microwrites - ISSUE TWO AVAILABLE NOW

You're arguing with an English person. Nothing to do with Jill Stein. You can quietly delete or apologise, your choice.

"I totally support his strategy," Machado told me. "And I've said on Dehalf of the Venezuelan people that we are very grateful. I think it is the right thing to do. It's courageous. It's visionary." But attacking a speedboat? Killing 11 citizens? "I'm in favour of the US dismantling this criminal structure."

In your opinion, what does it mean when someone says they're in favour of a strategy when asked about attacks on civilian boats? How do you interpret this answer? What is your opinion on it?

Ohhh you're ChatGPT.

What are you talking about Gordon Ramsay for? No one asked for abusive criticism, especially from a stranger, he was literally just happy with his food. Then she sent me about ten messages insulting me for pointing this out, ironically calling me a snowflake.

Sardines For Dinner skeeting a picture of his spice box - chicken, chips, onion, chillis, dips - saying "I feel so powerful right now"

Central NY 22 - apparently a name - skeeting in reply "Garbage plate?"

A shot from skythread showing the skeet from Sardines with the reply from Central NY 22 in context.

She literally replied with "Garbage plate?" to this post of a complete stranger showing his pals a photo of his food. Then started calling his friends weird when they defended him from her unprompted attack.

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.

We shouldn't have to choose between these options in 2025! Make something that functions!! At least include drafts!!!

You never had this problem with Twitter I tell you that for nowt. Well, not so regularly.

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.

microwrites issue two microwrites is a short (very short!) fiction zine, leaning to the weird but not averse to any genre. Starting in an exclusively web-based format, this is the second paper issue. Inside you will find a...

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.

Yeah, it just sort of makes sense after a bit.

I did enjoy The Gallows Pole a lot, eventually it just kind of overwhelms you and you're in its world for a while. One of those books where it's hard to read something else afterwards because you're in such a groove.

WHICH MIGHT SEEM ODD given that I started Microwrites as a way to create a little support network, a writing group to motivate others to write and is that not in many ways what NaNo is all about??

And yet I've never liked it. The whole *concept* gets my back up a bit.

But, like, seriously... their pivot to "AI is good, actually" feels in retrospect like a flailing attempt to grab a window ledge while falling 11 storeys. Having some kind of formal organisation for a project like that always seemed weird. idk, I've never got on with the idea of NaNo.

Go AI, time to die.

And then Daisy Johnson! And bookended with James. I mean... 😍

British Library Eerie East Anglia. Their collections are generally great but this is outstanding.

Denis Healey speaking at the 1959 Labour Party Conference, following their loss in the general election; "Hugh Gaitskell was absolutely right yesterday when he said that what gets cheers at this conference is not necessarily what gets votes at elections. If it did we would have won Devonport [the seat which Michael Foot had just lost]. There are far too many people who...want to luxuriate complacently in moral righteousness in Opposition. But who is going to pay the price for their complacency? You can take the view that it is better to give up half the loaf if you cannot get the whole loaf, but the point is it is not we who are giving up the half loaf. In Britain it is the unemployed and the old age pensioners, and outside Britain there are millions of people in Asia and Africa who desperately need a Labour government in this country to help them. If you take the view that it is all right to stay in Opposition as long as your Socialist heart is pure, you will be “all right, Jack”. You will have your TV set, your motor car and your summer holidays on the Continent and still keep your Socialist soul intact. The people who pay the price for your sense of moral satisfaction are the Africans, millions of them, being slowly forced into racial slavery; the Indians and Indonesians dying of starvation. We are not just a debating society. We are not just a Socialist Sunday School. We are a great movement that wants to help real people living on this earth at this present time. We shall never be able to help them unless we get power. We shall never get power until we are able to close the gap between our active workers and the average voters of this country.”

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

Distance, by Thom Willis The countryside is vast. England, when it thinks of itself at all in terms of space, does not consider itself possessed of much in the way of empty space. Political rhetoric – “We’re full!” – tries…

This is the only thing I've written of the fens but it's *really* about the fens. microwrites.wordpress.com/2019/09/03/d...

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!

Omg I could illustrate them. It would be SO MUCH EFFORT for no reward. Sounds cool.

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