stories at bedtime

So I've been reading my most recent story aloud, listening for hicups, killing my darlings. I've always heard people talk about reading aloud and how much it helps, etc, but I always poo pooed it, because, well, to put it simply, I can't be told. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've now come round and am finding it most useful (point to note, other things I heard were great and ignored and then realised I loved are; Harry Potter, Kindles, sushi, red wine, Mslexia).

I'm quite pleased with my new story. Continuing current trends it's written in the second person, but it's quite a departure for me because it's historical and has a happy-ish ending. It's also super short, which I like, 712 words to be exact. This is part on purpose and part because that's how long the story is. I'm going to enter it in the Ruth Rendell competition (which you can find by following this link here http://www.interactreading.org/content/ruth-rendell-short-story-competition-20112012) and I'm actually quite chuffed with my bad self because although most of my stories are earmarked for certain comps, not that many of them actually make it. This one will because I'm literally at that last "take a comma out, put a comma in, delete half a sentence, change a word" stage of editing and if someone put a gun to my head, I could actually send it now. But I won't, I'm going to send it on Thursday, when I've been paid.

Other things that have made me happy this week are the fact that I've been mentioned in a blog as a resource for writers, which I didn't think I was and which made me feel oh so important. You can check out the blog here

http://talking-in-the-library.blogspot.com/

she's worth a follow, she really is.

And I think that's just about it for bijou-news. November is nearly upon us and I am super-duper excited for NaNo, and my Arvon course, both of which are almost here. I've built Arvon up to mythical proportions in my head, so am a little bit scared that I'll be disappointed, that nothing can be as good as it is in my imagination, where it plays out a little something like this: go and meet lots of lovely writers and be the most inspired I've ever been and live in a lovely bubble of candy coloured prose and short stories that flow like a big flowy thing, and get really constructive - hang on, I'll be honest since it's my head - really AWESOME feedback about how wonderful I am and then come home and continue being inspired and keep in contact with people I've met for continued honest and constructive feedback and end up finding an agent and getting published and binning the day job and living happily ever after.

Sigh.

Sometimes, it is a bit of a curse, this imagination malarky...

I've started, so I'll finish

Eeek, well my story is now published in Writers' Forum. It's really nice seeing something you've written in print, in an actual magazine which people actually pay for. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

In other news, I've found a home for my amazing title. It isn't for a story, but for a collection of stories (most of which are currently not in existence, or in some form of first draft limbo, or worse, incomplete first draft limbo). Anyway, I've formulated a plan. It goes a little something like this...

• finish all the stories I've started


• use NaNoWriMo to write more stories (I know it's technically a bit cheaty, but I figure that if I can write 50,000 words of short stories that I then look at and edit and do something with, it is better than writing 50,000 word of novel that is so jumbled and frightening that I don't know where to begin and therefore never look at it again)


• pull all this together into some semblence of order and send it off to New Writing North for their Northern Writers Awards


• send all stories off to competitions (with optional feedback) and make them the best they can be


• enter the collection in the Scott Prize for short stories

So, if I follow this plan it gives me about a year to do all this, which is do-able. I need to think about the stories as an all-together and not just as stories, but I've had some ideas on how I can do this, which is nice.

I've been reading a lot of short stories recently (helped in no small part by the fact that Salt Publishing are selling collections of stories for 86p for the Kindle. Yes, that's right, eighty-six-freaking-pence. It's all kinds of awesome). So I've been reading a lot of short stories and have realised something - I really need to up my game. Like, seriously. So imagine an appendix to plan A...

• practice, practice, practice


• don't be too scared to do brave things with my writing


• just be better, generally

One story that's stuck in my head is called Darling and it's by a lady called Padrika Tarrant and it's amazing. Absolutely make me feel a little bit sick with envy amazing. You should read it, it's very good.

Anyway, that's about it really. The husband has fixed it so I can now comment on my blog again, but the little icon where I can add a link and make it look like words has disappeared. I guess a girl can't have everything.

Fifth time lucky

As some of you might know, one of my favourite competitions to enter is the Writers' Forum competition. I enter quite a lot. It's cheap. I've learnt an awful lot from the feedback they've given me. In short, I like it.

Anyway - wonderful, wonderful news. My story has come second, yes kids that's right, SECOND, in their competition. Happy, happy days. I am slightly elated.

The boyf (I can't call him that for much longer, I'll explain why in a bit) has forever been pestering me to write a story with a happy ending. I've been resistant. I like misery. My stories don't really have happy endings, but this one did. I didn't force it. It came to me that way. There was about half an hour where I toyed with some horrible things that could happen to the main character, but I opted not to go with them, and boy, am I glad I did.

The other reason this story is a bit of a departure is because it is written in the second person, which is very new to me, but something I actually felt really comfortable doing. Do you ever have a story that seems to write itself? Well this was one of those stories. Wooooohooooo! So I think it will be out at the end of August, I'll keep you posted.

This is the second success I've had this year. If you want to check out my other story, you can do so here...

http://www.gumbopress.co.uk/wordgumbo/wordgumbo1.pdf

I'm on page 19.

And in my last very exciting news? This time in two weeks I'll be on a plane to Las Vegas, on my way to get married. We're having a very traditional Elvis wedding.

So it's all go in the bijou household!

Happy Sunday

Well I've had a story accepted for publication! What a lovely thing to wake up to! It's for Gumbo Press, and will be in the first edition of their Word Gumbo magazine. I'll post a link when it goes up at the end of the month, but until then, woooohoooooo!!!

It's one of my better stories, and one that has been doing the rounds for quite a while. I've sent it to Aesthetica (twice), Mslexia, Global Short Story Comp, Writer's Forum...and I'm sure there are some other ones that I've missed off. So it's nice to finally have it accepted somewhere, and (at the risk of sounding trite) it does just go to show that you just have to keep sending stuff. Someone will want it, somewhere!

Last week, I was feeling quite rubbishy about my writing. I thought it was crap and I might as well give up and the small successes of the past were just a fluke and blahblahblah. Today, I feel a bit more positive. So I'm going to give my story back-catalogue an overhaul, get more stories to the stage where I can send them out, and I'm going to send them. Because as a wise man once said to me, "if you throw enough balls at enough coconuts, sooner or later you're going to win a prize".

feedback and the art of making it better and knowing when you just don't know something (or anything)

I like to enter competitions where I get feedback and a particular favourite is the Writers' Forum comp, because for the bargain price of £8 you can enter the competition and get feedback (if you're a subscriber, I think it's a bit more expensive if you're not).

This month, I sent in a story which I really like, but I was sure needed something doing to it but I wasn't sure what. I thought it needed perhaps some more conflict, or something else to drive the story forward but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. So I thought, I'll send it away and see what happens.

