After Michelangelo

Inspiration

After Michelangelo was originally written for the 2004 Verulam Writers' Circle David Gibson Cup competition, where the prompt was David. Under its original title of The Model, it was the winner by popular vote.

Publications

Under its new title, After Michelangelo was submitted to Necrotic Tissue, who were keen on it, but felt it needed a bit more work to show the protagonist's motivations. They were absolutely right. With these revisions in place, it was duly accepted and published in Issue 4 of the magazine, in October 2008. This was also my first ever magazine acceptance. Not only that, but I got a free T shirt. You don't get that sort of thing every day.

Performances

A staged version of After Michelangelo was developed for Obstacle Productions, who included it in two shows: A Winter's Chill at the New End Theatre in Hampstead in December 2008, and What Stirs the Spring at The Bookshop Theatre, The Drill Hall and the Old Red Lion in March/April 2009.

Notes

I was very sad when Necrotic Tissue closed, if only because of this wonderfully despairing note that appeared in one of their editorials:

Our guidelines are going through a minor tweak. We have received a large number of necrophilia stories, either because everyone in horror gets them or because in our original guidelines we had put in a line about accepting necrophilia if done tastefully. This might offend some people, but at the time, we thought it was funny. Now, three months and about 40 necrophilia stories later, it's not. We have received so many that ranged in level of detailed graphic description that we were actually trying to come up with criteria for what made an acceptable necrophilia story. I want you to stop and think about that for just a second and try to imagine the conversations. Finally it dawned on us that it would just be better to change our guidelines.