This website

The Smoke website is composed of words and images sent in by readers. Each new piece appears in full on the home page, with older pieces in excerpted form beneath. Every piece of writing is also filed under the WORDS & IMAGES/LINES OF SMOKE tab; you can search on author, subject matter or place. Random tales and photos from our archive appear in the right-hand column, as do excerpts from forthcoming books – of which more in a moment.

So, if you have anything you think would fit – whether it’s a short story, a single paragraph, a photo, a drawing, or some radical new art form of your own you’ve just invented but which can still be squeezed down a phone wire, please send it to us – the only criterion is that it has to be in some way inspired by London. More details about how to submit can be found HERE.

Many of the pieces appearing on the site will be collected into occasional printed publications on various retrospectively selected themes – we’ll be announcing the first of these soon.

Alongside those books, we’ll be publishing others where the topic will be announced upfront, and contributions invited. The first of these, an anthology of pieces about the effect of the Olympics on London (From the Slopes of Olympus to the Banks of the Lea) will be off to the printer’s soon, so submissions are closed on that; another, about London’s music venues (Night Bus To Camden), is more of a long-term project, so please feel free to send stuff in! Successful pieces will be filed under the appropriate project heading (under the WORDS & IMAGES tab), and also appear on the home page as a regular contribution – unless they arrive late on in the process, in which case they’ll probably just be kept for the book (that’s why most of the contents of From The Slopes of Olympus hasn’t appeared on the site!).

And, finally, this site also features occasional pieces from back issues of Smoke: a London Peculiar, the little magazine that started all this. If you want to know more about Smoke, there’s some historical info under the About… tab. Details about Soho!, the board game we produced for Christmas 2010, are there too. And obviously back issues of the remaining magazines are still available from our SHOP.

Matt & Jude