Welcome new visitors and followers
Writing

Welcome new visitors and followers

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

I’m not entirely sure why, but I seem to have had more visitors this month – welcome to all of you. I hope you are keeping well in this strange and very disorientating year. I’ve been working in my new marketing role and juggling creative writing, my literary podcast and family commitments throughout lockdown this year. It’s been a challenge at times (as it has for everyone) and I haven’t written or submitted as many short stories as I did in 2019.

I’ve had one short story, The Cabinet of Curiosities, published this year in a new subscription-only lit mag called Writers Egg Magazine. This short story was also longlisted for the University of Sunderland Short Story in Association with Waterstones Award in 2019.

I’ve also ‘published’ a new short story on my podcast and you can listen to Call Bird here. Generally, the podcast has been going very well. Two of our regular writers, Martin Nathan and Miki Lentin have been shortlisted and longlisted for literary awards (I’ll update on Story Radio with a round-up soon) and the podcast is averaging 160 downloads a month.

Otherwise I am working on some new short story ideas – one based on the theme of harvest and Autumn – and working on a collection of published and unpublished short stories. My first novel is now more or less complete and I have been querying the first three chapters with agents and had a few ideas for a second novel which I plan to start work on soon.

I’m also still writing book reviews for Roman Road London. This has been a great way to learn more about my local area, I’ve written about subjects as diverse as the Kray twins, Victorian boxers, kickboxing champion Ruqsana Begum, artist Doreen Fletcher and the Huguenots…. all my book reviews and journalism go onto my Authory page which is automatically updated so if you don’t find them here, you’ll find them there!

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Two new short stories published recently
Writing

Two new short stories published recently

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

Recently I had two short stories published. One, Some Notes on Container Gardening During the Apocalypse, is a satirical short story I wrote at the beginning of the pandemic, and was published by the excellent American literary magazine The Disappointed Housewife. I knew it would be the right magazine for me to submit this story to when I read that it was looking for stories that ‘that strike us as different, always with that idiosyncratic touch. Iconoclastic. Kind of bent.’ Thank you to The Disappointed Housewife for giving my strange little story a home!

The second, The Sin-Eater, was written and workshopped during the Genre class in my Creative Writing MA and is set in a fantasy world whose inhabitants all experience life through synaesthaesia and whose skin changes colour according to their feelings and sensations. I think it’s one of my most original short stories and am very pleased with it. It was published by the UK based Fudoki Magazine which is an online magazine of myths, legends, fables, fantasy, folklore and fairytales. Fudoki captured stories that were passed down the generations in Japan and ensured they wouldn’t be lost.

Meanwhile our final short story of 2020 will go online tomorrow at Story Radio Podcast – thanks to all the writers, actors and producers who have so generously shared their work, especially to my extremely talented Birkbeck contemporaries Tatum Anderson (The Invisibles) who was Highly Commended in two debut novel awards this year, Miki Lentin (Persepolis, Meringues) who was a Finalist in the Fish Publishing Short Story Award and of course my fellow producer, Martin Nathan (The Edge, Mock Crab, The Vulnerable) who is on the shortlist for two international playwriting awards. I am privileged to have been able to work with all of them during this very difficult year.

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The Abyss Within cover
UncategorizedWriting

The Abyss Within – new anthology benefits charity Women’s Aid

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

I recently had two stories, Crow Girl and Masquerade, selected to be included in an anthology, The Abyss Within, by new UK publishers SmashBear Publishing. They specialise in fantasy and horror fiction and all profits from this anthology will be donated to Women’s Aid, the national charity working to end domestic abuse against women and children. I’m proud to be part of this exciting new venture.

If you’d like to support this charity, have a look at The Abyss Within on Amazon (affiliate link).

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Photograph of Elixir Magazine
Writing

Elixir Magazine in print for the first time

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

The Elixir Magazine is one of the magazines that has frequently published my work. It was started in Yemen in the city of Sana’a, by a remarkable young woman named Esra’ AlNaggar. It gives a voice to women, in particular, who may not always have had access to a platform. The Elixir Magazine was launched on January 1st, 2019 and they have managed to create an international team via Twitter.

