There are many, many good things arriving on the Bugged website today. Not just one, but two selections of new work, and a competition. The first selection is from the latest batch of submissions from writers from all over the UK, and in this one features work by Cathy Bryant, Maggie Doyle, Lynda Nash, Suzanne Phillips and Rodney Wood. You’ll find their writing here Bugged July 29th . And the second is more work from our core writers, and there you’ll find a script by playwright Steph Dale, another story by David Gaffney and a story from the first of our editors to complete her piece, Jo Bell. You can read their work here – Core writers – July 29th
And now for the competition. One of our editors – not the one who’s work appears in this post – has a new novel coming out next week. It’s fantasy adveture story called The Map of Marvels, and tells the story of a boy who goes on a series of fantastic, magical, and sometimes terrying journeys. And, as many of your overhearings have involved you going on some kind of journey, we’d like you to send us a single sentence describing a journey of some kind. It may be an actual journey you’ve taken, or a dream journey, or one you’d like to take. But the idea is to send us just a single image from that journey, in one sentence. The competiton closes on Tuesday 3rd August and the writer of the one we like the best will be sent a copy of The Map of Marvels. And if you suspect that this competition is just an underhand way of plugging the book – it is.
Finally, we’d like to say thank you to Bugged Writer and photographer Janet Jenkins who’s been inspired by the project not only to write overhearings but to take photographs of them as well. It’s one of her photos that illustrates today’s post. Birdbugged. Thanks again, Janet.
Bugged 
Packed and poised, I have planned, provisioned, prepared, til now, pace petering, I pause perplexed… a premonition?
Driving home afterwards, I pull into every bus stop, placing unsafe hands on anger-heated leather.
I found the turning this time, unlike five years ago when I pulled up against a field gate and she held my hand awhile, blue eyes dreamy in the last rays of the sun.
The country that you travel through
is spiritual mountains
hiero and glyph, myths,
other people’s loves, forays into
deserts, shorelines, wine-strong streets.
Just to say that the ‘Cathy Bryant’ in the tags isn’t me! She might not be too pleased to see the poem attributed to her, so I thought I’d mention it.
Best wishes,
Cathy Bryant
Sorry about that Cathy. We’ll remove the tag.
Best wishes
Jo and David
Thanks Jo and David! x
Once in a Lifetime Journey
“If only I’d known there would be such a fabulous book at the end of my labours, I would have done my best to remember something about the most exciting, incredible and miraculous journey I took down the birth canal a few decades ago.”
The whole “Bugged” project is such great fun and so many sources of inspiration and venues in which to place them, I am loving the total experience – such a clever conception. Oh, I’m off with the ante natal stuff again.
Men Never Ask For Directions.
Moving away from Manchester to Crewe to attend university would have been easier if my father hadn’t left his internal navigation system switched off, there are only so many times you can drive through Dunham Massey before everyone realises you’re lost.
This is my Journey ….
“Holding her eyes shut she jumped into blue-grey mist, cold pinched her ankles and gripped tight while ice frosted into the small stippled surface of her worn blue jumper, her small desperate sound echoed and merged with the wind, relaxing her knees she lands in a sea of white.”
But this is a better way to read it …….
Holding her eyes shut she jumped into blue-grey mist,
cold pinched her ankles and gripped tight while ice frosted
into the small stippled surface of her worn blue jumper,
her small desperate sound echoed and merged with the wind
opening her knees she lands in a sea of white.