And do you know what happened? I got the best piece of feedback I've ever received from them.

Wooohoooooooo!

For the first time, they didn't pull me on the layout, thought the title was good, thought everything, overall, was well...good. Here, I'll let you see for yourself....

Hello Helen,


Landmines

Thanks for entering the Writers’ Forum competition.

Presentation: Manuscript layout is generally good.

Title: Very good. It’s apt for the story and works on more than one level.

Opening: Very good. This grabs the reader’s attention and takes us right into the heart of the story.

Dialogue: Generally good. The dialogue is minimal, but where used it does everything that good dialogue should.

Characterisation: Good, but your narrator’s age seems to fluctuate. I would suggest going through this with the age in mind and correcting the sections where the voice is too young or too old. Because of this fluctuation, I couldn’t quite grasp her age.

Overall: This is a well written and poignant story. It has lots going for it and your writing style carried me along to the end. However, you have a slight tendency to overwrite, almost as if you don’t quite trust your readers to get things. Often you explain something that your dialogue and narration has already made perfectly clear, for example: “But if he does wake up, he’ll know how much we love him and how much we’re going to miss him,” I said. This made her cry again [which was a bit confusing. I thought that was a nice thing to say]. You don’t need the words in brackets as they detract from what is already a well portrayed situation.

Commended - needs some work but has potential

Best wishes,

I have to admit, I was really quite pleased. I've tried really hard to follow all the (very confusing) rules in regards to layout, and I've taken on board advice from previous feedback about the title, and applied it and now my feedback is...good. Not great, but good. I feel like I'm getting there.

So I had a little think about what I needed to do and enlisted the help of a friend. The narrator for my story, Vivian, is six years old. I don't know any six year olds. We have a little downstairs neighbour who is three and a half and just adorable (quote of the day on the stairs yesterday "my daddy is sick of my mummy but he isn't sick of me") but she's really the only child we see on a regular basis, and even then she's only chatty sometimes.

So I asked my friend, who has three kids ranging from four to eleven, to go through the story for me and tell me what was working and what wasn't. She replied within a few hours with the most informative suggestions I've ever had. She hadn't just gone through the story, she'd written an introduction on her experiences with her children, the things they say and how they react in certain situations. I now feel like I can go through it and make the changes that I need. I now feel like I know what I need to do. Both of these are exciting feelings.

So this morning, I've been through the story. I've taken out my two favourite lines on Amy's advice as they weren't age appropriate and so far, it is going quite well. I'm glad I asked an expert as these aren't changes I would have made on my own (I loved those lines, but "kill your darlings" boohoo).

Right, ok, that's me done. I'm going back to my rewrite...bye!

a little bit of tweaking...

So I told you that I’d pre-paid for a competition so I would have to enter, right? Well, as I pre-paid, I selected which story I was going to enter. It was “strongly considered” for last year’s Aesthetica competition, re-entered in this year’s Mslexia competition and as far as I could see, pretty much good to go, right?
Wrong.

I’ve just undergone the short story equivalent of thinking you’ll perhaps clear out your jewellery box and before you know it, you’ve emptied all your drawers, pulled everything out from under the bed and are sat in the middle of your room surrounded by piles of crap you haven’t had a use for since 2002.
A full-on accidental re-write, but oh! how I feel so much better for it. I’ve also given myself the luxury of time (it isn't due in until the end of June), so I can now leave it til next weekend and hopefully when I look at it again any faults will pop out at me, easily fixable, so I can then send it off.
I've also (finally) fixed the last lines of my story for the Waterstones Perfectly Formed competition and have just emailed that off. Over the last few days, I've had the inklings of another (longer) story, and the title has just come to me, as have the characters names so I'm going to start off by making some notes and see where that takes me. Originally, I thought it would be my NaNo story this year, but I need to start making notes now before I forget so if I play by NaNo rules, I can't technically start it yet...hmmmm...I think I will just have to see what happens. Its likely that I'll put it away and not look at it again until November anyway, so it might not technically be cheating...

Anyway, must go. The sunshine is glorious but I'm sat at the kitchen table being dedicated to my art. Go me.

Eviction Night

     It’s eviction night. I’m…excited. If that’s the right word for it. No, no, it doesn’t seem strong enough, it’s just not enough.


Excited; aflame, agitated, aroused, awakened, eager, enthusiastic, provoked, roused, ruffled, wild.

Thank God for the online thesaurus, it helps me define myself. But more of that later. Back to what’s important here.
    
     Its eviction night and I’ve been voting for her all day. Finger on the re-dial button, I’m nervous, fidgety, which is weird because I never normally get like this. I’ve never been one for reality TV, it’s inhumane, appealing to the lowest common denominator and you never know what might happen. Colonic irrigations and live liposuction, Richard Madeley being eaten by a crocodile whilst Ant and Dec watch on, open mouthed and horrified. It’s far too spontaneous. I used to hate them. I used to hate all of them, but then I saw her.

     It was love at first sight, I saw her enter the house at 9.21pm, she was the third person to go in which didn’t automatically endear her to me as I’ve always found threes quite confusing. As a child, I thought if you put two of them together you would make an eight. But she makes all that seem so unimportant.

     She is breathtakingly, deniably beautiful. An Earth Goddess, her favourite colour is black and she doesn’t like turnips, trainers or daffodils. Her favourite snack is stale bread and she despises insecurity. She’s an only child and an orphan, her entire family wiped out in a freak whaling accident when she was thirteen. She’s rubbish at counting and was picked on in school. I know this because I read it on her myspace page. It’s now my homepage and I know almost everything there is to know about her.

     I know lots of other things about her as well. I know I love the way she hides behind her hair when she’s moody, I love the way her eyes are different colours, I love her webbed toes. She is an eclectic rainbow of perfection, my anarchic angel.

     As soon as she stepped out of the car, tips of her shiny black boots pointing Westwards, I was mesmerised. I rolled the soft syllables of her name round my mouth like marbles. It seemed to call to me from a distance, the sea at the bottom of a shell. Mooma…Mooma…Mooma…real name Moira but she couldn’t pronounce it as a child so she became Mooma and it just stuck. Funny, because I normally despise nicknames on grown-ups, it’s a sign of weakness, makes me think they’re hiding something. But in this case I’ll make an exception. In this case it seems to suit her. Mooma. Like a comfortable chair or a favourite aunt, Mooma my love you have taken over my life.

     I love to watch her. Relentlessly, religiously, like an alcoholic reaching for the first whisky through a vague haze of sleep, unconscious, the TV on in the background subliminally filling my head with her. Lovely, lovely her. She is like sunshine.

