Beyond Happily Ever After appears in Wet Ink magazine OUT NOW!

Okay, so I'm just a teensy weensy bit excited.

A couple of months ago my short story, Beyond Happily Ever After, was accepted for publication by Wet Ink magazine, and now its on the shelves. This is my first sale!

If you have come to my blog looking for a summary of Cinderella, this is not the place to be. However, if you want to know what happened to Cinderella after she married her Prince 'Charming' and you are an adult, then read on:

Here is an excerpt:

Beyond Happily Ever After

And they all lived happily ever after.

That’s what Prince Edward had promised on their wedding night, but Cinderella found that the reality of life in the palace was far removed from any fairytale.

Twelve months after the dream wedding, Cindy showed no signs of producing the expected heir to the throne. Each evening a dozen chefs would concoct a feast containing all manner of aphrodisiacs, but Cindy often felt nauseous and bloated by the rich food. After dessert, the Prince would grunt and grind away, shouting commands to his sperm as if leading his troops into battle. Cindy opened her legs, laid back and thought of the kingdom she now served. Occasionally she wondered if her husband’s sperm had gone AWOL.

Each month as her stomach retained water and she menstruated, the newspaper hounds and gossip magazines published pictures of her ‘baby bump’, and expectation flew around the countryside like clucky hens. Cindy cried as she confessed to her husband that she was still without child.

To read more, go to the Wet Ink website and purchase the magazine...

I had so much fun with Cinderella and her friends, that I expanded the short story into a novel...so stay tuned.

Another first draft complete

Woohoo! Another first draft finished and Cinderella gets her 'sort of' happy ever after, at least the best happy ever after that she can hope for in the complex love and family circumstances she is now in.

After ditching the false beginning which was all about Sleeping Beauty who suffered from narcolepsy (and never made another appearance in the story), I have replaced it with the original short story that started it all. And this is my final first draft word count:

68,572 / 68,572 (100.0%)

Today, I've been editing 'I'm with the Band' and looking through magazines for words for a collage gift that I'm making for a friend. I will post a picture of the gift once it is finished and presented.

My last short story has been doing the rounds of the office and I've been getting some very interesting and encouraging feedback. It's very appropriate for my co-workers to read it as it is set in a call centre, and we work in a call centre. But I've got to hang out for another four weeks to find out the competition results. The results are in, but will not be announced until the writers' group AGM. Best not to think about it.

So with the completion of Beyond Happily Ever After, that makes five first drafts in various stages of development. Time for some editing!

And the words just vanish!

I lost 844 words tonight. Actually more - I'd written 121 words during the day and when I tried to save the new 844 words to my flashdrive, it gave me grief and wiped the whole file instead. There is a copy of the file on my hard drive but only up to last night's writing.

Aargh!!!!

Cinderella's cursing me too! When I left her at the end of the 844 words, she was holding her new gorgeous baby in her arms and now - she has to go through the labour again. Well, not really - the scene I lost wasn't about her labour, it was about her husband's anxiety because he's just been busted! With his pants down. You get the drift. Prince Charming! Not quiet.

So it's back to recreating the scene. Perhaps the almighty critic of the universe had decided that it just wasn't right. The judgemental flash drive obviously didn't think much of it. But it would've been nice if they'd let me decide!

Back to work!

I've won!

Oops she did it again. But this year, it was actually a marathon, or an endless series of sprints to make it to the finish line. Buoyed on by a cheering squad of RWA Nano participants, and word wars with Di in Canberra, I have made it over the finish line with a word count of 50,068 and 13 minutes to spare. Whoa! That was close. And to make it across the line, I wrote an incredible 6416 words today.

That's what I get for having days with no word count. I know I had a late start on Nanowrimo this year because I was working on another project, but zero word count days are naughty once I started . And when they happened I lost momentum.

The story is yet to be finished. This is where I have stopped for Nano....

So that was it? That’s what they called sex? Cinderella looked at the back of her snoring husband and wondered what all the fuss was about.

I'm not sure how much longer it will take to finish the story and I won't be finishing it tomorrow! My hands and arms and shoulders and eyes and brain all need a rest. Sleep! Sounds like heaven. And then after that it will be part-ay time! It's the end of year work bash, and I don't have to drive to it, so it's time to have fun. November just finished with impeccable timing.

