Blog update: I'd like your titles, please, and we now have film reviews

Hello there. No fiction today but I thought it was time for a general blog update. Yes, it still looks the same. Not that kind of update.

Right, so the Witch's Bile series has come to an end. I hope you enjoyed it, I'd be very interested to hear what you thought about it. But those characters won't be coming back for a while, which brings us to the question of what to do with the blog now. I thought that having something with a running story-line would be a good idea but given that life is life, I can't guarantee the constant updates that something like that really deserves. Obviously the sensible thing to do would be write the whole thing and split it into segments, but I have several other longer projects on the go and I just don't have the time at the moment.

So what I'd like to do is appeal for your short story titles again. I'm sure our regular readers will remember (I believe our numbers may have swollen from seven to ten, hello everyone!) that what I've done in the past is ask for titles, and then I will write the story. I'm very happy to admit to the fact that when it comes to title I am beyond useless, so this experiment worked out very nicely for me last time. Popular stories from the last batch included Do You Still Love Your Girlfriend Now That She's Dead Again?, I Was Dead Inside Until I Met You (both titles from Iain McGibbon, or @phernalia_i on Twitter), A Thrilling Warning To Naughty Ladies (suggested by Nia Childs or @nia_loves_films ), Surprisingly Moving With Its Oddness (from Stacey Siddons or @baker_court ), The Flailing Quizmistress (from Helen Cox or @helenography ), Mermaid Skin (from Martin Parsons or @martang66 ) and Von Haselnuss Rides Again (from David Hayes or @DavidHayes4 )

The first short story I'd written in quite a while came from a title from Thomas Roberts (or @tom_wookiee), called Mindquack. I had so much fun writing that story that I thought it was time for another titles whip-round. So please, if you read this blog, either drop me a line in the comments section or find me on Twitter (@JonathanHatfull) and give me a sentence you think is in some way catchy or fun, or even isn't. Could be anything. I'm open to genre suggestions too but I can't promise to abide by them (most things I write tend to end up horror). Only condition? I already have two titles with 'Samurai'  (courtesy of that Parsons boy and @LaFemmeFlaneuse) in them, not sure if I can do three! I'm already at work on the next short story for the blog, The Widow and the Treehouse, the title of which comes from @scottywrotem . I think it should be fun, we'll see though.

The other part of the blog housekeeping is related to my film reviews. I'm sure those of you who follow me on social media know that I mostly go on about film rather than fiction, and I had resisted merging the two here for a long time. I didn't want to do it. I wanted this to just be a fiction blog. And it still will be. But, it seems silly not to have a place where people can find my reviews if they want to so there is now a section, ingeniously titled Film Reviews, where they will be collected. So if you want to know I think American Mary "shows that the Soska sisters are a force to be reckoned with", why Looper is "humane, clever sci-fi", why Maury and Bustillo's Livide is "bewitching and oddly moving", or why Lucky McKee's The Woman "reaches out and grabs you by the throat", there's now a whole section with links to reviews where I talk about these films less clunkily than I'm doing now. You'll also find my coverage of this year's Frightfest there, and my (currently on-going) London Film Festival write-ups for Cinetalk.

The ebook is also rumbling slowly towards self-publication. When it is ready, don't worry. I will plug the hell out of it on here. Which just sounds weird. I will promote my ebook (Lovely Creatures! Darkly comic horror!) on this blog. Like a normal person would.

But enough of the self-promotion. Thank you very much for reading the Witch's Bile series and I hope you keep reading and keep enjoying (if you did enjoy, if not, then start enjoying) the short stories that will going up on the blog soon. Thanks for listening to my rambling, here's Bob.