Publication in Stringybark’s latest anthology!

I’m happy to share with you that one of my short stories for adults has been accepted for publication in Stringybark’s latest anthology! I entered this competition earlier in the year, and found out this week that my story was highly commended.

The anthology is called Standing by, and is available as an e-book here for the princely sum of $4.00, and will be available as a print book in mid-June for $14.95. You can preorder a copy here – preordering does help with print runs.

My story is called Naming, and I wrote it about two years ago. I was completing an online short story course through Writers Victoria and had submitted a couple of short stories, around the theme of adult fairy tales. I’m interested in these classic tales, the idea of journeys and trials and tribulations, the changes the hero/heroine has to go through to reach their goal, good versus evil, and I love all the imagery in fairy tales – keys, the number three, woods, names, mirrors and so on.

I woke up early one morning and in a half-dream, almost wrote half of this Naming story in my head. When I realised I had half a story, I quickly got out of bed and typed it up before anyone else woke up. Thank goodness for sweetly-sleeping children that morning!

I worked on the second half of the story, and edited the whole story a few times before I sent it into my tutor. She gave me some positive feedback, and I then sent it out to a few competitions, with no success until now!

This is the first time I’ve ever had such a complete idea for a story. Usually I have an idea, then something else latches on to that idea, then I explore it a bit, then I think about the main character some more, then I start writing. But this story felt like a gift.

I used the fairy tale Rumplestiltskin as inspiration, but it’s a contemporary story, told from the viewpoint of a twelve-year-old boy who is somewhere on the autistic spectrum.

Thank you to everyone who has left lovely comments on Facebook or forwarded my tweet on Twitter – I’m so grateful for your support – it’s made my week!

I’m reading my way through the other stories in the anthology, and I’m honoured to be published in such a talented group of writers.