Welcome to my forties....

Design available at The Writers Zone in the Chickollage Shop

It's the first day of my forties....

and I slept in. Because it's the only day I could sleep in all week. Yep, I have the day off today and then it's back to work tomorrow and Sunday. Will be very glad when this election is over. I've been pleased to have the extra work but it will be good to return to some kind of normal.

Life begins today. And I got myself one of those free solar return charts (gives you a year forecast) from astrology.com and things are looking pretty good in the stars for the next twelve months. Especially in the department of creativity.

I feel as if I'm coming into my own creatively and there's never enough time to create everything I want. The 365 day collage poetry challenge died after two months, although I have since made some 3D collage projects

and Nanowrimo is proving to be very challenging this time around due to my extended working hours. If only I had more hours in the night (not in the day, because I don't want to spend any more time at the day job). I've surpassed 21,000 words and hopefully today I will at least hit the halfway mark. It means a lot of writing in the next week, but there are people out there waiting for the sequel, wanting to know what became of Cinderella beyond the 'beyond happily ever after' so I must not disappoint my four fans. I've always responded well to extrinsic motivation.

Meanwhile a few more designs have been added to the Chickollage shop (including the one at the start of the post) and I'm also trying out zazzle as they have alternative products to cafepress including keyrings.

Tonight will be a birthday dinner, more writing and some sleep before I have to face work again...

An imperfect prince

I think I've finally found my groove... the writing thang. I haven't hit the 20k mark yet so I am still towards the back of the race but if I put my head down and type type type, I might just make it to the finish line.

A tiny sample:

And thankfully a young naïve and beautiful maiden had turned up to the ball
wearing her glass slippers and enchanting everyone including Prince Edward.She had been just perfect, naïve enough to not recognise Prince Edward’s tendencies, young enough to be impressed by the riches, and malleable enough to be conditioned to the role of princess.

Cinderella had been just perfect. The perfect wife for an imperfect
prince. And now she would right it all by giving birth to the heir of the
throne. And right at this moment, the Queen did not give a damn as to how
Cinderella had achieved this miraculous feat. For the child would be the
saviour of the monarchy.

As usual work is trying to get in the way - leading up to Saturday's election, there's just so much of it! I haven't had to deal with extra hours during previous Nanowrimo's and some years I have had time off in November. Not this year. It just means that I have to do more word sprints and word wars and steal small chunks of time for writing to get that certificate to hang on my wall, and another first draft to edit. But I'm having fun, really I am! Who wouldn't want to spend their nights hanging out with the dysfunctional fairytale monarchy?

Cinderella wins a prize

Hey! Where did February go?

Oh, that's right - short month! It always throws me off.

I've got good news. It must be official because I received the cheque in the mail yesterday. $150 - 2nd prize in a short story competition. Cinderella has done me proud. But don't think that's the end of it! That was the 1800 w0rd version. The 3000 word plus version is still out there. Cindy's got a mind of her own, as well as her shoe fetish, and she's got her sights set on world domination.

Actually, I'm really glad there was a second prize. There was a time in my life when I was job-hunting and I always coming in as the runner-up. 2nd out of 150 applicants is no comfort when there's only job being offered. Glad that part of my life has passed.

I will be entering another competition - this is a Blog-off organised by Courtney at Five Second Dance Party. It will be a survivor-style competition. Entrants blog on a submitted topic and then vote on the best blog. Least number of votes and you're eliminated from the next round. Funds are being raised for breast cancer. Interested? Then head over to Courtney's blog to get all the details.

I'm getting tired of cooking for one again. So last night, I cooked for 4. 4 Tandoori chicken fillets. I was the envy of everyone in the lunch room today when they could smell my lunch heating up. And guess what I'm having for dinner tonight?

Speaking of Tandoori, we will be having a Indian feast at our writing retreat and the dress code is exotic. So I went looking for my gold snake bracelet, and in the process, I decided to completely empty my jewellery box. Behind the drawers I found jewellery that had become entwined in the music box mechanism including an amber heart from Russia, which I truly thought I had lost years ago. Unfortunately, this search did not also turn up my missing Ab Fab and Being John Malkovich DVD's.

