A-Z Blog Challenge

See the badge over on the right. Yes. I've signed up for the A-Z Blogging Challenge again. This involves a blog post inspired by a letter of the alphabet every day - except Sundays - during April, twenty six posts in all. I don't have a theme. I'll just be writing about anything that takes my fancy as I usually do although there may be a bit of a focus on writing and similar activities. It was great fun last year so I'm looking forward to doing it again and finding some new blogs to follow. I was number 1422 to sign up so obviously there's a lot of choice and it's always good to widen your reading.

Call for Submissions

Twelfth Planet Press has released details about Defying Doomsday, a anthology of short stories edited by Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench to be released in mid 2016. Following a Pozible campaign, open submissions will begin on May 1.

Why am I blogging about this? Well, the stories will be about apocalypse survival - nothing new there, you're no doubt thinking - but the twist is the stories will focus on characters with physical impairments, mental illnesses, chronic illnesses, neurodiversity or other similar issues affecting them instead of relegating them to secondary or supporting roles. They will also be expected to entertain with the editors aiming at a range of stories from fun and/or exciting to sad or even horror.

This is exciting stuff. As a person with multiple health issues, most of them invisible, I'm used to being seen as an inconvenience to many around me. No-one likes the person who has to pull out of planned social events on a regular basis, who walks so slowly that everyone else has to slow down or  who can't eat certain things for medical reasons - and I definitely don't like being that person. If, while providing entertaining reading, an anthology like this makes the wider population aware that those of us with disabilities are more than just a collection of inconvenient symptoms and stops them judging or thinking we are exaggerating our problems - something I've experienced from a wide range of people including doctors and nurses who  really should know better - it will do us all a favour.

Twelfth Planet Press is an innovative small publisher, not afraid to tackle the controversial, and I always look forward to their books. I have been buying them as they come out for years and I'll be waiting eagerly for Defying Doomsday.

Interstellar Award for Speculative Poetry

This new competition looks interesting. It covers both speculative poetry and speculative short fiction and there's decent prize money. The poetry competition is now open and the short fiction one will be open later in the year. Go here to find out more.