Acceptance, yay!

A story that I've tried for quite a while to find a home for (in various different incarnations and rewrites) has been accepted for publication!

The Venetian will appear in Dark Gothic Resurrected magazine next year, in April 2011. It's a story about a vampire who finds herself in a damp, grey land and wishes to return to the much nicer setting of Venice where she is from, but being a vampire, her journey isn't easy.

Don't worry, I'll be sure to remind you about it at the time as it's quite a while away!

Life is too short to...?

Life is too short to do all sorts of things. I do of course occasionally have to do things that I don't like in order to earn money, or keep someone I care about happy, but I'll only do them if there's some kind of reason behind it.

I mentioned to a friend the other day that I consider life too short to do much ironing - I'll iron for a job interview, and that's about it. Otherwise I try to buy and wear clothes that don't wrinkle easily. She said that though she bought clothes that did need ironing, overall she was with me - especially as some people iron things like sheets.

Why??? Why would you iron sheets?

What else is life too short to bother doing, in your opinion? 

Truth vs Creative Fiction:

..All but one of the statements I made about myself last week were true.

The statements were:

1. Lobsters terrify me.
2. I have no middle name.
3. When I was a child I played the role of Mary in a school nativity play.
4. I love doing bungee jumps.
5. The first time I smoked a cigarette, I was 12.
6. When I was a teenager I was in a samba-style drumming band.
7. I play the same numbers in the lotto every week.

 #4 is the only falsehood. I have never done a bungee jump, though I would love to do one one day, and a parachute jump as well. All the others are in fact true!

200 days

Tomorrow it'll be 200 days since I gave up smoking!!!

Yay me.

There were some difficult days. Like moving house. And exam time. And various other occasions that I always associate with smoking. But I'm glad I quit....will just have to see if I manage to stay off them long term.

According to the facebook app I've added 17 days to my life as well, by not smoking for 200. Well, you know - as long as I don't get hit by a bus or whatever.

There are nearly 5000 cigarettes I haven't smoked too. That's a pretty scary amount for a little over 6 months. Funny how it's that figure rather than the life saved or money saved which tends to hit home for me. 

Busy week so I haven't done any writing, got a few rejections but haven't sent pieces out again...I'll get to it. Will catch up on everyone's blogs as well, haven't been reading or commenting much this week. Hope all is well with everyone & everyone's writing :-)

Creative Blogger Award!

Firstly, thank you to the darkly talented Pixie J. King who passed this award on to me!

The Creative Blogger award is a 'pass it on' sort of concept, which means that I now get to nominate others for it. Oh, and tell some lies. *ahem* I mean creative fictions.



Specifically, I must:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link to them.
2. Add the award to your blog.
3. Tell six outrageous lies about yourself and one truth. (Another variant: Tell six truths and one outrageous lie.)
4. Nominate five creative liars/writers and post links to them.
5. Let your nominees know that they have been nominated.

So #1 is done, thank you, Pixie :-)

#2 is also done.
 - So now for the fun stuff!

Are these six lies and one truth, or six truthful statements with just one single lie among them? Have a guess, in the comments (and if you know for sure, don't spoil it for the others!)
:-) I may tell you next week...though I have been very forgetful, of late. Muahaha.

1. Lobsters terrify me.
2. I have no middle name.
3. When I was a child I played the role of Mary in a school nativity play.
4. I love doing bungee jumps.
5. The first time I smoked a cigarette, I was 12.
6. When I was a teenager I was in a samba-style drumming band.
7. I play the same numbers in the lotto every week.

So, now to nominate 5 others! This is the hard part...I don't like upsetting or insulting people! And I'm still quite new to the blogger network so I don't have that many connections yet, but some of the people I know all know each other so they've already been nominated! Conflustering. So here goes:

E. J. Tett - Em's Blog of Waffles.
Lee Hughes - Lee Hughes Writes
Lily Childs - Lily Childs' Feardom 
Rev. Wayne Austin Goodchild - The Change Has Started
Craig Saunders - Petrified Tank




So now to go let these people know I've nominated them, and then I'm done :-) Overall this was definitely fun to do, and it's a great way to showcase other writers' blogs and hopefully get everyone some more hits and followers and fans! So thanks once again, Pixie, and I look forward to reading all your thoughts on which of my fantastic facts are true and which are lies!

What I'm working on...

Probably the last regular Friday update for a while. Not that I'm going to go away or anything, but next week I'll have to start studying so I can get a headstart before the baby comes...and then there'll be the small matter of becoming a first-time mum. So now as Summer becomes Autumn, I'm having to accept that I might not have as much time for writing. Nappies and night feeds as well as assignments might have to take priority for a while.

Don't worry though, I'll still update the blog and share stories and poems! Just probably a little less, especially once the baby arrives.

So, what I'm working on:

I finished a draft of the little hillbilly town story, but it needs an awful lot of work yet. So I'll probably try to get some more work done on that. I think now that there might be several stories, set in several different Odd Little Local Towns rather than just the one, as there seems to be too much to fit neatly into one story. Or one town.

I also wrote a piece called Disfigured. Just a flash fiction, but I quite liked it, so I submitted it somewhere as soon as it was edited. Fingers crossed!

It's been a good week, with one story published on Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers and another accepted into a Pill Hill Press anthology.

Done some reading this week as well - read The Empress Graves by E. J. Tett, and I'm also reading Stitched Up!, the House of Horror anthology which features one of my stories, as well as some other great tales so far. Since next week I really need to start reading Hamlet and and some chapters on cognitive psychology, a YA fantasy novel and some short stories about zombies are the perfect diversion at the moment!

Now, since it is Autumn, I think I'll light the fire and try to get some writing done while listening to the rain beating against the window, and the dogs snoring. There's inspiration there, somewhere...

Acceptance, yay!

Two pieces of good news on the writing front!

Firstly, today my story Looking for Adventure appears on the Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers website :-) Go have a read and let me know what you think!

And secondly, I have had a story accepted to Pill Hill Press's 2013: The Aftermath anthology. Yay!It's a post-apocalyptic story called Stepping on the Bones. Quite dark, but since it's set after the end of the world as we know it, that works quite well :-)


Always good to get good news, can't beat the confidence boost of an acceptance!