It’s a wonderful, hopeful and peaceful project in a war-torn country. As they say on their website: “We try to remind our audience that reading can be both entertaining and beneficial. Also, The Elixir acts as a platform for aspiring poets, short-story tellers, journalists and prose writers”. Have a look at some of the short stories they have published. Or if you’d like to support them, consider buying a copy of their Special Edition print magazine on Etsy. I have a short story in it (Hagstone).

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Cover image of A Book of Short Stories by Tabitha Potts
Writing

Download my eBook of short stories for free

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

With the help of graphic designer Elaine Odlin, I’ve created an ebook with a selection of my previously published short stories, illustrated with my photographs. For a limited time, I’ll be giving it away for free if you sign up to my website newsletter. If you are already signed up but don’t have a copy, please email me and I’ll send it to you!

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Photo of ruined priory
Environment

All changed, changed utterly.

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

In the early days of the pandemic, I found these words kept repeating in my mind and went back to reread the poem. Yeats’ poem Easter, 1916 is of course about the human cost of politics, not of contagion – but there is something political about this pandemic. The virus seems to have exposed weaknesses in our political structures, the way in which people continue to act as though the world fits their expectations when in fact it has completely changed, leaving all our systems unfit for purpose. Our leaders are frantically grasping at solutions, some with a lot more foresight and imagination than others. I am hoping the ones who succeed will be the ones who can help us create a better future, not the one we were headed towards when the virus so abruptly forced us to stop.

We struggle to maintain our ‘normal’ in the face of all this, but perhaps normality itself was the illusion. The slow inevitability of environmental disaster brought the pandemic to us as humans came disastrously too close to wildlife whose own ecosystems are being destroyed. We are now forced to question some of the fundamentals of our society up till now. Can we continue to have economic growth at the expense of everything else? 

A terrible beauty is born
I started reading Tarot cards recently, to see if it would help me come up with ideas for my writing, and two cards come up a lot in my readings. The Hermit (which makes a lot of sense for obvious reasons), and the Tower, signifying destructive change but also rebirth. Change, my Tarot book tells me, is terrifying but also necessary. There’s something surreal about the contrast between the achingly blue skies and clouds of blossom I see when I go for my daily walk and the appallingly high death toll I hear about every day when I watch the news.

Nature appears to be thriving during this enforced cessation of human activity – we’ve all seen the photographs of wild creatures venturing out of their usual territories – but this recovery will probably only be partial and will need a huge amount of effort to sustain once the pandemic is over. 

I keep hoping that out of all of this chaos and misery something good could come in the future. A chance to rescue our planet and the other creatures we share it with? To stop the pollution, environmental degradation and endless war and destructiveness we’ve created? For the UK, the country which Yeats holds to account in his wonderful poem, a chance to become more forward-looking, equal and inclusive, instead of heading in the opposite direction? I don’t know, but I can only keep hoping. 

An extraordinary book I read recently during lockdown was Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. It was written in 2014 and tells the story of a pandemic which wipes out most of the human race and the aftermath as the survivors attempt to create a new society. I was almost too afraid to read it but actually it’s a hopeful book showing how the stories we have created (a comic book which one of the characters draws, the Shakespeare plays acted by The Travelling Symphony, a group of actors who are permanently on the road) live on after us and can inspire new worlds – both good, and bad. 

The most recent Tarot Card I drew was The Artist. As we wait indoors, it’s our artists who are saving us with their stories, music, plays and drama. I’m hoping that the terrible beauty of their visions will inspire us to create a new and better world, when the pandemic is finally over. 

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Writing

My new short story podcast is live!

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

I’ve set up a short story podcast, Story Radio! It will feature short stories read by new and emerging writers in the English language. The first story I’ve featured is one of mine as I wanted to get comfortable with the technology and set-up before I unleashed it on other writers. Crow Girl was a Finalist in the MIROnline Folk Tale competition and I’m very proud of it, I hope you enjoy my reading of this dark tale with folk horror overtones.