    I had every reason to dislike her but I even love her when she’s doing the conga and her operatic rendition of Leo Sayer’s You Make Me Feel Like Dancing was nothing short of inspirational. The others only exaggerate how wonderful she is with their childishness, their bitchy comments. Darryl and Carol were in the diary room the other day and they said that she was insincere. Insincere? Nobody in their right minds would call a finger-painting vegetarian insincere!

     It was only logical really, this next step. It was the only thing to do. When I saw her big, promotional cardboard cut out, poised as if to jump, her features contorted into an unnatural expression of “look how zany I am! watch me defy convention!” When I saw her there, alone in a sea of other housemate’s friends and familiars I knew. I knew what I had to do.

     Now I’m here, I can’t quite believe it. Can’t quite believe I did it. I normally think spontaneity is so over-rated but here I am. Day twenty-one and I’ve had the three most wonderful weeks of my life. Like the holiday of a lifetime but without the foreigners. And there’s that three again. See what she does to me? If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

“So, how long have you known the lovely Mooma?” our mock-cockney host asks, with just a hint of sarcasm.

“Oh, not long,” I said. I’ve never been one for lying and live on national TV is no time to start. “But she’s very important to me. She’s stolen my heart.”

I’m so excited, my hands are sweating and I have to concentrate very hard so I don’t accidentally wipe them on my trousers and leave marks. I’ve never been like this before. I never normally get so bothered about people, I don’t see the point. But she’s different. She makes me different. Makes me normal. Makes me feel what normal people feel.

     I feel like I’m going on a first date. Not an ordinary one but a big one, like an arranged marriage or something. I can’t quite believe I’m here.

“So!” shouts the over-sexed teen with the microphone. “It’s thirty seconds to go! Who will be re-united with their loved ones? Twenty seconds! It’s hang by the seat of your pants time! Ten seconds! And with a record ninety four percent of the votes the third person to be evicted from the house is…”

     They say Love changes you. She’s changed me. I feel like I’ve woken up. I can’t wait to meet her.

Welcome to the shortlist (some would argue that this is the list I’ve been on all my life…)

So way back in January I entered a competition to write a story on the theme of Heaven…results are in today and (drum roll please!) I made the shortlist! There were three hundred and seventy four entries, and mine is somewhere between numbers nine and twenty. I’ve already had my calculator out. That’s top six percent (six is my favourite number). Well done me. This afternoon we broke out the coffee and donuts to celebrate.
I’m happy because I knew that my story was good and I just feel completely validated. The fact that I didn’t actually win doesn’t matter. I got through enough rounds to have my story sent off to the agent (yes, agent) and on a different day, with a different reader, I could have won. Its close enough to make it all seem worthwhile.

I feel so happy, and motivated and generally awesome.
 
If you want to see my name on the shortlist, follow this link...(my story is called The Chosen)
 
http://www.callytaylor.co.uk/competitions.html
 

The Secret

     You always made a big deal out of my birthday. There would always be a party, and you would always bake a cake and dance with the neighbours, swinging the women round in your strong arms, twirling little girls and drinking beer with the men. As I got older, you would always phone early and wake me up.

     That’s how I knew that something was up, before Mum called me and told me. It was my birthday, and you hadn’t phoned at 6am. Mum phoned at midday.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
    
     She’d found you on the sofa that morning. Cold cup of tea balanced on the arm, cigarette burnt down to the butt in the ashtray in front of you. You’d been dead for hours. Almost twelve by the time I found out. She hadn’t wanted to tell me, hadn’t wanted to ruin my birthday and make it the day you died. But it was always going to be that day, no matter how long she tried to put it off for.

     The funeral passed in a blur. Crematorium. Pub. Club. You’d always been the one who would encourage everyone to remember the good times. Jake tried to do that for you, to step up to be you but your shoes were too big. Mum had pulled out one of your old suits for him, quickly taken it up and in. I couldn’t believe my son was almost as big as you. It didn’t seem right.

     Afterwards, I drank your best Merlot and went through your things. Mum was asleep so it was just me, on my own with your memories. I heaved boxes down from the loft, knowing Mum would struggle on her own and really thinking I was helping. I thought that I would finally get to know a bit more about you. About the family you never spoke of, of your past before you met Mum and had me.

     The box, when I found it, just looked like any old box. It didn’t have any taped warning, no signs, “no do not open”. So I opened it. And nothing, at first, old photos of you when you were a child – oh, you looked like Jake! Your mother was an austere looking woman, all drawn face and high necked dress. And you had a brother. I never knew this. A letter you’d written home when you were in the army, postcards from far away places. Nestled in between all these things, a single, faded newspaper cutting.

     ‘Local man charged with murder’ and a photo. Of you. ’Gerald Rafferty, 21, of Heddon Street, was today found guilty –‘
I woke Mum up.
“Did you know?” I asked. She shook her head.
“He was 43 when I met him, he seemed so wordly. I was just 19. I didn’t think to ask what he’d been doing, and by the time I did, it just didn’t seem right.”

     I sat on your bed and sobbed quietly.
“Oh, Pandora,” she said.

The Waves

The waves swooped down on the beach, where Thora was lying with her head on the sand and her feet in the water. They crashed at her toes and dribbled and trickled up her calves. She stretched her arms out to either side, making an angel shape. A sand angel. She was a sand angel. Overhead the sun beat down brightly, making her eyes squint, the light playing and dancing in the corners of her vision. The waves crashed again and this time the water reached her knees. Clouds skirted across the sky, soft white shapes that were too far away to really see properly. She moved her arms again, the coarse sand chafing her newly pink skin. She would burn if she stayed out here much longer. Her mother’s voice resonated in the back of her head, a stern warning to stay out of the sun delivered with a kiss. She didn’t have to heed such warnings anymore. It was the surf’s turn to kiss her this time, as the water reached her thighs, covering the tops of her legs this time, caressing her with its cool hands. She continued to study the sky through her eyelashes. She guessed at what she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see clouds shaped like dinosaurs, she couldn’t see planets, she couldn’t see aeroplanes. She could see the shadow of a man stood above her. She lifted one of her angel wings, placed a hand horizontally against her brows and opened her eyes fully for the first time that day.
“Are you alright? You’re getting wet,” the man said.
“I know. I’m fine, thank you.”
“The water will be up to your neck soon,” he warned.
“That’s ok,” Thora shrugged, her shoulders making little furrows in the sand. “I like the water.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” the man said, stepping over her to continue his way down the beach. Thora was sure. She thought how odd the man was, how earnest. How nice it was that he’d stopped to make sure she was ok. If she hadn’t been ok, she would have very much liked someone just like that to stop and ask how she was. The waves landed again, pushing the water up to her waist this time. Thora wiggled her toes as the froth splashed over her. Behind her, she could hear children playing in the sand, digging a moat, building a fort, waiting for the sea to come and destroy it. What a funny game, what fun they were having. Another crash and the water crept up her sides. The sand underneath her was wet now, with each wave she could feel the pull of the sea tugging at her. Crash, it covered her belly, crash it covered her breasts, crash, it covered her face, her neck, her head and then she was gone. Dragged out into the sea by the sheer force of it, by its willingness to reclaim her. Thora felt her legs fuse together at the ankles, the scales wrapping round her like a piece of chiffon as she kicked her flippers, tested them once or twice and swam.

