More Serendipity

Had another short story accepted by Serendipity magazine, who published Flotsam a while back. The new one is The Wind Singing in the Wires, a magic realist kind of piece about a woman and the unexpected voices she hears coming from the telephone system ...

The short story will be appearing on January 1st 2009, so a good start to the new year.

This is also, as it happens, the 50th piece (poem or story) I've had accepted for publication over the years, making it a pretty significant landmark. But I really feel like I'm still only just beginning ...

A Degree of Success

I found out today that I've passed the last part of my Open University literature BA and have been awarded a first. Major celebrations all round. I've been working towards this since 1993 - admittedly with an eight-year hiatus in the middle - so it's obviously fantastic to get to the end of it.

The course covered a lot of ground, including both literary analysis and creative writing. I've enjoyed it immensely. It means very much more to me than the degree I got umpteen years ago from a brick university. This is the one I should have started when I was 18 and completed when I was 21. I'm 44 now so it's only a little overdue. But it's never too late for these things.

I also notice there's word of the Open University starting a Creative Writing MA in the next couple of years. I just might think about it ...