Just so she doesn’t think I’m hopeless, I run my fingertip along her neck: a raised white scar, soft as fog, the width of a match.

‘My father,’ she says. ‘He was hit by lightning.’

Francesca Barrie at Johnson & Alcock will be representing my first novel, Rust and Stardust, as well as (hopefully) whatever comes next. Short story collection? Novella? Genderqueer burlesque mime show? Watch this space…

He says: You want a prince’s esteem, you want gallantry and grace.

She says: Princessing is not a process. I have skirts to be lifted.

He says: You have not checked under mine.

She says: Oh, now you complicate.

S/he says: Kings in tiaras, queens in the mud. We drew the line ourselves.

S/he says: I do not want to cut my hair.

S/he says: So don’t. We’ll make bridges of it.

S/he says: Skin can still cover secrets. You, I, we.

Saying: Unprincessed, unkinged.

Saying: Unmaidened, unmanned.

—

This is an entry for the Mookychick blogging competition, FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now.

make sure they can hear that scream

all the way             to the back             of the cinema. aim

to deafen the projectionist.

look behind you when you run                        up to the attic

or down to the basement            or whichever way

leads to snapping jaws. turn to the camera so your hair

flips             just right. pull

your dress tight             so your tits bounce.

leave a trail of potential weapons

dropped from your shaking hands.

you must always make it easy for him to follow.

later there will be a girl who will grab a weapon

and not let go.                        but this is only the third scene. you

are axe-fodder. you should not have

fucked           smoked            cursed         filled the shape of a woman.

next time only sign on if your character            has a boy’s name.

—

This is an entry for the Mookychick blogging competition, FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now.

throat tilted just right and her glass angled

to spill. we all shuffle our boy-cards because

it’s late and Josh is the hot one. Cassie cradles

the loaf-sized phone — pinker than any girl —

and dials. he’s not wearing a hat says the phone

and we all scratch our pencils on the boy-list.

we played this game before we had tits or spots

or periods or stretchmarks or hangovers. now

we’ve had them for so long we need the game

to be those girls again. a handful of girls to a

fistful of women and really what’s changed?

we drink harder and compare one another’s

dark roots. you’re right says the phone.

I like you. Cassie giggles into her empty glass.

we crumple our lists,

our boys.

—

This is an entry for the Mookychick blogging competition, FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now.

In 2006 I was in my final year of university. I was studying English Lit, my dissertation was on retold fairytales, and I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing. So, purely as a distraction from the car-crash that was my dissertation, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. I wrote 50,000 words of rambling nonsense about a fairytale princess, her robot boyfriend and her mermaid best friend living in modern-day Glasgow. It was a total mess, but I thoroughly enjoyed writing it. I felt exhilarated by the experience – this writing malarkey wasn’t so hard after all! I resolved to fix up my novel into something halfway decent, and started looking forward to the following year’s NaNo. (By the way, I finally got my shit together with my dissertation and ended up with a 2:1 honours degree, so it all worked out okay.)

I completed NaNo in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. I soon learned not to take it very seriously – I was also studying for an MLitt in Creative Writing, writing short stories and poems, etc. and in my head that was my ‘real’ writing – but oh, it was fun. It was made even more fun when my good friend Avery Oslo started to NaNo too, so every December we traded novels and crowed over the horrendous scenes we’d written.

In 2010, for the first time since I signed up, I didn’t participate in NaNo. I was a ‘proper’ writer now, working on a ‘proper’ novel, and I couldn’t take the time out. But I missed it. The frantic production of words! The all-encompassing obsession with people I had made up! The cancelling of all unnecessary commitments with impunity! Oh, happy days.

So now it’s 2011, and I’ve almost finished my second ‘proper’ novel (which just seems to mean that it took longer than a month to write and has fewer meandering, misspelled paragraphs about sex and self-indulgence). I do have time to do NaNo, if I want to. But should I? Do I need it? Do I want it?

I’d love to know what you think. Have you NaNo-ed? Do you plan to?

Luckily you don’t have to go out with a graphic designer to have a fancy business card – Moo do lush typewriter and vintage notebook designs. Let me know if you want to order any, as I can wangle you a 10% discount.

What’s the grocery list for your current project?

Last year my story ‘Underskirts’ won third place in the Bridport Prize, and now you can read the whole story online at PANK magazine. Hope you enjoy it!

Click here to read ‘Underskirts’ >>

The Story:

‘How I Learned To Love A Real Man’, first published online at BURST.

Reprinted in Eve’s Harvest (Odyssey Books).

An extract:

Thirteen heralded my Goth phase. I had brief affairs with Heathcliff (too obsessive), Mr. Darcy (too pouty), and Jonathan Harker (too wussy). I went through a brief but decidedly creepy phase of swithering between Edgar Allen Poe and Humbert Humbert. I soon realised that a lust for thirteen year old girls is not necessarily a good thing in a prospective lover.

The Inspiration:

The short version is that I wrote this story because when I was a teenager I had a crush on Rasputin. Just process that for a moment before we continue.

A crush.

On Rasputin.

I’ve always had unusual crushes. Some may say ‘odd’, but I think they all make perfect sense. Right now, for example, my secret boyfriend is Danny Trejo.

PHWOOOOAAAARRRR.

I think it goes without saying that if Danny Trejo was an actual, real, non-famous man who came up to me in a bar and was all “hey baby, wanna get dirty?” (because I imagine that is what he would say), then I would say “no thank-you” and move to another seat. Or perhaps throw my drink in his face and run away before he could wipe the vodka out of his eyes, depending on how scary he looked at the time.

The point is that while the face of Danny Trejo is not attractive, the general persona of Danny Trejo is very sexy indeed. I can’t really explain this, because if you’re not nodding in agreement as you read this then I can never convince you. And that brings me to Rasputin.

Similarly, Rasputin is not attractive. I mean, check this shit out:

He’s obviously a total creep. And yet, and yet! My teenage brain considered him to be the ideal boyfriend. Clearly, a beardy dead Russian mystic is the perfect partner for a queer bookish goth teenager in Glasgow. The rom-com script practically writes itself. Again, I can’t explain this, because if you’re not nodding then I’ve already lost you.

I should add that I had some slightly more normal crushes, like King Charles II and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (they’re normal guys for teenage girls to fancy, right?). Then again, I’m pretty sure I genuinely had a crush on Humbert Humbert and Edgar Allen Poe too. Maybe I just needed to get out more.

Obviously I’m not the only person who can see Rasputin’s appeal, because the illustration that goes along with my story in Eve’s Harvest makes him fit for the cover of a romance novel:

How about you? Who are your unusual crushes?