The Garden

We bought the house for the garden. An acre of land which just screamed "country" although by the time we moved in "country" had evolved to "jungle". We stood in the doorway on our first night, arms round each other, glasses of merlot resting behind us on the ancient tumble dryer left behind by the previous owner.

"This garden holds some secrets," you said.
    
I remember how hard you worked, mowing and digging and trimming whilst I busied myself ordering antique wallpaper and trying to get to grips with the Aga. You would come inside after a hard day's landscaping to find that I'd burnt another pie and we had to jump in the convertible and drive to the pub. You cringed every time we went over a bump and I would spend the time complaining about another unwanted piece of rubbish I’d found as I was going through the rooms. We’d never existed together in so many rooms before, the space was a luxury. We turned some heads when we first walked in, but after the initial silence people were friendly enough.

"So you've bought the old Allinson place, have you?"

We didn't know what the old Allinson place was but we nodded anyway. I remember we'd been in there three weeks when you called me into the garden.

"Look at this," you said.

I started screaming then. Hysterically. You had to slap me round the face and take me inside for a medicinal brandy.

"It could be an animal," I said when I could speak again. I had romanticised visions of a kitty funeral, father saying the last rites as the children wept.

"No, it couldn't," you said solemnly. It was your 'I wish I wasn't right but I am' voice. The one normally reserved for squashing my recurring dream of opening a bed and breakfast, or spending £10,000 on a chaise-lounge once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte, with no authentication certificate.

"It’s human," you said. "Definitely human."

The police didn't come straight away. There were some vandals down on Lower Farm and once they'd established that our problem was neither mobile nor particularly fresh, they said they would be there when they could. We went back out into the garden and stared down at the shallow grave. It didn’t look like much. A hole in the ground, a bin bag with a tear in it where you’d struck it with your spade, yellow skull smiling out at us. It didn’t look like a person.

"This is where the roses were going to be," you told me. I said that I absolutely couldn't think about roses right now, I felt too sick.

"That poor soul," I said.

The policeman, when he finally arrived, was nice enough.

"We're going to have to get a forensics team out here," he said. "Probably dig up the whole garden."

"I wish I'd found them earlier," you joked. "You could've have saved me a job."

I could see how disappointed you were. It was your garden, your project. I was upset at the thought of muddy boots trampling all over my reclaimed Victorian parquet flooring.

That night, we went to the pub again. I couldn't face cooking.

"Oliver," you said, putting a reassuring hand on my leg as we pulled into the car park. "It will be ok you know."

"I disagree Tom," I said, turning away. "I don't see how it possibly could be."

The news had obviously already gone round the village by the time we got there.

"I hear you found Linda Allinson," the barman said, giving us our drinks on the house. "Folks've been looking for her for years."

Harness

Big Hoss whinnied and bucked a little when Pa put the harness on. He wasn’t usually like that. He was a big soft horse. They’d had him since Cally was a little girl.


“What do you want to call him, button?” Pa had asked.

“Big Hoss!” was all she could say. It was a silly name from such a little girl, but it suited him. He sure was a big horse. Cally helped Pa load the wagon, making sure everything was packed away tight so it wouldn’t rattle and break. Cally knew that they would rattle sat in the wagon.

“Little girls are free to make,” Pa told her with a wink. “Good China is expensive.” Big Hoss pawed the ground impatiently.

“Steady there boy,” Pa soothed. Cally stood by and stroked Big Hoss’s soft nose. He wasn’t misbehaving, he was just excited. He wanted to go West.

The Lost Boys

     Drake sat on the speaker tapping his black polished fingernails impatiently on the surface. He checked his watch again, the diamonds on the second hand quickly ticking off the minutes. Out of sight on the stage behind him, the support were just finishing.
“Thank you New York! You’ve been amazing! This is our last song – we hope you enjoy it and have a rocking New Years Eve!”
     Drake looked back at his watch. Where was he? Marty wandered over, clipboard in hand, suit looking as fresh as it had when he’d met them at Heathrow sixteen hours before. How did he do that? Drake wondered.
“Is he - ?” Marty started but Drake shook his head. No, Henry was not here. Henry had disappeared as soon as they got to the hotel. No, he did not know where Henry was. It was Marty’s turn to check his watch.
“He’s got about fifteen minutes.”
Drake jumped down off the speaker and started to pace. It was wrong to blame Marty for not being able to control Henry. He hadn’t grown up with him. Drake was the one who should have expected this – the European Tour, the X Factor, the interviews, for gods sake. How many times had he sat there and apologised to journalists for the fact that Henry had failed to show up? Henry was the one they all wanted, voted best looking, most charismatic, best hair cut. He thought he could do what he wanted, that Drake couldn’t get by without him. Well he was wrong.
     The audience roared their approval as the support finished their set and ran off the stage high fiving each other.
“Killer crowd, man!” Brody whooped as they clattered past to their dressing room. In the auditorium, the crowd was getting louder.
“Lost Boys! Lost Boys! Lost Boys!”
“I’m not going on!” Drake said finally, throwing his hands up. “There’s no point.”
“Don’t be such a drama queen,” a voice said from behind him. Drake turned to see Henry sandwiched between two leggy blondes, arms round their shoulders, cigarette in one hand, bottle of Jack Daniels in the other. “The show must go on!” Henry exclaimed. Drake’s face was set in hard lines now, his teeth clenched together.
“Oh, don’t such be a cliché, Drakey,” Henry said, disentangling himself from the blondes and going to put his arm round Drake. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“I’m the cliché? I’m the cliché?” Drake shouted, striding away. “I’m not Mr Rock and Roll, chasing the girls, turning up whenever he feels like it!”
“You’re jealous.”
Drake spun round, grabbed Henry by his coolly up-turned collar and slammed him against the wall.
“It was only one night, Drake. Get over it.”
The two men glared at each other. In the background, the crowd continued chanting.
“Right, the rest of the lads are here,” Marty intervened. “Now are you two going to kiss and make up, or shall we call the whole show off?”

publication, oh, how sweet you are

Ok, so, check me out!!!!
http://www.mslexia.co.uk/magazine/newwriting/nwstory_44.html

Not only am I in the magazine, but I am also on the website, and they've linked to the blog. This is almost exactly how the best case scenario dreams played out in my head (the only thing missing are the phonecalls from the prospective agents/publishers but hey, its only been on there a day)

Thank you Mslexia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Happy days. I've been crying. I'm so soft (and watching Got to Dance, it doesn't help)

Woo hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas Story

“Ho ho ho, little girl, ho ho fucking ho.”