But now I’m inviting more writers to submit. I am looking for short stories (up to about 2000 words) read by you and recorded as MP3s. I will add music, FX, intros and outros, and edit. Your entry will be unpaid until I have enough Patreons to fund payment for all writers whose work I podcast (see my Patreon page here) which is my goal for the podcast. All writers will retain copyright, we ask only to retain audio rights for one year. Submissions will always be free.

Email Story Radio

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Read my short story, The Reckoning, in anthology Exit Earth
Writing

Read my short story, The Reckoning, in anthology Exit Earth

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

Exit Earth, an anthology published by Storgy Books, is currently free to download. It includes my sci-fi story, The Reckoning. The story is set in a California of the future, where the Golden Gate Bridge has disappeared beneath the sea and all the Silicon Valley billionaires have moved into a floating island above the earth.

From Trumpocalypse to Brexit Britain, brick by brick the walls are closing in. But don’t despair. Bulldoze the borders. Conquer freedom not fear. EXIT EARTH explores all life – past, present, or future – on, or off – this beautiful, yet fragile, world of ours. Final embraces beneath a sky of flames. Tears of joy aboard a sinking ship. Laughter in a lonely land. Dystopian or utopian, realist or fantasy, horror or sci-fi, EXIT EARTH is yours to conquer.

EXIT EARTH includes the short fiction of all fourteen finalists from the STORGY EXIT EARTH Short Story Competition, as judged by critically acclaimed author Diane Cook (Man vs. Nature). EXIT EARTH EXTRA contains additional stories by award winning authors M R Cary (The Girl With All The Gifts), Toby Litt (Corpsing), James Miller (Lost Boys), Courttia Newland (A Book of Blues), and David James Poissant (The Heaven of Animals), in addition to stories by Tomek Dzido, Ross Jeffery, Alice Kouzmenko, Tabitha Potts, and Anthony Self. With exclusive artwork by Amie Dearlove, HarlotVonCharlotte, CrapPanther, and cover design by Rob Pearce.

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Photo of a flower
Writing

My writing year in review

by tabithapotts
written by tabithapotts

It’s been a long and in many ways rewarding year for me as a writer. Most importantly, I submitted my Creative Writing MA Dissertation (the first eight chapters from my novel in progress and an introductory Essay) and received a Distinction.

After a couple of sometimes quite tumultuous years as I battled with the side-effects of my successful cancer treatment in 2017 (fatigue and forgetfulness being some of them), it was wonderful to get this mark, which was the best I’ve had so far during my MA.

Physical recovery is a lot like writing. I seem to have put a lot of hours in (in the kickboxing gym, on my laptop) and sometimes it feels like not very much happens as a result (and sometimes things seem to go backwards), but I am improving slowly and growing as a writer.

I’ve learned to look at my progress over time rather than expecting everything to happen at once and I hope I’ve become more objective about my work.

I had quite a few stories published too! My short story Masquerade was Highly Commended by the Booker Prize at Birkbeck competition and eventually published by the brilliant Elixir Magazine. I was on the longlist for the Sunderland Short Story Award 2019 and was a Finalist in the MIROnline Folk Tale Festival with my story Crow Girl (which was beautifully illustrated and published on the MIROnline website).

My story The Edge was published on the Short Editions website (alas, not in the short story dispensers, I am going to try again because I’d dearly love to have a story in one of these). Meanwhile, one of my ghost stories is going to come out in a printed anthology soon – I will let you know when it’s available to purchase.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing for Roman Road London and they recently created an author page for me where you can read all my reviews and articles – it’s a great opportunity for me to explore my interest in East London history.

And I’ve been managing MIRLive which has been a joy – the chance to listen to some wonderful writers, both well-known and emerging, reading their work live in an intimate venue. Our final event of the year will be on the 2nd December featuring Toby Litt reading from his novel Patience as well as some amazing new work from writers from Birkbeck and all over the UK. I hope I’ll see some of you there.

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