Okay - back to the editing!

Bonsai Story Generator

Nanowrimo can lead you to some interesting places on the net. Yesterday it took me to the Bonsai Story Generator, a website that will mangle your story in only a couple of seconds, but somehow retain some (and I emphasise some) sense.

So I decided to stick my Cinderella story into the generator and see what it spat out.

Here are some of the resulting sentences:

Her life was no dictator.

(but I bet hubby is!)

He had a post-it note, and the kingdom.

(useful!)

Snow married her fairy godmother, but Cindy often felt the blood rush to her husband that she would only so much He shook a napkin out of rehab to beat her palm.

(well, that's where one would usually get a napkin, isn't it?)

A ménage a problem.

(usually turns into a problem the morning after)

An erotic fantasy of colourful footwear.

(many women's fantasy)

The slipper had a genetic right to have a velvet lined, gold encrusted shoe box.

(of course!)

Dirty socks on a short red silk cocktail dress, and fame made.

(I think this one has Monica Lewinsky undertones)

This program appears to try and keep verbs and nouns in order to make some kind of sense, but it's interesting the odd combination of words. Enough to set off another bout of creativity. Hmm, I don't remember Snow White marrying the fairy godmother!

The Perfect Man - Carribean Women's Blue T-shirt

Speaking of creativity, the folks at Cafepress have added a heap of new t-shirt styles and colours and I've added them to the existing designs at the Chickollage shop. We now have women's shirts in carribean blue, red, violet along with light colours, white and dark v-necks and much more.

New Beginnings - Women's Violet T-shirt

Drop into the shop and have a browse!

Legendary Punk Poet T-shirt

Relapsing & the Cinderella summary

I have a confession. I have relapsed.

Just one, I thought it'd be alright. Well, that turned into one a day. Then two a day. And now I've bought a bottle home.

Shame!

Does anyone know of a Cokeaholic meeting I can attend because that brown liquid is enticing me again?

So today, my father tells me to have an energy drink instead, it'd pick me up. I thought he was talking about Gatorade. But no, he was talking about Guarana. So I bought a bottle, and then looked at the contents. More sugar than Coke, and a high caffeine rating - not sure how that compares because Coke doesn't reveal it's caffeine levels. So tonight I'm drinking water.

I'm a bit miffed that my next Quickflix DVD's didn't arrive in time for the weekend. Why can't Australia Post be quicker? I was looking forward to having a guilty Melrose Place marathon tomorrow night, and watching Click with my partner when he arrives home on Sunday. But now they won't arrive until Monday, and I probably won't have time during the week to watch them. So in absence of trash TV, I will watch quality Australian drama instead - LOVE MY WAY. Let me think, twenty to thirty somethings who drink a lot and sleep with each other and have extremely mixed up relationships - not much difference really! Just the accent.

Last weekend I watched Confetti, the weirdest wedding competition movie - that was fun - and Transamerica - powerful stuff, I can see why Felicity Huffman won the Golden Globe for her portrayal of Bree.

I started reading my lulu copy of Diary of the Future. It is amazing how having it in book format changes my perspective and makes editing so much easier. So it will undergo another edit, some formatting of the collage poetry inside, and hopefully some more poems added, reformatting of the layout, so it doesn't take up so many pages, and resizing the backcover so it appears more symmetrical. Even my father's impressed with what I've achieved so far and with this concrete form of visualisation, I know that I'm on the way to achieving my goals.

I'm bored with cooking for one. It's 8.30 and I'm not really hungry because I ate some dips and biscuits earlier, but I suppose I'll have to eat something tonight. Maybe some more snacky foods - give in to my ongoing olive craving.

Last night, I was browsing the Nanowrimo forums and came across the Auto summarize feature in Microsoft Word (in the Tools menu). So here's the 10 sentence summary of my Cinderella short story (as determined by Microsoft):

Snow White giggled.
‘Snow White and Henry are expecting,’ Cindy told her husband.
Damn the prince and his royal traditions!
Can one prince be enough for our Snow White?
Cinderella placed her hand on Snow White’s stomach.
‘Henry, it’s Cinderella.
‘Cindy, come in.
‘Oh, Cindy.’