“You’re drunk,” Louise said.
“No, my dear, I am not drunk. I am merely merry. It is Christmas after all.”
“You’re not merry, you’re drunk. You stink.”
The man let out a loud belch and leaned back in his chair, resting his hands on his large, red velvet covered belly. His once snow white beard was stained round the mouth, yellowed with old food and sherry. Louise stood in front of him, hands on hips, the fur trim on her short red skirt barely brushing the cheeks of her bum. It was much shorter than regulation and made her feel uncomfortable. The man leered at her and flung his arms open wide.
“Come and sit on Santa’s lap,” he said.
“Fuck off, pervert,” she shot back before storming out of the room.

The factory was buzzing and clattering as the elves worked overtime, loading dolls and bikes and footballs and scooters and new limited edition platinum DJ Hero, the ones in the authentic carry cases, into cargo boxes. Further down the line, worried looking little men with maps and lists scratched their heads as they sorted it all out into regions, as defined by local authorities. Every year they depended on the men from the council getting them the right lists in plenty of time, and every year they got it wrong. This meant that there was always a lot of sorting out to do at the factory. Louise wove her way through the conveyor belts until she reached the floor manager.
“How are you getting on?”
Dennis sighed and scratched his head some more.
“Well, I’ll be honest with you, it’ll be tight but I think we’ll make it. How’s the boss?”
Louise pulled a face.
“I’d best get on then,” he said as a whistle sounded and production groaned to a halt. Relieved, the elves stretched their aching fingers and started to chatter. Santa opened the shutter that blocked his office off from the rest of the factory.
“No fucking talking!” he yelled, throwing one of his boots. It hit one of the littler elves in the face, knocking her over and making her nose explode in a splatter of blood.
“Hey!” Louise hollered back. “They’re taking a break!”
“Yeah, well, two minutes, no more. In case you retards hadn’t noticed, we’re on a tight schedule here!”
“They’re allowed a break.”
“Yeah, well, if they want a break, you can send one of the little ones up here to see to their old Father Christmas, if not, get back to work!” He slammed the shutter down. The sweatshop slowly returned to silent work.

It was just their luck to have this Santa. No wonder Luxembourg had been so quick to get shot of him. The elves must have been tap-dancing in the street the day he left.
“Oh, we’re only a little country, we don’t need such an experienced Santa. No, no, you take him and we’ll have a trainee. We don’t mind at all.” American Santa, who had so much more to do and was always stressed, was firm but fair. Australian Santa was laid back in his board shorts and sunnies. German Santa was an Angel (well, ex-Angel). No, it was only British Santa who was an absolute bastard. The shutters flew open again.
“Louise!” he roared. “Bring me some fucking whisky! And a bucket of KFC! I’m wasting away here. Oh, and I’ve lost one of my boots and just stepped in a puddle of cold tea. Sort it out!”

By the time Louise battled through the wind and the snow, the fried chicken was cold and the grease had soaked its way through the bottom of the bucket. She stomped up to the office.
“About bloody time,” Santa grabbed the bucket from her, turned his back and started cramming the pieces into his mouth. The noise of his eating filled the room, nom nom nom. Then a split second of silence. A sharp intake of breath. Then all of a sudden he was coughing and spluttering.
“Help me, I’m choking!” Bits of deep fried poultry fell from his mouth as he opened and closed it like a fish, banging his fist on his chest to try and dislodge whatever was stuck there. “I can’t breathe!”
“Let me guess, you need the kiss of life? You’ve got no chance mate.”

Fifteen minutes later, Louise opened the shutter. A hundred pairs of frightened eyes looked up at her.
“Its ok, it’s just me,” she said, as they quickly returned to work. “Er, Dennis, can I borrow you for a minute please?”

They stood over the fat man’s prone body.
“Oh dear,” Dennis said, scratching his head. His scratching place was a little bald patch about half an inch long and two fingers width wide just to the right of his crown. “This is a bit of a situation, isn’t it?”
“He choked –“ Louise started. Dennis held up his hand.
“I don’t care to hear the details, the important thing is, it’s finally happened.” He smiled a little smile. “It’s a Christmas miracle!”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Why, my dear, its Christmas Eve. What do you think we’re going to do? We’ve got presents to deliver. We’d best get the reindeer.”

Louise led Rudolph through the silent workshop, his hooves clip-clopping on the wooden floor. He manoeuvred the rickety stairs with ease and squeezed through the door and into the office.
“Oh sweet lord,” Rudolph said when he saw Santa’s body rapidly cooling on the floor.
“He cho –“
“Shush. Ours is not to reason why. Now, let us take a moment to be thankful.” He bowed his head, Louise and Dennis followed suit. “Amen.” Rudolph muttered. He knelt down and slid his antlers under Santa’s body, bracing himself he bowed his head and rolled the fat man over until he was lying face down over his back.
“Jesus Christ, is he made of concrete?” he asked, shakily rising to his feet. Louise took his reins and they slowly made their way down the stairs, through the factory and out to the barn. The elves looked up in surprise.
“Nothing to see here people,” Rudolph called. “Drunk fat man coming through.”

They propped Santa up in the front of the sleigh and packed presents all around him to keep him upright. His head lolled back, his gaping mouth still packed with bits of chicken. Louise had filled his pockets with stones.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked Rudolph.
“Do I know where I’m going?” he tapped his antlers on the side of the stall. “In-built sat nav these things, of course I know where I’m going. I’ll let you know when the time is right, don’t worry. Now, have you got his security pass?”
Louise felt the plastic rectangle on a lanyard around her neck and nodded.
“Well I guess we’re ready to go then, aren’t we? Come on then boys,” he called to his colleagues. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
It was much easier than Louise expected. The pass let her in to houses with ease and no-one bothered her as she popped the presents under the trees and quietly left. Time passed in a blur as they moved quickly and efficiently, Rudolph occasionally shouting instructions to make sure she didn’t forget anything. It was two o’clock in the morning when they crossed over the Irish Sea. The reindeers slowed their pace, Rudolph leading them in a lazy circle. It was time. With a heave-ho, Louise pushed Santa from the sleigh. He toppled through the cold night air before landing with a barely audible splash.
“Well I guess that’s that then,” Prancer said. “End of an era.”
The reindeer cheered. Louise couldn’t help but smile.
“Come on, back to work.”
“Yes boss,” Rudolph saluted her and winked.

a different way of thinking

So I've done some thinking and I've come to the following conclusion.
Re-writing = treading water.

