeare scholars in manners inspired by the plays.  First Folios are stolen, there’s a King James Bible book code, the affair is mixed up also with Don Quixote.  There’s an awful lot going on, much of it done breathlessly; there’s a great deal of research evident, though much of this is used to construct a join-the-dots chase across the world against time rather than try to make a convincing case for anything.

The conceit of the murders are lifted from the 1970s Vincent Price movie Theatre of Death, the conceit of the book is taken from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinco Code, right down to the identity of the villain, with an ending that’s pitched somewhere between a lesser and as-yet-unmade Indiana Jones movie and one of Nic Cage’s National Treasure flicks.  That’s not to say that The Shakespeare Secret is actively bad, though it is wholly derivative.   There’s some fun to be had along the way if you’re in an indulgent mood and there are a couple of neat gags.

There are occasional period inserts, where we cut back to late Elizabethan/Jacobean London; these are cheats as they detract from the present day first person narration and don’t add anything to the story themselves; they’re odd additions that don’t really work.  Author Carrell provides several pages of notes which at least flag up her persistence and ingenuity in lashing everything going on in the literary world around 1610 into one novel.  The downside of the book is, though, that in a novel where the international travel arrangements are utterly implausible (multiple fake passports appear out of thin air, disguises, the lack of any screening at airports despite our heroine being at one point a murder suspect and so on), then there’s nothing to warrant suspension of disbelief in a four-centuries-old conspiracy involving Cervantes, James I, Christopher Marlowe, an abandoned silver mine and the Jesuits.

Carrell, J L.  2007.   The Shakespeare Secret (London: Sphere), 480 pages, 978-0751540352   

Christmas 2011 short story competition

The Great Escape is running a short story competition for Christmas-themed (or other winter festival) tales up to 1,500 words long.  Stories must contain at least one of: "a ribbon or bow" / "a best laid plan gone awry".  There's a token cash prize plus the chance of publication on offer to the winner.  Full details are available here.  The competition closing date is 25th November 2011. 

Arizona Mystery Writers Competition 2012

Details for the 2012 Arizona Mystery Writers' Contest have now been confirmed.  Short stories of up to 2,500 in the mystery/thriller genres (so, no horror or SF fiction, please) may be entered.  There's a closing date of 29th February 2012.  There's a $200 first prize, plus a range of runners-up prizes.  Full details may be found here.