So - what will 2008 (our third year!) bring? Well, the new issue is currently with our selfless and excellent sub, the lovely Helen, so that should be with us before the month is out, if the printers smile upon us. We're applying to the Arts Council for a little hard cash to help develop the website (our dream includes resources for budding writers, forums where people can discuss their work and that of others, and bags more stories, poems and features) and to fund professional distribution, so we can become a Proper Magazine. Plus we hope to pop up at a few more literary festivals (and you never know, I might even make one this year if you're bored of Hape and Anna's sweet faces).
In other news, I had a bumper crop of Mass Observation-related books for Christmas. Nella Last's diary (that which Victoria Wood based her dramatisation on), "Betty's Wartime Diary" and, most excitingly, an original 1939 Penguin publication from the Mass Observers (which advertises the forthcoming "Why Hitler is Dangerous" in the flyleaf). Bliss. Plus "The Inheritance of Loss", as reviewed in Pen Pusher, which I am already racing through. AND I found "On Chesil Beach" at half price while taking Alistair Campbell's Diaries back (my pa already had them), and Kerry Katona's memoirs for 25p on the bookshelf at the back of the church, so I'm thrifty too.
