What a total ….. up my first effort at self-publishing turned out to be. Probem is that I am used to proof reading on paper so it is only when I received my ‘test’ hard copy this morning that I spotted all the mistakes!
Firstly – no table of contents.
Secondly – no page numbering (don’t know why but I thought this would just happen automatically).
Thirdly – one big typo on the back cover (not too bad I guess).
Fourthly – the spacing was different for different stories.
So there you have it!
But less pages now and slightly cheaper. Just wish I hadn’t bought so many copies to give my friends.
And I got rid of the original A4 version.
So once again it’s at An Irrational Fear of Dogs and other short stories
Yes I am still going on about my new book which I just self-published on Lulu.com. I can’t wait to get my copies and see what it looks like. I’m so excited!
Have a look at An Irrational Fear of Dogs and other short stories
Here is yet another extract. This is from a story called The Indulgence:
‘How long have you been dead?’ asked the angel, not even looking up once at the pretty young woman sitting across the desk in front of him.
‘About 30 years,’ she replied. ‘I am not sure. Time moves slowly when you have nothing to do.’
‘Do you miss your children? Your family?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I can’t remember. Did I have any? Children that is, I must have had a family of some sort. Is this a job interview?’
‘Some might call it that. Personally I would call it an “indulgence”.’ The angel dipped his pen in a bottle of Quink and continued scratching shapes on the page.
‘Have I been good? Is that why you are “indulging” me?’
‘It’s not about good or bad,’ he replied, ‘it’s just your time.’
‘30 years? Is that my time?’ She fidgeted nervously.
‘Yes,’ said the angel, never even glancing at this small, slight woman who was twitching and rubbing her hands together. Anyone with a modicum of compassion would have appreciated how she felt. But not him…
‘Am I still pretty?’ She asked.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he replied. ‘That’s not my department. You need to ask someone from the Department of Girlfriends, Models and Attention Seekers, or DoGMAS for short.’
Yesterday I self published this as an A4 paperback. That of course is not the right size for a book, more like a magazine! So today I republished in A5 size but it works out far more expensive per copy as it’s 92 pages.
Have a look at An Irrational Fear of Dogs and other short stories
Here is another extract. This time it’s from a story called Double Bill about a bigamist who failed to take into account that ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’:
Goodbye Sarah. I bet you thought we would be friends for ever. How wrong you were. The two of us were going to stand here and watch as Bill’s coffin was lowered into the ground. We pictured ourselves distraught, crying on each others shoulders, coming together in our shared grief, holding hands and laughing through crocodile tears, taking turns throwing earth on the coffin, our airline tickets to Rio de Janeiro safely tucked away in our Gucci handbags. But now it’s just me standing here, watching as your coffin is lowered into the ground. Goodbye Sarah. You thought we would be friends for ever. How wrong you were.
It all began two or so years ago when I started going to the Top Rank in Watford. I was a widow. My husband of fourteen years had died after being run over by an ambulance. It was coming towards him, sirens blaring and lights flashing but he was too preoccupied reading the Times Literary Supplement to notice it. When they took him to hospital they found the paper open at the review of a new book called ‘How to Survive in a Dangerous World’.
Well, I finally have my degree after seven years so I thought I would stop being a student and actually publish something. I did this on Lulu.com (self publishing I know but you have to start somewhere and I wanted to see my stories in proper print). I therefore uploaded six short stories under the title An Irrational Fear of Dogs and other short stories.
They are quite dark and often have a bit of a twist. Here is an extract from An Irrational Fear of Dogs:
The children are coming, the children are coming, the children are coming. Look out children. It’s in the bushes. It’s in the bushes. Look out. Look out.
Phoebe couldn’t take her eyes off them as they ran around in front of her. She imagined them all evaporating into thin air with a pop and then coming back down to earth like small coloured lights, silver and red and green and orange. ‘Pop’ there goes one. ‘Pop’ there goes another. How sweet it felt to see them all. Like little faeries of the night they fell and scattered. The children, the children. She was one of them yet not one of them.
‘Mummy, why am I different?’ Phoebe was lying the wrong way round in the bed with just the top of her head poking out at the foot end and the blanket and sheet tucked in really tight. She was looking at her favourite teddy as she spoke.
‘You’re not. Why do you say such things?’
‘If I was like them, the others I mean, then they would want to play with me. But they don’t. They are scared of me, aren’t they Borage?’
‘Look at me Phoebe, not at the bear. And does that make you unhappy, darling?’
‘Not really, mummy, but sometimes it makes me just a little lonely,’ with which her mother wiped a small tear from the corner of her eye, walked out of the room and shut the door.
First of the month. White rabbits and all that stuff. Beginning of a new era. I get my result on Friday. Time for a quick Haiku.
Once
This is no rehearsal
Life is only once and then
The chance has slipped away
Of all the poems I have written, this is not my favourite. I am still not sure about it, but I want to publish the best and the worst. The theme is religious because I have always had an interest in religion. It wasn’t intended that way but sometimes you are driven subconsciously by your background and your childhood.
