Happy Valentine's Day and...

Happy last day of work, Zoe!! Good luck with the throwing off of the corporate shackles. Zoe is one of the number who has decided to chuck it all in and become a teacher. My parents were teachers and always told me not to be one. In fact all teachers of my parents generation told all people of my generation not to be teachers. Then of course there was this whole big crisis because now there aren't enough teachers. So we are anyway, just 10-15 years later. Well, I'm not. Yet. Just my generation.

And, in honour of Valentine's Day let's talk about things that are shiny. Shiny is a new e-zine seeking submissions:

Shiny is looking for fresh, entertaining stories between 2000 and 8000 words long. The style and substance of Shiny stories should be up there with the best current YA fiction, and should (for the most part) feature teenage protagonists. We're mostly interested in stories with speculative elements - science fiction, fantasy and horror - but we're open to non-speculative stories that would appeal to genre readers. We prefer a contemporary setting and/or feel to our stories, but will not let this restrict our choices. Shiny is aiming to appeal to teenagers, but also to the wide body of adults who read and enjoy Young Adult fiction. We look forward to reading your submissions!

Follow the shiny link if you think this is for you. I think submissions close in July but they say they might fill their quota before then (yeah, because writers are such before the minute people and never rewrite whole stories the day before they're due.)

(By the way, in the interests of being open and honest about my interest, they sent me an email, said lovely things about my writing and asked me to contribute. If you want your gig/zine/toenail promoted on Eglantine's Cake, apparently that's all you have to do).

Here's a story Martin came across to whet your appetite. Or, like, kill it forever. You do know they're talking about you, don't you?