Bristol Short Story Prize Longlist

As any writer will tell you, things should always happen in threes. Today has definitely followed that rule. Two of them arrived in the post this morning:  my £100 prize-winner’s cheque from JBWB and a copy of Litro 95, including my story “Piss and Patchouli”. But I had to wait until this afternoon before the third one turned up, when the longlist for the Bristol Short Story Prize was announced.

Yes, that is indeed me. This is in fact the second longlist that this particular story has made it onto – the first one being the Fish earlier on this year. However, the longlist for this one is a little tighter than the Fish – only 40 entries out of nearly 1500 – and I have to say that I am seriously chuffed to be sitting there alongside the likes of Elizabeth Baines.

The shortlist is announced on June 7th, so I may be a little twitchy around then. The longlist was in fact as far as I got in the Fish, although I have tweaked the ending a bit since then (which was always the weakest part of the story). The question is: have I tweaked it enough? Watch this space …

[EDIT: Just realised that it was in fact the Fish shortlist that the story got onto, not the longlist. Although, weirdly, that shortlist was around three times the size of the Bristol longlist, for roughly the same number of original entries. *scratches head*]