Last night, I opened the document, copied in the words I’d done at work and then found the interview scene that went next. I went through it and, because I now know a lot more about my murderer and the method of death has changed, a lot of it had to be deleted as it just wasn’t relevant. So I re-wrote a lot, but it didn’t actually add much to my word count. In fact, I think I may have had less words than I started off with. But the “proper first draft” of the novel is now 30 pages long, as opposed to 26. I’ve spent all of November worrying about my word count, that now its hard not to measure things in word count terms. Just because I haven’t added words doesn’t mean I haven’t added value.

And my “proper first draft” is still lacking a lot, there are some scenes that are two dimensional and have no depth whatsoever, but these are things I can fix later. So anyway, I am going to stop measuring myself on overall word count, and start looking at length of coherent story. I still want to aim to add another 15k, but I hope that will work out alright. Tess, one of my main characters, gets a speaking role soon and if you remember, she is now a lot younger than she was when I started so I will lose a lot of words then. I am also going to be brave and, by the end of the month, have deleted the scenes that really aren’t relevant (especially the one where I experimented with first person narrative). The word count will progress when I add description and write new scenes.
Its hard, but I need to accept that I will be treading water for a while. I’ve already won the race, and now this is about endurance rather than speed.

So, I feel like I've made progress because I've changed my way of thinking. Bang. Just like that, its like a little light has switched on and I'm like "oh yeah, why didn't I think like that before?"
Another thing I've changed my thinking on recently is sense of place. For the longest time, I've felt inadequate when describing place. I really like Ian Rankin, who lets Rebus wander so realistically round Edinburgh, historical, beautiful, dirty Edinburgh. The boyfriend and I took a trip there about a year ago and I felt like I knew it as I recognised places from the books I'd read. I could never do that, never ever ever. I guess that I've never felt so attached to a place, no one city has captured me in a way that makes me want to bring it to life with my words (my own fault, I suppose, for being slightly nomadic). Anyhoo, I thought that place was actual landmarks and buildings and real stuff, and it is, for some writers. But place can also be smells and history and feelings and thoughts and speech and ritual. Place is a lot of things that aren't actual places.

I wrote this next little story as a piece of flash fiction, then edited it for my writing class when I was assigned the task of writing about "a native settlement in an under-developed country". I received the rejection letter for the flash fiction today, so I'm posting it here (and even though its been rejected, it still proves I'm sending things off, which is good!) I no longer think place is buildings and Newcastle central station and my flat and St James's Park and Buckingham Palace. I think that place can be like this...



The sky is black, the stars look like tiny silver fish. The light of the campfires barely reaches up to the tallest man’s shoulders before it surrenders to the night. Groups of women and children huddle in the shadows, squatting on hard feet, soles stained reddy brown. The youngest draw pictures with sticks in the dust, silent storyboards of warriors, elephants and cooking pots. Somewhere in the far away darkness, a lion roars. The women talk in whispers and hug babies closer into naked bosoms, looking wistfully towards their homes, invisible in the dark. The trees stand an unwilling guard, their little huts underneath, just out of sight in a solemn circle, sturdily built by their father’s fathers of wood and clay. There is no-one there now. They have all been summoned to watch the ceremony.


The drums beat out a slow rhythm, softly stepping up pace until it matches the boy’s heartbeat. Strong arms press him down into the dusty ground. Buh-boom, buh-boom. His ears are sharp tonight. Above the wailing and clapping, the cicadas vibrate in the warm night air, surrounding the circle. He smells sweat. The soft salt smell of his thirteen year old skin and the stale stench of the Men. Buh-boom, buh-boom.
“Stay still,” a gruff voice says. “This will hurt.” He feels the sharp sting of bamboo break the skin on his face, score a line from his eye socket down to his chin. The blood trickles down his cheek as the dusty charcoal powder is rubbed in. Rough hands pull him to his feet, thrust the spear into his grasp and point to the white man, cowering between two of their youngest and strongest.

“You are marked as a man. Now act like one.”

The Librarian

Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome to the New and Improved City Library and Adult Learning Resource Centre.

Do you know how much money they’ve spent on us? Would you like to hazard a guess?

Six million pounds.

Yes, yes, I know. You heard me correctly. Six million pounds to house these books. Aren’t we lucky? Of course, it’s been difficult whilst the Library has been closed. They’ve farmed us out to other Libraries, however, it isn’t really the same. A Librarian of my calibre isn’t really at home in the smaller Libraries. I need the bustle of the big city Library, I find I crave the noise. Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. Noise in a Library? Well it isn’t that kind of noise, not rowdy disco kind of noise. It’s a quiet, book-borrowing, pen-scribbling kind of noise. The noise in the smaller Libraries isn’t the same. It is more of a don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself-so-I-thought-I’d-come-to-the-Library kind of noise. Totally different. So even thought they packed us off to other Libraries, I’ve still had more time on my hands than I normally would. Time which I’ve spent at home. It’s been quite nice in a way. I spent a lot of time in the garden, re-grouted the bathroom, was able to do my skirting boards once a week, that kind of thing. And of course I was able to spend more time with Jerry.

Ah, Jerry. Jerry is my husband, of course. He’s always been one of those softly gregarious types. You know the kind, not one to shoot his mouth off but he’ll talk quietly to anyone. He’s forever stopping to give young men lifts home. I always tell him, you have to be careful Jerry. You never know who you might pick up, what sort of undesirable you might find in the backseat of your car but he doesn’t listen. If you care for it, Ladies and Gentlemen, I think you’ll find that we have a top-notch true crime section that will make your skin crawl. But he doesn’t pay me any mind, as I’m sure any ladies who also have been married for thirty-odd years will agree is an unfortunate attribute of the male psyche. He wasn’t like that when I married him, he always used to agree that I know best, but I suppose that’s marriage for you. My waist isn’t as slim as it was and he’s forgotten that its better all round if he listens to me. I think he forgets where I work, what I’m involved in, day-in, day-out. He’s never been this close to such a wealth of information succinctly detailing the horrors of human-kind. He wouldn’t know how to use the internet if it walked up to him, smacked him in the face, and said “hello, I’m the internet, here is a simple step-by-step guide to how I work.” No, no, he’s in his own little world, and, this is a bit of a guilty admission, I am quite ashamed to tell you this, especially when so many of you have come here in the dusk of your lives, when things are becoming a little hazy, you’re going a little grey, trying to broaden your horizons, bring a little light, but…he isn’t even a member of the Library. That’s right! I’ll hold my hands up! My name is Lillian Broadbent, Chief Librarian of the new and improved City Library and Adult Learning Resource Centre, and my own husband isn’t even a member.