‘Cheeky!’ smiled Snow White.
‘Still two princes!

Can anyone guess the plot from these ten random sentences?

Hanging out at the carnival

I had a few hours to kill in town the other night so I wandered down to the Jetty and took some photos of the Carnival.

I've never been one for wild rides, but it was interesting watching other people on the rides. The expressions change as the ride moved faster or in an unexpected direction.

In this photo on the left hand side, the monster's hand is between the two exit doors. He kept poking his head out to entice the kids to enter The Temple of Doom. It was great watching the little's kids faces when they came out of the ride. So many young kids I noticed at the carnival were covering their ears, blocking out the loud music and loudspeakers. And I've noticed this reaction with young kids in my own family. So I wonder when they reach the point that loud noise is suddenly okay for their eardrums, and they stick earphones right in their ear, and turn the music up to '11'.

Diary of the Future is now uploaded to lulu.com so I can have a copy to stick on my bookshelf and inspire me to finish the editing and send it to a publisher. The editing isn't done as yet. So much other stuff going on, including training for the new role at work -which I'm going to love. But I managed a copy edit so there should at least be no typo's left in the book. Things like typing 'head in his pocket' instead of 'hand in his pocket' and 'chickout check' instead of 'check out chick.' I still want to rewrite the beginning of the story to change how Nicky acquires the diary.

It took until 2.30 in the morning to upload it all to lulu.com - I probably should not have converted the document to a PDF myself, because it kept reformating it to a larger size, meaning the text was going to be smaller when I changed it back on the lulu site to novel size. And then the cover took 20 minutes to upload by itself. Meanwhile, my eyes were falling out of my head, and I was wondering how I was going to function at work the next day. But I perservered and went to bed at 2.30am, knowing it was done.

I've been receiving great feedback on the Cinderella story, so I'm pumping it up with another 1200 words to bring it to the 3000 word minimum for a major short story comp which is closing at the beginning of February. Cinderella now has a major shoe fetish - wonder where she developed that?

We watched Candy last night with Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish. It was interesting seeing the movie after hearing Luke Davies talking about it at the Byron Bay Writers Festival. And I can't imagine how long it took to set up the scene where Candy writes her story all over the walls of the house.

I'm also catching up with the second season of Love My Way. But today I need to do some writing/editing.

Why do the weekends go so fast?

Dorkus helps with the editing - NOT!

Dorkus decided he wanted to help me edit. Which is all well and good, but it makes my task a little harder, trying to read around him.

Well, it seems that everyone's a critic. I left the pages out for him and he slept on them. Next morning, he'd given his considered opinion by throwing up all over the manuscript.

Beautiful! Thank you very much. Lucky I wasn't the one to discover it, and my partner cleaned up the mess. Hehe!

But this version of the manuscript was chucked out after being chucked up on. Thankfully, I had finished transferring all the corrections to date to the computer file, and printed a new and clean edit copy which is safely encased in plastic.

Yesterday I finished my Cinderella short story and mailed it today for the short story competition. Because I was working so close to the deadline, there was no time for an edit after my beta reader checked it out today, but she thought it was very funny and politically uncorrect. So the premise is...what happens when the Prince and Cinderella are having trouble conceiving the heir to the throne? And I take potshots at tabloids and paparazzi, and modern royalty and celebrity.It was challenging to write a story with a beginning, middle and end in under 2000 words after writing 50k, 80k, 100k - you get the idea! In 2000 words, I'm just getting warmed up.

I also reserved a place in the blogosphere for Nambucca Valley Writers' Group, who are my favourite bunch of people. I have been posting the 2006 Year in Review for the group. You can check it out here.

Because it was relatively quiet at work today, I started working on the One-Pass Manuscript Revision on Making the Cut. And yes, I have worked through all the steps of Part One, including condensing the novel into 25 words. I'm still working on the 250 words - that will need a few more revisions.

Another work day (hopefully reasonably quiet again) and then another three day weekend. I just wish every weekend would last three days!