Bad Language @ The Castle - Wednesday 23rd February

Bad Language will be running another brilliant night of poetry, prose, general amusement with a fantastic special guest, Jo Bell.

From her website: "Jo is a writer and performer, facilitator, workshop leader, editor, live literature promoter and manager of creative projects across the UK. Her main job is to co-ordinate National Poetry Day, for which she is the Director. She is also a director of Living Derby and a trustee of Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Jo devised the online/ hard copy writing project Bugged and is currently writing a play for young people with Action Transport Theatre."

http://belljarblog.wordpress.com/
http://www.bell-jar.co.uk/

There will also be copies of our wonderful second anthology Scattered Reds available and performances from Bad Language themselves.

If you have any questions please e-mail events@badlanguagemcr.co.uk

http://www.thecastlehotel.info/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=183944688303381

Manchester Rain @ 330 Words

Thanks to 330 words one of my stories is here today:

http://330words.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/manchester-rain-written-by-nici-west/

The piece is called Manchester Rain and it was written on a typical dreary day inside my flat watching out the window at the rain in Manchester, hense the title. The picture is taken from my balcony on that same dreary day.

330 Words is a project where the creators challange writers to take a photo and write a piece no more then 330 words to it. It can be an extract or a half finished piece; whichever you find easiest. Mine is a finished piece but it did take a couple of edits to get it to just below 330 words and I nearly didn't submit as I felt that cutting 50 words out might confuse the meaning of the piece. However, once I tried it I found the meaning of the piece came accross just as clearly and I prefered the tight and consise language. Just goes to show that killing your darlings can actually work.

Bad Language Submissions Continue....

There's only a few days left until the submissions for the third Bad Language anthology close, so I thought I would remind you all! Hurry Hurry Hurry!

Here are the submission guidelines in case you forgot:

Submissions are now open and will close on March 2nd. The guidelines will be as follows:

Please only submit to one of the following categories.

Short Stories

Short stories to be no longer than 2500 words.
Only one short story per person.
Stories to have not been published elsewhere.

Poetry

Poetry to be no longer than 40 lines.
Maximum of 3 poems submitted per person.
Poetry not to have been published elsewhere.

Flash and Micro Fiction

Flash and micro fiction not to exceed 500 words.
No more than 3 flash or micro fictions to be submitted per person.
Flash and micro fiction not to have been published elsewhere.

Other

We will also be accepting graphic fiction (as an A5 sized PDF, maximum ten pages of story).

We also accept extracts from novel's, following the same guidelines as short story submissions, however the extract
has to be able to stand alone.

You may also submit non-fiction articles that have a clear relation to literature. These must follow the short story guidelines.




House guidelines.

You must attach your submission as a .doc file to an e-mail (unless it is graphic fiction.)
You must include a 50 word biography as the body of the e-mail
Your e-mail must be titled 'Bad Language Submissions'

Please note we cannot read the same submission twice. If you have had an entry rejected from a previous anthology, please do not re-submit the same piece. We love to read new work!

Due to the large amount of submissions we cannot accept any that do not follow submissions guidelines.

Submissions should be sent to submissions@badlanguagemcr.co.uk by 10pm on March 2nd.

Pacing

Just a quick note to say one of my stories, Pacing, is being published here today:

http://thepygmygiant.com/author/thepygmygiant/

The website is The Pgymy Giant; it publishes a variety of writings including flash fiction, poetry and non fiction. Have a look around the website there's some good stuff there.

One of my favourite stories on the website is Mash by Emma J Lannie:

http://thepygmygiant.com/2008/12/15/mash/

That is all. 

Bad Language @ The Castle and other exciting things...

The last Bad Language event took place on Wednesday 26th January at the cosy Castle Hotel (which ironically is not a hotel) in Manchester. David Gaffney was the guest slot and read from his new book The Half Life of Songs complimented with other Powerpoint stories. Accompanying this there was an interesting mix of performance poetry, short stories and improv pieces. I think my favourite piece of the night was Bad Language's very own Joe Daly and his slightly unerving piece about a stalker.

The most creative performances of the night (bar David Gaffney's) were Fat Roland's, who performed a piece in letter stuffed in percarious places around his body, and the latest piece from 330 Words, Joely Black's Stalker. I read a new piece based on Deansgate in Manchester about the disillusion that the build up to new years can bring. I'm currently doing a few more edits before I consider submitting this piece to Rainy City Stories. 

Claire Conlon has done a full write up of the event at her Words & Fixtures blog here: http://wordsandfixtures.blogspot.com/2011/01/not-bad-at-all.html   You can see pretty photos of the event here. But here's a taster for you:

Exciting Bad Language news is that our submissions are now open for the third anthology. You can come along to the next Bad Langauge @ The Castle event on the 23rd Feb and test out your new piece ready to submit. Jo Bell will be headlining the next event which I'm very exciting about! There are still open mic slots available so if you're interested email: events@badlanguagemcr.co.uk for a slot! They're running out fast so hurry.

Jo Bell has now taken over the website for Something Every Day, which Bad Language will be hosting in May. We said goodbye to Anna McCrory's at the end of January following a month of quirky poems about everyday problems, and welcomed Jo's experiemental, sometimes bitter poems. I'm enjoying the links she includes to the places she gets inspiration from as well.

Here's a picture of Jo Bell reading at the last Bad Langiage event so you know what to expect for February:

One of my favourite stories of the month is from someone who was featured in the last Bad Lanaguage book Scattered Reds, David Hartly. He's had a story published at Rainy City Stories called The Primark Invasion, and for those of you who have visited the Primark in Picadilly Gardens before, it's not hard to imagine.

I went to see Black Swan with Daniel Carpenter the other day and am left with images of nail files being stabbed in faces. It's an entertaining film at face value but take a look at Daniel Carpenters blog about what is wrong with the film overall - spoiler warning! 

I leave you with some more calming pictures of peoples backs.... at least it made me feel like taking a walk on a summers day, if only this Manchester rain would stop.....


http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/blog-love-downtown-from-behind