What's New?

April 19th, 1999

• OK, own up! Who stole most of March and April! Seriously, I have no real idea were the last few weeks have gone. All I know is that I have been excessively dweebish of late and what free time I've had has all gone on The Final Carrot. I won't put links here to all of the work on there (expect for this one - I pandered to my love for alliteration on an assignment with a short essay on Linen) - you'll just have to go and take a look (and maybe join too, huh?). What I do want to draw attention to is that I finally got off my butt and finished the story that I've been writing for my brother for about two years now. It's called The ones that didn't get away! and is a true story of a fishing trip that my Dad took my brother on when I was small. I wrote for John and I hope he enjoys it - it will be a nice bonus if any of you do too.

March 4th, 1999

• Spurred by the tragic death of one my favorite writers, Andre Dubus (it was after reading Broken Vessels 3 years ago that I started writing fiction again), I have finally gotten around to creating  Brittle's Bookstore. This is an Amazon.Com associate site and my intent is that all profits from this will go directly to charity (this will change from time to time but is currently CARE).

March 1st, 1999

• So, as the clock ticks into the early hours of Monday morning, I put the finishing touches on my submission for the latest Final Carrot assignment. I chose to continue from the thumbnail sketch of David / Davinia, a drag queen as provided by ALEXDOM416. I did think that I might manage to link all the entered characters together in one story but the story of David / Davinia and his mother decided that it wanted to be told exclusively and so that was the end of that!

February 27th, 1999

• Well, doesn't time fly....., etc. etc. Unfortunately, much of my creativity has been greedily sucked from my very soul by corporate dweebdom of late. The latest Final Carrot assignment is one of two parts and won't be completed until after the week-end. The first part was to develop a thumbnail sketch of a character for a story and then the second part is to take someone else's character and to write a story around them ( with bonus brownie points for those who can incorporate all the characters). One thing I have been doing though is going through some old e-mail which dated back to when I joined a  mailing list for writers of erotica. The poem Showtime was one of the few pieces that I submitted there. Within a few hours of posting it, the mailing list spat out a review from a woman who said that without a doubt that it was the finest poem (of any genre) that she had ever read. Unfortunately, the pride from this didn't last too long as she posted further message the following day saying that while she thought the poem was really good, that maybe her subjectivity had been colored by the prescribed drugs that she was on! Oh, well - I'll let you, the public, decide!

February 15th, 1999

• You will all be pleased to know (at least I hope so) that I continue my speedy return to health; limbo dancing and free-fall parachuting apart, I'm getting back to my old self and feeling a lot better. The Final Carrot also continues to grow from strength to strength and again I encourage those of you who haven't visited my new home from home to drop in and pay us a visit. Our latest assignment was to "write a poem or fiction in the style of your favourite Beat writer - the subject being 'Ode to my favourite item of clothing'". As you can imagine, this generated some great submissions. My own was entitled "catalytic color burst" and references my adolescence as a punk poseur growing up in a gritty mining town in the north of England.

February 7th, 1999

• Well, I'm up and active again! All I can say, after 2 weeks of being stuck in the house, is that I now know the true meaning of "cabin fever". My latest poem, Time, finds me reflecting on the healing properties of that precious resource that we never seem to have enough of. On  The Final Carrot front, we are now up to 11 members and it's starting to really gel together.

January 31st, 1999

• As you can see from the recent frequency of posts, my new baby The Final Carrot has me energized at the moment! Our assignment for this week was to choose a pulp fiction book cover from www.pulpcards.com and write the accompanying back cover for it. I chose that latter day classic, "I married a dead man". As of today, we have 9 members but there is always room for more. Why don't you cast your vote for vegetable rights today - drop by and sign up!

January 29th, 1999

• Well, I can honestly say that the last seven days has been a week from hell. Last Saturday, I managed to twist my back to the point that I was on the floor of my study unable to move. From there it took me 3 hours to slither on my stomach to my bedroom where I waited until a decent time to call friends to come and help me. Since then I've very painfully learned that there is little in life that you can do that doesn't involve the lower back! Anyway, I'm on the mend now - after getting past the "ice maiden from hell" at the doctor's surgery (her advice was to take Tylenol!),  he gave me some industrial strength painkillers and muscle relaxants which seem to be doing the trick. On a creative note, The Final Carrot has been keeping me busy as I've been trying to drum up new members and nag people into handing in their assignments. I was also playing around with the different handwriting fonts in Microsoft Word and a poem called Why? sort of wrote itself (I didn't leave it in the original font because you never know what fonts people have installed on their PCs so I played it safe with good old Comic Sans MS.

January 23rd, 1999

• "So", I hear you asking yourselves, "what has he been up to this week?" Well, having found that Yahoo (and ICQ and Delphi among others) offers the capability to create a free online community website, I decided to fulfill a long-cherished dream of mine. About a year or so ago, I got together with a few friends and we decided to create a writer's group which came to be known as "The Final Carrot" (don't ask, it's a long story!). Anyway, we met a couple of times with the intent of "providing a support network and creative stimuli for writer's of all types", helping each other through those dry spells and encouraging each other to try different things (writing styles, structures, etc.). Anyway, because people moved out of the area (and we also hosted visitors from out of the area) we came up with the plan of making this a virtual group with an accompanying e-zine. Up until now, that seemed like a lot of work but Yahoo et al have now made it a lot easier. So, "The Final Carrot" is now up and running. I encourage you to go and take a look at it and join us if it takes your fancy. As a taster of the sort of things we'll do there, our first "warm-up" exercise (set by yours truly) was to write a 250-word mini-saga on "The boy who ate Brisbane".

January 15th, 1999

• Life still consists of intense training for the "corporate dweeb of the year" award! All that work and no play doesn't exactly make this particular Jack a dull boy (at least I hope not!) but it does mean that I don't get to do as much writing as I'd like. Short of inspiration the other day, I picked up a guide to writing poetry which has lots of great ideas for if the creative juices won't flow. In there was an exercise wher it suggested to find an old photograph and to write about the people in it; what were they thinking, what was the photographer thinking, etc. Well, I decided to try this with an old picture of me from when I was 7 or 8 and entered into a "Mr. Puniverse" contest by my parents. Weird, isn't it? 30 years ago and I can still feel the embarassment that I endured that day! Anyway, that photograph led to Brand New Me. Enjoy!

January 14th, 1999

• For those of you interested in time travel, journey with me back to 1994 with a couple of long forgotten poems that I found in a discarded notebook. The first called Money Matters toys on an old recurring theme of mine in my frustration with the crazy lizard woman (no.. not Liz, the other one!) who ruled that sceptred isle across the seas. The second one called Shadows also explores a recurring theme (though not one I always choose to publish) about the enending battle of words and wills that seems to have been my marriage.

January 4th, 1999

• Can it really be so long since I posted anything up here? I guess it can! Well, although I haven't exactly been prolific over the past couple of months (my alter-ego as an everyday corporate dweeb put paid to that) but I have written a few poems and completed a short story. I haven't gotten around to transfering the poems from my latest gadget (a Philips Velo handheld PC - great for getting thoughts down when you're stuck in an airport terminal) but here is the story called  "The Gift". I wrote it as a birthday present for a very close friend who was a pillar of strength when I needed to lean on her - thanks, Nikki.

(slip back into 1998)