We’re having a birthday evening of readings 4th May, 7.30-9.30 pm at St James Wine Vaults, Bath… free entry, free wine and free cake. About nine of our winners, including three of our mulit-winners, are reading their fictions. Do come and support them. More details about this on our events page.
If you don’t already know about Ad Hoc Fiction, our free to enter weekly micro contest, here’s what you do:
Read in Full
Sue is one of a number of authors who submit to our free micro contest Ad Hoc Fiction every week. We really appreciate her support and it’s marvellous to see what good use she has made of entering. It was our intention in launching Ad Hoc Fiction to encourage people to write more short-short fiction and to read other people’s work. Sue is so inventive and dedicated with writing and sharing her pieces – an event where people called out numbers to select a story for her to read from her ever-growing collection, a scarf she has had made with the Ad Hoc stories printed on it, writing while in hospital and forming the ‘Adhoccers’ group.
We’re delighted to link up with new quality magazine Project Calm for an Ad Hoc Fiction Autumn Special, scheduled to open Wednesday 21st September. One winning Ad Hoc story and two runners up will be published in the second issue of the magazine which will have a focus on books and the love of reading.
The ethos of Project Calm is one of creativity and mindfulness. This fits with our view of writing. To create very short fiction you need to be present and aware – paying careful attention to every word. It’s often a meditative experience. Alison Wassell, who wrote the winning piece, Just a Crisp was recently interviewed by Once We Were Fiction about her method of writing. Ad Hoc Fiction involves writing a very short fiction to a given prompt word. Alison describes how she lets the prompt word float around in her mind, then “writes” very short stories in her head when she is walking to work at 7.00 am in the morning. She says “the walk takes about 40 minutes, which is plenty of time for 150 words.”
Though our special contest doesn’t launch until Wednesday 21st September, we’re happy to tell you that the prompt word will be ‘CALM’, so you’ve an extra week to let your ideas form. The three stories with the highest number of votes will be the ones chosen for the magazine. As usual, the winner will get a free entry to Bath Flash Fiction Award.
Issue Two of Project Calm will be published in the UK on the 24th November and sold in outlets including WH Smith, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. In the US it will be published on the 24th December, available in Barnes & Noble among other places.
It’s a wonderful and unmissable opportunity to be widely published around the world. Have a look at a digital sample of the now sold-out first issue. The Issue One focus is not on writing, but it is packed full of creative ideas.
And a video of Issue One can be viewed here on Facebook.
Project Calm can be contacted via Twitter @ProjectCalmMag and via their main Facebook page here.