Flashes to Ashes

On Monday night I read at Small Stories, a new spoken word event that takes place at The Birdcage in Bristol on the first Monday of the month. This was the third Small Stories event, and I'm planning to go again — great atmosphere, good set-up, very well attended.

One of the features of Small Stories is a resident illustrator for the evening who will take one of the stories as the inspiration for a piece of art. After the first few stories it dawned on me that the artist, Dave Allen, had selected "Ashes to Ashes, Mañana, Mañana" — my story!

What is perhaps more interesting is that, to my knowledge (and independently of illustrating it for publication), only one other person has produced a piece of art inspired by one of my stories — and it was the same story. This piece is by Lilly Kate Hillage:

And speaking of "Ashes to Ashes, Mañana, Mañana", I was saddened to learn that Kazka Press, the paying market that published it a few months ago, was set to close its doors recently. I was further disappointed to discover that their site went offline a few days ago, taking all the published stories with it. It seems they've just renewed their server space and domain name and are now back... but to be sure it remains live and current, without resorting to the Wayback Machine, I've republished "Ashes to Ashes, Mañana, Mañana" on ReadWave.