Epitaph
This was my son
I gave him to you
I asked you to love him
But look how it grew
Into something so cold now
The darkness shot through
Second chances are futile
When the world lives through you
I swore I’d never let this blog get out of date and now it’s been four weeks since I last posted. I haven’t written anything new (other than two short stories too long to put on here and half a sestina) which means that technically I have nothing to post. So what else can I do apart from write a little Haiku. (Not sure about the little … is there such a thing as a ‘big haiku? Mmm.)
Sunshine
When you feel empty
And there is nothing but space
Fill it with sunshine
Just like I rarely write funny poetry, I almost never write poems for children. However, I wrote this one many years ago and thought I would share it at long last. It was inspired by a book called ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ by Robert Louis Stevenson which I won as a school prize when I was about seven (could have been a poetry prize but that is probably wishful thinking!)
If I were a King
If I were a king
And my bed was a throne
And the garden a kingdom
Of my very own
I’d stand on my bed
And proudly I’d say
Sun I command you
To shine every day
Rain you are exiled
From out of this land
And the clouds would disperse
With a wave of my hand
Seven years and my degree is almost complete. In just over a week my last ever project will be printed, bound and posted. Then it will be time to start writing for myself only. That is even more daunting. No deadlines to meet. No study books to read. No assignments to polish. No instructions, no marks and no feedback.
Real author time. I won’t be able to call myself a ‘creative writing student’ anymore. The feeling is just slightly uncomfortable. In reality we never stop learning. Like a martial artist who has just attained a black belt, the journey is just beginning.
Seven years
Me, in true fashion
Timely walks out from the nest
This is it, I’m done
During the 18 months I have been studying Creative Writing, I have come across a number of people who claim that they write only for themselves. Whether it is poetry, short stories or a diary (I have to confess I have NEVER kept a diary), I don’t really understand this. Why write if no-one is going to read it? It’s like painting a picture and then leaving it in the attic unadmired, with the colour fading over the years.
I know it’s embarrasing to show someone your work the first time – especially poetry which is so much more personal – but it’s worth taking the plunge. (When it comes to poetry it’s much better to read it to them – even scarier I know, but it ensures that the rhythm is correct.) You never know, you may get comments like ‘That’s brilliant’ or ‘I wish I could write like that’. Or they may say ‘That’s cobblers’, but I bet they won’t, unless they are very rude. Most people are impressed that you had a go. They may even reveal that they write as well. Then you can support each other. It may turn out that they have already been published and give you loads of really excellent advice.
And if anyone says ‘Poetry is a load of old rubbish for people who read the Guardian’ well that says more about them than you, doesn’t it.
So if you now feel brave enough to share your work with the rest of us, go visit www.writers-forum.co.uk. You can apply to write for the site and see your work in (virtual) print.
And don’t forget to follow WritersForumUK on Twitter as well as me Cookiebiscuit.
I love poetry, but I know there are lots of people out there who hate it. At best fit only for ‘old’ people and love-sick Romeos and at worst a load of old rubbish, poetry has come to signify something a bit high brow and not for the likes of mere mortals. Unless of course we include Pam Ayres and why not indeed! She brought poetry to the masses and actually did it jolly well.
Now I hear you squirming while being reminded of school poetry like The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner or The Charge of the Light Brigade, which were at times quite heavy going, but not all poetry is long and heroic and concerned with history (or fable). Sometimes (read Roger McGough for instance) it can be fun and modern. And not a lonely wondering cloud to be seen.
Haikus, for instance, are only three lines long and the pattern is very simple 5, 7, 5 morae or sound units (which are rather like syllables).
Here is an example (apologies, I already posted this one):
In my dreams I fly (5)
Birds and clouds pass by the sun (7)
I want to be them (5)
Traditionally they are supposed to be about the seasons, but they don’t have to be these days.
Have a go!
Another sonnet. I like the sonnet form! The name sonnet derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning ‘little song’. The form dates back centuries and has come to signify a poem of 14 lines with a strict rhyming scheme and specific structure. There is usually (traditionally anyway) a volta or turn more often than not after the first eight lines. This volta marks the place where the initial ‘problem’ in poetic terms, is ‘resolved’. Shakespeare was a lover of sonnets and wrote 154!
This is the childhood that I daily dreamed of
This is the childhood that I daily dreamed of
In beauty, you and I, in laughter, playing
See how I loved you, though I rarely hoped for,
Not yet born, in sleep, in dreams, in praying.
This is the motherhood I daily dreamed of
In beauty, you and I, in laughter, caring
Know how I loved you, though I never hoped for,
Believed that we might, this love, be sharing.
But now that my life is all I wished for
In beauty, you and I, in laughter, loving
Believe I loved you, though I never hoped for
This lifetime, in beauty, walking, living
So quiet now in sleep, in dreams, I wake
To find you not yet gone, but still with me
Bookchatter@Cookiebiscuit 