queensland

Giveaways & Good News

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Just to confuse you, I’ll do the good (although slightly old) news, first.

Which is (drum roll):  despite writing it in a tearing hurry, my submission to 100 Stories For Queensland was accepted! If you haven’t heard of this excellent volume, it’s an anthology that will be published to raise money for charity, following in the footsteps of 100 Stories for Haiti and 50 Stories for Pakistan.

I was pleased to be on the shortlist, but thought that’s as far as it would go, so very chuffed with the news. The story is called Pop, and it’s about…ah, well, that would be telling. You’ll have to buy the book. I’ll just say that it’s a light-hearted humorous tale that was inspired by a birthday card – one that was sent to Techie Husband several years ago. So you see – ideas really can come from anywhere!

The book will be available in print, digital and audio formats, and is full of the work of other lovely writers, such as Sally Quilford, Simon Whaley, Glynis Scrivens, Sue Moorcroft…and 95 others, of course!
More info soon.

Now for the Giveaway (drum roll again please, Mr. Collins. And do take that gorilla suit off).

I have a paperback copy of Lisa Gardner’s The Neighbour to give away to the first correct answer of this question:

What’s the title of Lisa’s first Det. D.D. Warren novel?

I have a little stash of book goodies to give away in the near future, but I’m thinking of auctioning some for Comic Relief or other good causes, so keep your eyes peeled (but only metaphorically, please. Don’t want any bloodstains on the blog.)

Mmm…great title for a novel…’Bloodstains On The Blog’… 😉

Weekend Wonderfulness

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After a few weeks of complete madness – just tooooo much to do – this weekend it’s been nice to chill. Not that I’ve really chilled in the typical sense, but I’ve felt chilled because there aren’t deadlines breathing down my neck. I got the latest OU assignment in on time on Thursday, despite spending more time at work than I expected to, completed the most urgent paperwork for work, and sent off my submission for the ‘100 Stories for Queensland’ book (albeit a little late).

On Saturday I had a really enjoyable OU tutorial in Cambridge. Once again, considering there are about 24 people on this course in what must be around a 25 mile radius, there weren’t that many of us, but it was great to see familiar faces and a couple of new ones. Caron Freeborn is not only a good tutor, she’s also an interesting person with a great sense of humour. Must remember to buy her novels and have a read 🙂

We had a lot of fun with one of the exercises – we voted on a setting (I was quite chuffed because it ended up being an opera house which was my suggestion!), did some descriptive work, and then Caron made each of us pick a Secret Slip of Paper…this was the character we had to be in the monologue she asked us to write. And of course, the challenge was for everyone else to listen to it afterwards and guess who you were meant to be!

A really interesting exercise, but I was a bit unnerved, as I found it disturbingly easy to write as my character – ‘a 40-year-old alcoholic woman in need of a drink’! Lovely to spend a few hours with fellow writers though.

And today was pretty great too, because thanks to a tweet from Simon Whaley, I found there’s a longlist (well, more of a shortlist!) up for ‘100 Stories’. And – yay! I’m on it. Very chuffed.