Charlie Fish and Fiction on the Web

Who here is migrating to Bluesky? I've started posting over there instead. Come follow me: buff.ly/3UW45HP

The Smart Search List of the Day is: Fee-Free Mainstream Fantasy Short Stories feat. @fishcharlie @thedarkmagazine @TranslunarTL @SeizeThePress_ et al. duotrope.com/search/smart/f…

A member of my old longstanding writing group, Helen Bain, had her first novel published by Bloomsbury! I attended the launch event this week, which was emotional. The book is about the last days of Sylvia Plath. Go buy it!

Barry Garelick's story "The Sun and the Moon and the Stars", first printed at Fiction on the Web, has been reprinted in The Parallel: readparallel.com/the-sun-and-th…

Fiction on the Web submissions will be closing for the month of April, so get your stories in now while you still can! fictionontheweb.co.uk/p/submissions.…

The Feeling of Running by Mitchell Toews - mailchi.mp/8b151dd51805/f…

Scratch Books are open to submissions for the Scratch A4 1000 word short story competition until 25 April. Send them your rich, exhilarating and brilliant short works! Entry £4. Winners presented in Soho on Sat 6 June. (I attended last year's - great fun!) scratch-books.co.uk/scratcha4compe…

@fordhsmith The environmental message was a bit hinky. She does the right thing by trying to rally the people to protest - but she is shown to fail and instead goes into a beaverbot. Actually, organising is the thing that should work! Especially since we don’t have beaverbots.

@FishCharlie Sounds like a wild concept but kinda wish they leaned deeper into the story instead of just laughs.

Saw Hoppers @ cinema. Young woman passionate about the environment transplants her consciousness into a beaverbot and foments an animal revolution. In the last 15+ years, Pixar have rarely reached the heights of their first 11 movies. This one prioritises goofy laughs. Adequate.

I read Strange Houses by Uketsu. An unusual floor plan triggers the unveiling of a dark family murder mystery. Proof that you can sell a million copies by writing for the lowest common denominator: it's condescending & convoluted. But the idea of including floor plans is original

I read Methuselah's Children by Heinlein. A whole generation is secretly bred for longevity, and when the world finds out they react with jealousy. I enjoyed the twists and turns, and loved that thie serves as back-story for Lazarus Long, from Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love".

Evergreen by Teresa Koeppel - mailchi.mp/0c88a76497fc/f…

Watched Gandahar. As a fan of René Laloux's Fantastic Planet, I was curious about his other feature-length animated movie about blue-skinned aliens - in this case, fighting against time-travelling metal men. I love the alien biology in these movies. So refreshingly NOT Disney.

Watched the Where the Wild Things Are movie. Did a great job of extending the story while doubling down on the childlike danger and wonder in the original. If they had come out at the same time, this would be considered an all-time classic. Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers - dream team.

I had a day to catch up on my reading, and I've just accepted NINE more stories for publication at Fiction on the Web, including some authors who have been trying to get in for many many months. Congratulations y'all!

This week, for the first time ever, Fiction on the Web will exceed two million visitors in a year! 🎉 🎊 🎈 Each story typically gets read by 2-3,000 people.

Magda's Boy by Matthew Ross - mailchi.mp/ec34fdff9ba6/f…

@keithroysdon Very cool!

@FishCharlie Vincent Price. I've met and interviewed a lot of well-known people, but my conversation with Price was just happenstance in an airport in 1982. He couldn't have been nicer.

Who is the most famous person you've ever had a conversation with? For me, it's probably Richard E Grant (British actor) or Terry Rossio (writer of Aladdin, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean).

Look, this is a neat graph. It shows how many short story submissions we got each day in February at Fiction on the Web. (We published 12 stories in February.)

Did you know I wrote a History of Video Games? I was thinking of doing a History of the Oscars before the 100th anniversary, but I'm running out of time, and the will is not strong.