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.
Excellent work and a beautiful story
Thank you, SP – glad you enjoyed reading my story!
Well done, Karen. Hope there is more success coming to you.
Terri.
Thanks for your support, Terri. Fingers crossed for more of this!
Congratulations Karen!
Thanks, Wendy – I really appreciate your support of my blog.
Looking forward to reading it, Karen x
Thanks, Carolyn – hope you like it!
Fantastic, Karen! I’m very pleased for you. Getting short stories published is tough, so well done!
Thanks so much, Amy – we’ve both had a good literary week!
Congratulations, Karen. Guess patchworking is on the back burner now.
Thanks, Gail. My Christmas quilt is a work in progress, just like my manuscripts!