Unsuitable blog and HappenStance news

How nice it is to get out! Chester Oyez was a lovely experience. Alas, D A Prince was ill and unable to be there, but Anne Caldwell, Gill McEvoy and Janet Loverseed made it. They read marvellously well. Gill McEvoy nearly brought me to unseemly tears with a poem I know well -- but it was still amazing. Janet read her Grey Hen competition winning poem -- stunning. Both Gill and Anne have full collections forthcoming from Cinnamon. These are going to be books worth waiting for!

Some of the reviews are now on the website. That is to say the ones written by three people, with a stripey Sphinx on the top. Count the stripes to get the rating.

I don't know whether I can fold or post or packet any more things! I think I'm posted out. The subscriber mailshot this week took all last weekend, plus Monday afternoon and evening and Thursday afternoon and evening. I keep filling postboxes!

Meanwhile, my wonderful subscribers - bless their cotton socks -- as soon as they got the mailshots, started ordering things, with the result that I did another 20 packets yesterday morning and by the time I was done, missed the bank.

Good news: Gill McEvoy (author of our out-of-print  Uncertain Days and in-print Sampler) won first prize in the Havant Literary Festival Competition. Hurray!

Not only that -- there have been some brilliant autumn days this week and even this morning the sun is shining and the rowan outside my window is turning red. I'm one third of the way through the subscriber mailshot and desperately hoping the postal services will get the bits and pieces to people. All subscribers are getting a free sample PoemCard as well as flyers for the new publications: everyday festival (Rose Cooke), Salaams (Sally Festing, Shadow (Alison Brackenbury) and No Panic Here (Mark Halliday). This time they're a kind of suite of pamphlets, all with cream covers but different inside flyleafs. And some lovely cover designs. Mark Halliday's is a sort of man-meets-ketchup, self-inside-self portrait, which really fits the poems (you've got to read them).

It's been an autumn weekend of many postings. An generous friend sent me a little collection of stamps - such a kind thought. They went onto some of the 22 packets I posted today. I took eight to the post office yesterday - various shapes and sizes. Another five have to be done this evening.

So much to do! But how much worse to be bored!

Three pamphlets are now at the press: everyday festival must be about to come back, with the other two not far behind. Flyers are done for these three.