I have always been a member of the Library. I’ve worked here for 40 years. Woman and girl. My first job was in this Library, when I was a young woman straight out of school, I was here part time when the children were small and needy, and I’ve taken more hours since they’ve grown up and spread their wings. The children, I am pleased to tell you, are members of the Library. They don’t come here very often because they live away and don’t get back a lot, but they’re always keen to pop in when they do. And it is always wonderful to see them. It really is.

So here we are, and I do hope to see you all again in the future. This is a wonderful Library, a real lifelong learning centre, it has everything you could ever need. Not just books you know. We have a varied selection of audio books and some wonderful films and documentaries, some of the dvds, I’m lead to believe, are quite racy, if you like that sort of thing. I don’t much care for it myself. I prefer a nice historical documentary, or a period drama. Jane Austin dramatises particularly well. Such lovely costumes. And it constantly amazes me that she is still so relevant. My daughter doesn’t agree with me, but then, our children rarely do, do they? How many in here have children? I suppose that in some small way that might have spurred you to come here. To fill the gap left by empty nest syndrome, or, really, just to see what all the fuss over the internet is about. Well, we’ll get to that later. There is an introductory session later today at 2pm, which will give you a really good idea of how it all works and what you do with all the bits and pieces. What I really want to convey to you though, is that, no matter what your reasons for coming here, do not be afraid. We’re all friends here. It might sound like a cliché, but it’s true.

Ok, so we have lots of treats in store for you over the coming weeks. Thursday mornings are dedicated Senior Citizens Day. Although I’ve had to put my foot down and cancel the first key speaker. One of our younger members of staff booked her, in what I can only imagine is a bad taste joke. The book this lady wrote is about…sex. The premise is about not letting the dull familiarity of marriage intrude on your sex life. It was written by an American woman with three ex-husbands, no children, and an assortment of handbag sized dogs that look like hairdos. The book itself has a bright pink mock suede cover and is full of jaunty tips, the kind of quirky sex secrets that are apparently best tried out by candlelight. Honestly! Have you ever heard anything like it? It all seems so…robust. I can’t imagine Jerry and I ever doing anything like that. Cold lino under bare skin? No thank you very much indeed. Far more comfortable just to sit in quietly, perhaps read the paper or watch a gardening programme. I do love my garden. It is one of my few pleasures outside of my work. Not that my life is devoid of pleasure. I didn’t mean it like that. I have a lot of pleasure in my life. I mean, look around! Six million pounds they spent on this place. If that doesn’t make you happy, I don’t know what will. So luckily for us all I managed to stop us being subjected to that and now our first key speaker is going to be a member of the Local Historical Society. Full details can be found on the notice board by the main entrance, or when you’ve learnt how to use the internet, you can go on our mailing list and have all our up-and-coming news beamed straight into your inbox!

Here at the Library, we also keep a full range of papers, both broadsheet and tabloid. The story running on the front page of all of them today is another sad tale in the continued saga of the Side Street Strangler. These poor young boys are perhaps living on the shadier side of the tracks but that doesn’t mean that they deserve what happens to them, poor things. It must be a monster who picks up a young man and does the things described – if you haven’t been following it, well, first of all I don’t know where you’ve been because it has been all over the news, and secondly, I can’t bring myself to repeat the atrocities that are delightfully regaled in the newspapers – they are all over there in case I’ve piqued your interest and you would like to look yourselves. Basically, these poor unfortunates are picked up by a man who is trawling for…well, you know the things that some men look for outside of the home, late at night on the dimly lit side of the street. Five times it’s happened in the last six months. The papers say he’s picking up speed, killing with more ferocity now, but it looks like they have a lead, however tenuous it may be. They say the man they are looking for drives a dark coloured Ford sedan. Well, I call it tenuous because we all know how popular those cars are, don’t we? I mean, we have a dark coloured Ford sedan, as I’m sure do some of you and half the people in the city! Scepticism aside, I do hope the police catch him soon. I mean, he could be anyone! He could be anywhere! We could have passed him in the street and not known about it, such is the anonymous society we live in. This is why institutions such as the Library are so important. Back when I was a girl, the Library was seen as one of the hubs of the community, and it is my fervent wish that it will be that way again.

And that concludes my talk today, Ladies and Gentlemen. I hope this introductory session has whetted your appetite for what’s to come, which is, I hope, many a pleasant hour passed in our Library. And if you quite literally have worked up an appetite, why, you can visit our café bar! It wouldn’t have had a place in the old Library, but I have to admit it is a very welcome addition to the new one. That’s progression for you. And my children call me old-fashioned! Now, does anyone have any questions? No? Good, good. I’ll let you get on with it then, happy browsing, and remember, if you have any problems, the staff will be more than happy to help, or you could just ask for me, Lillian Broadbent, Chief Librarian.

Halloween Story

I have a secret. I’ve got something that I shouldn’t have.

Her hair feels soft, like I always imagined girl’s hair would feel. Her skin is smooth and her eyes so blue. She doesn’t look the way I thought a dead girl would. I thought death would steal something from her, but it didn’t. On the contrary, it gave something to me. Her death was her gift. Ha. I like that. She is poetry. I’m going to write that down.

It was a lot of effort to remove her head from her body. A lot harder than I thought it would be. Who would have thought that such a beautiful head would have so much gristle and sinew and stuff? Note to self, I need to invest in some better knives.

Her mouth pouts a little, like I’ve done something to upset her. Like I’m late for dinner or don’t compliment her new skirt. I pinch her lips together with my thumb and forefinger. I don’t want her to look upset. I want her to look beautiful. She doesn’t look dead. I think that will come later. At the moment she looks like she did when I met her. When we had the conversation. The one that started all of this.

I smooth her hair and make it cover her ears, so it looks the way it did when she shook her head and said, ever so quietly,
“I’m sorry but we don’t stock that here. There’s a shop up the road called Steel Wheels. It sells a lot more alternative stuff. You should try there.”
They didn’t have what I wanted, but that’s not the point. She tried. She understood. She spoke to me like I was a normal person who deserved to be spoken to. She was lovely.

She is lovely.

She is love.

I want to keep her and it makes me sad that I can’t. I wonder how long it will be before she starts to smell, before her skin wilts and she starts to smell and can’t be mine anymore. I think I’d be happy only to have her body for a few hours, but I would like to keep her face forever. She is so pretty.

