Read: 1 poem, 1 short story, 1 essay every week. Write: 1 short story every month. Blog about it. To find out more about the challenge and why I'm doing it, you can find the first post about it here: The Blackthorn Challenge - Week 1 | Shona Kinsella

I can't quite believe that we've made it round to Thursday already this week! I had been aiming for Tuesdays for this weekly post, but as you can tell, I have not settled into that rhythm yet. Maybe we'll get there. Or maybe it'll just be whatever day I get to it...

Poem: Dust by Harry Baker

I stumbled across Harry Baker on YouTube some time ago and found such joy in the small things, such inherent love and hope in his work. Dust speaks of the everyday love that biulds and binds people together rather than the grand gestures that society teaches us is what romance looks like. 'It's not the dreaming, it's the waking up with you' is one of the most beautiful lines I've ever come across. 

Essay: On why we write stories, and while we should reject gen-AI while we still can… | Joanne Harris

If you follow me here and care about this project, the chances are that this essay is preaching to the converted, but Joanne Harris makes the case agaisnt generative AI very eloquently. Art - any kind of art - is ultimately about one human consciousness/soul/whatever you want to call it, connecting with another. It is the business of trying to understand ourselves and the world around us, of living in someone elses's shoes for the length of time it takes to read a novel/watch a film/stare at a painting. It is building a connection which shows us we are not alone. Gen AI cannot do any of those things. 

Short Story: Manic pixie Girl by A.C. Wise in The Other Side of Never, edited by Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane.

Inspired by the works of J.M. Barrie, this anthology has a wide range of different approaches to Peter Pan and the other characters from Neverland. Manic Pixie Girl focuses on Tinkerbell and tells a story of addiction and depression and how the love and support of one person can be enough to bring about change. Sometimes. I really liked what Wise did with this story, the bleakness and seediness of it, the way Tinkerbell targets men who treat women like prey. A really powerful piece, which definitely makes me want to find more work by this writer.

As for the writing part of the challenge, I have completed a first draft of a short story, tentatively titled Call of Death. It's around 4500 words long at this point. I'm going to step away from it for a few days then go back and edit it down a bit. I'm not entirely confident it fully works yet, but the shape of it is there.