Hello! Can I ask any microwrites veterans if they are available to proofread our stories for Issue Three, please? Light duties, indoor work with no heavy lifting. lmk in DMs or email, I'm going to go full speed getting this issue out now thank you I love you bye.

Oh god Bluesky I hate your app so much. I typed so much just then and five seconds on another app to check something and I LOST IT ALL because you rebooted. You absolute piece of SHIT.

On the Ocean once again. Our final seagoing tale is named Fifty Miles off Aberdeen. Regular microwrites readers may recognise @bisonfish.bsky.social's Lord Dangerberry from an earlier story on the blog. Certainly I appreciated the return of the spinner of high-adventure yarns.

Where was I? Ah yes, the beach! Next story is another microwrites debutante, Jem Tenebris with Any Weather Is Good Beach Weather. Jem is a great example of a writer seeing the zine and wanting in. To that end, please do spread the word! I want as many voices as possible!

Back to the sea! And here's @danstow.bsky.social's second piece (his first I will come to). Remember I said the ocean section has a playfulness to it? I wasn't kidding. This is a jaunty poem with a strong flavour of Wind in the Willows to it.

IT'S ONLY A BLOODY EBOOK OF ISSUE TWO www.lulu.com/shop/dan-mel...

Back to the beach, we're going to the beach and we're going to talk about Siren by @howliet.bsky.social. It's a meta-title because in the Beach section of Issue Two the sea exerts a siren call throughout, pulling the authors to it or into it. Probably the hardest story to illustrate!

Coast? Coast. Now if you've followed microwrites you may remember that I gave a copy of Municipal Gothic by @raynewman.bsky.social as a prize a while ago so I was THRILLED to receive a story from Ray for inclusion in the zine.

IT'S OCEAN TIME, BAYBEH. And you KNOW we love the silly so it's silly time here, with @thefirstcaro.bsky.social's The Early Memoirs of Fred the Pirate (An Excerpt). Maybe the longest title of a microwrites story... ever? Maybe! I'm not checking the blog.

SECOND STORY, also in the "Coast" section, is Sea Watching by microwrites stalwart @ursanews.bsky .social. I did um and ah about which section to place this in, but there was something about its scene-setting that was so powerfully coastal it ended up in the first block.

Issue Two starts off with a story from the coast, it's Returning by the ever-wonderful @plantpotonassis.bsky.social. In just a few paragraphs so much is conveyed, a broad sketch of small details. The open wound of the pandemic festers, almost unspoken, in the narration.

Go AI, time to die.

Denis Healey on "half a loaf" leftism at the 1959 Labour conference.

Reading the British Library collection of fenland weird stories and my god my god it's so good, fens are so spooky. Just read the short story of Possum and fucking hellllllll it's a new kind of skin-crawling horrible. Why have I not written more fen stories? My parents live on the fens!

Might fuck around and just publish a whole book of my own stories.

Short stories.

First of all, THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT BIRD WATCHING. Second of all, you FUCKING hypocrites:

Lulu has sent me a tax return, I assume as an early April Fool.

What genre is the microwrites zine and I'm asking this as a non-rhetorical question. I'm interested to know what those who have read the two issues think.

On the Ocean once again. Our final seagoing tale is named Fifty Miles off Aberdeen. Regular microwrites readers may recognise @bisonfish.bsky.social's Lord Dangerberry from an earlier story on the blog. Certainly I appreciated the return of the spinner of high-adventure yarns.

Keishi Kondo’s NEW RELIGION is now available on @shudder.com… as featured in this article on Shoegaze horror…

It still blows my mind that, years ago, I would actually pay for new ringtones...fast forward to today, and if my phone so much as makes a sound, I want to chuck it out a window.

Where was I? Ah yes, the beach! Next story is another microwrites debutante, Jem Tenebris with Any Weather Is Good Beach Weather. Jem is a great example of a writer seeing the zine and wanting in. To that end, please do spread the word! I want as many voices as possible!

Not going to ask that bot that tells you you're Switzerland about this account, it'll probably be the first one it decides is Nazi Germany or something.

