Earlier in the year, I saw that the Folkestone Literary Festival was on again - and then I forgot all about it. Somebody made a passing comment today that made me hit the web to find out when it is, which is in a couple of weeks - 6 to 14 November. On their website, there was a "short story competition" link. Shall I have a go? Why not.
Well there was a bloody good reason why not. The deadline was midnight last night. That gave me three hours from when I got home to come up with an idea (confined to historical fiction based in Kent) and deliver it. Could it be done?
Yes it could. With minutes to spare, Smuggler's Leap was signed, sealed and delivered. It was rough going: a) I am the last person on the face of the planet to know anything about the history of anything - unless it involves Kiss or Starsky and Hutch. b) I know even less about Kent than I do about history but c) I am quite able to take some unrelated scraps of information and pummel them into something that resembles a story that will kick everybody else into the moat. As with The Fire Sermon, let's see what happens. If it goes nowhere, it will turn up here (or on the site) for public consumption.
I am now officially 'tired' and I don't do tired.
Anyway, what I was really pitching at was running out a whole series of pamphlets, all of which had the first chapter or first section from all the projects I'm currently working on and taking them down there. Maybe getting them into the hands of some people who matter. Maybe even get them into the hands of some people that don't matter as well. So today is a day of planning out just what the hell that might involve...
It basically amounts to nine pamphlets, so I had probably best get busy. As I'm sitting here writing this though, I figure I might be approaching this all wrong. Maybe it needs fleshing out into a proper PR attack on the local area. No point in trying to take over the world if you can't master the town that's less than ten miles away. Yes. A plan is needed...
...what would Gene do?
More later...