Is this what its like to have a girlfriend?

I think it might be.

Five Minutes

It’s funny how five minutes of one day can change your life. How five minutes of one day can go on to set the standard for all other days. This was one of those days.

It started off in the same way that all days normally do. I got up later than planned, didn’t wash my hair even though it needed it, pulled on the first clothes I could find, got to work and opened the shop. I’m usually on my own til about eleven. There’s only ever me, reading, dusting the shelves, drinking tea. A nice, luke-warm start to the day. Except this day. He scared me when he came in. Snuck up behind me so quietly that the first I knew of it was a soft waft of stale beer.
“Do you have any books about pirates?” he asked.
“Treasure Island, it’s over there. In the R section. We’re on first name terms with all our authors here.”
He laughed with his mouth closed and I blushed at my own piss-poor joke.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a reference book?” he said.
“We don’t deal in fact here. Fiction only. Treasure Island is the only one I can think of, off the top of my head,” I was babbling. It’s my worst habit. “It’s quite good,” I said, searching for something to save myself. “I read it in school.”
“I know,” he said, smiling. Lovely teeth. I suddenly noticed how lovely and blue his eyes were. “I know who you are, Cordelia Deadly. How could I ever forget a girl like you?”
And with that he was off. Into the labyrinth loosely titled ‘Popular Fiction, Bible-Present’. And I couldn’t stop staring. Like the odd glimpse of his elbow, a shot of his arm would make me remember who he was. You know when you know that you know someone, you just don’t know how you know them? He was walking back to the counter, book tucked underneath one arm when it hit me. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realised sooner. He hadn’t changed that much since we’d been at school.
“Why, Thomas Brown!” I said, “whatever are you doing here..?” I trailed off, embarrassed again. I knew what he was doing here. He was looking for a book, one about pirates. It was one of those moments when I wished I could stop time, think of a winning line and then press play again.
“Oh, you know. I’m just trawling second-hand bookshops looking for pretty girls I used to go to school with,” he grinned. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“That’ll be £3.99 please.” He paid for it in handfuls of change.
“Well it was nice seeing you again,” he said. I told him not to be a stranger.
“Stranger than what?” he asked. After he left I stared into space and wrote Cordelia loves Tom 85% all over the newspapers.

I was still daydreaming when Pete got in at twelve. He handed me a scrap of paper torn from the front of a novel. “I certainly hope it isn’t one of ours,” he grumbled. I didn’t answer as I hurriedly unfolded it.

I always wondered about you. Would you like to spend the day with me on Saturday? I’ll meet you here, at ten, in the morning. I’ll get up especially early and wear my good shoes. Hope to see you, Tom.

I woke up early on Saturday. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t help it. I never can sleep when I’m excited. I washed my hair and put on some eyeliner, found some clean clothes and gave my trainers a quick scrub with the dishcloth. I was at work for nine thirty, humming to myself. Pete wolf-whistled. By the time eleven o’clock rolled around, Pete bought me my fourth cup of tea and patted my arm in what I’m sure was supposed to be a reassuring gesture.
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,” he said.
“I don’t doubt it,” I replied, when in actual fact I doubted it very much indeed. Maybe he’d forgotten, maybe he’d been drunk that day he came in, maybe he’d changed his mind. They weren’t reasonable explanations.

At twelve o’clock, Pete excused himself and went to watch the tiny black and white portable he kept in the back room. Since I refused to go home, I might as well make myself useful and watch the shop. Like I didn’t know that he spent most of his time smoking rollies and watching the racing in the backroom, whether I was there or not. A few minutes later, I heard him shout.
“Cordie, you’d best get in here, quick!” I was so jumpy, I almost ran. Pete was watching the news. Tom’s face filled the tiny screen, his face tilted in profile, he was laughing at something behind the camera, something we couldn’t see. The voice of the newscaster droned on, emotionless.
“…police are appealing for any witnesses to come forward.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.
“He’s dead, Cordie,” Pete replied. “He’s been murdered.”
“He can’t be dead,” I said, “we’re going on a date.”

Silence.

“Well at least you know he hasn’t stood you up. I told you there would be a reasonable explanation.”

hello

hello...er...well this is it. I said I would start a blog and I have. so what do I want to say..?

I had a moment at work the other day...I was listening to a conference call and I thought, is this it? is this really it..? as much as I want to marry a rockstar and be a fairy princess, I am a realist, and the answer was resounding...

sadly, yes. yes, this is it. and the likelyhood is that I won't get to retire until I'm about 70, so I have a choice. I can either continue like I am or I can try to escape and do something that I love.

I want to be a novellist. I want to write stories. I am going to be 30 very soon and the very thought has struck fear into my bones and I have decided that this is not it. I am not going to let this be it. so I have started doing the following things...

I'm working with a writing coach (http://www.stephaniecage.co.uk/)
I'm going to a writing class
I'm working on this blog
I've been sending stories off to competitions/magazines

it might not sound like a lot, but to me, it is a lot. I'm lucky that I have the lovely cally (http://www.callyjanestudio.blogspot.com/) as my best friend/sis-in-law to do lots of lovely artwork for me and encourage me. and a boyfriend who is prepared to drive me to and from class and is learning to cook so he can make me tea and give me more time to write. other than that, well, it's really just down to me. so watch this space. I'm gonna post some words that I like, and it would be very nice if you liked them too ...

these words were from my writing class, they said, 10 mins, 200 words, romance, bus (admittedly, this is a second draft...) please feel free to post comments and let me know what you think.

“He looks like Justin Timberlake,” Shanice said.
“No he doesn’t! He looks nuffin like him!”
“He does! He’s his twin, man! Who you lookin’ at? You can’t be lookin’ at the same one!”
“I’m lookin’ at that one there, in the hat,” I pointed.
“Yeah, that’s him,” she sighed. “He’s lovely.”
“Well how come I’ve never seen him before? How come you’ve never said nuffin?”
“Well I dunno, do I? I’m shy or summat.”
“You? Shy? Fuck off.”
“Don’t take the piss Chantelle, I’m serious here.”
“If you love him that much, why don’t you just talk to him?”
“Oh, I can’t! I daren’t!”
“I’ll talk to him for you –“
“No!” she shrieked, grabbing my arm. “Chantelle! Don’t!”
I didn’t listen.
“Oi! Oi, you!” I yelled at JT. “My mate fancies you.”
Justin turned and winked. Started walking our way as he went to go down the stairs.
“Aw-right darlin’,” he drawled, grabbing his crotch as he went by. “Fancy a piece of this, do ya?”
Shanice went bright red as Justin and his cronies howled and pounded on the windows as they ran down the stairs.

If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn she was crying.