'I am afraid your letter is most unsuitable for me at the present time...

...as I have just spent the entire weekend writing the novel that you have summarily rejected.'

I didn't get shortlisted for the Asham Award this year. I'm disappointed, but not surprised. I have since been reading Richard Yates' collected stories and now realise that what I wrote was merely a sorry excuse for an imposter of a short story. I'm a little annoyed with myself only because I should have know that my first person prostitute-with-a-heart-but-also-a-borderline-personality-disorder narrative wouldn't be the sort of thing they were looking for, as last year's winner was 1500 words about a girl climbing into a bath of cement.

Titles of shortlisted entries include:

Anubis Ate My Inner Child;
The Belle of Biloxi;
Chameleon Soup;
Colour Me Julie Christie;
and
JK who?

It's been a good exercise, though, in not only finishing something off, but also putting it up for critiquing too - neither of which I had done before September. And there's plenty of time to work on my quirkiness before the next one comes around in 2010.