I finally went and bought the book that haunted my childhood. Specifically the telling of the Croglin Grange (given here as the somehow more sinister Croglin Low Hall) vampire, and the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui.

Couldn't get through that AI short story. Florid and overwritten, yet weirdly empty. Like it was trying to make up the word count. Which, in a way, it was.

Eyyy we're back at the coast and guess who? That's right, me, the guy writing this skeet. Unlike the stories I DIDN'T write I can really get into the weeds on this one. Like, it's clear I was reading Lovecraft at the time! I cut a lot of stuff from this, with the group on the island.

Hell yes, just used the link glitch to save a few characters and fit everything into one skeet.

Back to the sea! And here's @danstow.bsky.social's second piece (his first I will come to). Remember I said the ocean section has a playfulness to it? I wasn't kidding. This is a jaunty poem with a strong flavour of Wind in the Willows to it.

Always a pleasure, reading a short fiction collection, to encounter an MR James. Just come across Wailing Well, a quiet favourite of mine. It goes so hard - from a gently amusing thumbnail sketch of a naughty schoolboy to his straight-up, broad daylight murder by ghosts. Astonishing deftness.

Look, if you use the tinyurl it now has the ebook. Good, eh? tinyurl.com/Microwrites

That's right, all the goodness of Issue Two's print form (all the stories, all the illustrations, all the love) but available to read on your computer, tablet, phone or smart fridge. Bonus - this has exactly THREE more words than the print edition due to a corrected formatting error.

Has something exciting just happened?

Head. In. Hands. "Unbound also raised £1,293,050... to go towards a machine-learning tool... designed to assess someone’s X... network, and estimate how effectively they could crowdfund a book. The Bookseller understands that the machine-learning tool was not successfully launched."

You know which independent publisher pays their authors? Me! When I have enough sales to actually have the money to do so. Hint, hint. tinyurl.com/Microwrites

Sorry I've left off for a few days cause, well.

Back to the beach, we're going to the beach and we're going to talk about Siren by @howliet.bsky.social. It's a meta-title because in the Beach section of Issue Two the sea exerts a siren call throughout, pulling the authors to it or into it. Probably the hardest story to illustrate!

Last day to respond!

Coast? Coast. Now if you've followed microwrites you may remember that I gave a copy of Municipal Gothic by @raynewman.bsky.social as a prize a while ago so I was THRILLED to receive a story from Ray for inclusion in the zine.

The bright side is - you can no longer make a "bad" Bond movie, you can just make a Bond-branded movie or series or limited event that sucks or whatever. It's like Star Wars. The last Star wars that could be quantified as good or bad instead of "Star Wars flavoured content" was Revenge of the Sith.

This is my story! Fun fact Fred is based on Antonio the sailor boy a character from a story I wrote a long time ago who was based on Antonio Banderas’ character in the The 13th Warrior if he’d washed up on a beach & found himself in a pseudo Irish medieval society with portals & battles

IT'S OCEAN TIME, BAYBEH. And you KNOW we love the silly so it's silly time here, with @thefirstcaro.bsky.social's The Early Memoirs of Fred the Pirate (An Excerpt). Maybe the longest title of a microwrites story... ever? Maybe! I'm not checking the blog.

A lot of older houses in Hollywood were made by studio construction crews when they weren’t working. They can have a slightly Disney-fied air. A sort of memory of Europe. This is a good example www.redfin.com/CA/Los-Angel...

I cant stop laughing

Look I'm no salesman, what do I need to do to sell it to you, folks? Art? Story extracts? A range of enamelled pin badges? I just want to pay my writers.

Realised it would be better to alternate book sections so it's not all coast then all beach etc. SO!

You ever think

Harry Hill would have had a field day with this on TV Burp 🤣

Roger's stories tend to the mythopoeic, and this is no exception. A sailor's tale that blooms into a mist of old gods and spirits... tinyurl.com/Microwrites

SECOND STORY, also in the "Coast" section, is Sea Watching by microwrites stalwart @ursanews.bsky .social. I did um and ah about which section to place this in, but there was something about its scene-setting that was so powerfully coastal it ended up in the first block.