Curtis Brown Prize News

My short story collection in progress, Islands, has been shortlisted for The Curtis Brown Prize! There are two of us shortlisted - congrats to the other mystery shortlist-ee! Some happy news, that's made my day (and week, and year), and truly lifted me out of the snowy-rainy-any-excuse-progress-stalling murk of January (is it just me? 'I can't write anything, it's snowing/raining/too sunny, and I've not been to the bank yet and I've run out of, oh I don't know, socks. I can't write without socks').

Now I'm just waiting for the Curtis Brown email that informs me of an unfortunate administrative error. But that's the kind of cheerful optimist I am.

I've read today about a prize specifically for novelists, the Sceptre Prize run by Glasgow Uni and Sceptre, designed to encourage emerging novel writers. Congratulations to all the nominees: Elinor Brown, John Jennett, and Martin Shannon. John Jennett was kind enough to talk about his writing here on this blog last year, as well as being published in From Glasgow to Saturn a couple of times. As well as that, his short story Guga was published in The Glasgow Student Short Story competition anthology last year - winning a special mention from A.L.Kennedy! I am really happy to see his name appear on the Sceptre shortlist, most deservedly. Good luck to you all!

On an unrelated note, is anyone else seriously bummed out that Peter Capaldi is not nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for In The Loop? Just watched it again tonight. Glad they have the adapted screenplay nomination though!

My idol, Peter 'Don't ever call me fucking English again' Capaldi