Daisy Chains - my collection of short stories...

Hello everyone

As some of you know I have published a small collection of short stories. The book is available in Canberra at Smiths Alternative Bookshop 76 Alinga St Canberra City (in the Melbourne Building).

Description:
Take a journey from New York to Sydney, Jenin, and Brisbane. Intriguing stories of shock revelations, betrayal, loss, grief, forgiveness, grace, and political and personal conflict as well as much more.

"You don't expect your life to change forever on a balmy, September evening walking to the ATM to get money for dinner. But mine did." One Beautiful Night.

Some comments received about the book:

A Gem of a Book 25 Jul 2007 (From Lulu.com)

by jadzia1994

Each one of these stories is a little gem. Intriguing, and too the point. The author doesn't waste her words as she describes the action and scene. Very well written.
Anne Rogers, Australia.

"The stories pulled me in straight away and I couldn't stop reading them until the end. Very compelling," Karen Eggleston, Australia.

"I've finished reading your book and I enjoyed the stories very much. They are well written and I lived with the characters. They were the right length and the endings were subtle enough to keep the reader interested." Michael Acton, UK.

"I especially liked the bit of a twist in the first story, Forward Thinking, I loved it. Maybe the idea of giving one's life to a greater cause spoke to me a bit, I'm not sure," Joseph Picard, Canada.

"I loved reading this book. It struck me as original and interesting. I especially liked the Forward Thinking story." Kris Wynn, Australia.

Received Self Published Book!

Hello there!

Today I received my self published little collection of short stories. It was nice to see my stories published and presented with some images from my Europe travels in a book format.

Something you can keep. Also I found myself reading the stories from a new and fresh perspective. I was (does this sound vain?) actually drawn in by the stories because I hadn't read them for ages. Does that ever happen to you, where you feel like you are reading your story as if someone else wrote it?

There's this great quote from Bob Dylan where he turns to his then girlfriend in the early 60's Joan Baez and says when he hears a song on the radio, "Hey, that's a pretty cool song, who wrote it?" and she says to him, "you did, you mug." Apparently he wrote so many songs that he forgot some of his own songs, that were being covered on the radio. I AM NOT COMPARING MYSELF TO BOB DYLAN! I just thought it was a funny anecdote.

On another note, the Year of the Novel at QWC is on this weekend and I have homework before I get there! Woe, Veny, who's a task master. No, I think it is great to have homework, it means we will go there prepared and be able to learn heaps more from our time together.

So, I recommend some form of self publishing to keep your creative juices flowing (to use a cliche, sorry). It really helps to see your work in a final form, to help you (and maybe others, who knows, but that's not really why you do it) respect your own work and keep going for more publication goals. Until one day, people will read your more major works published.

I agree with Barbara from the Queensland Writing blog, we do not do this for money. Some of us do it to communicate to the world. We write to experience to reach out, to empathise and help others to empathise.

There are a myriad of reasons why people write. I don't write for money. Even though I am a journalist, that is how I get paid for my professional words, but creatively, I hope one day people enjoy, get something out of and benefit from my books or stories and thus I may eventually make some money. Money the necessary evil, to survive, who was it that said "being published buys us time to write" basically, money allows us to keep creating.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

www.blurb.com
www.lulu.com

Other stories I have written

Hello

I just thought I might post up a story I wrote recently and then another one soon.

I have only included One Beautiful Night as I am using the other story for something else. The PDF's are available below. I'd love to know your thoughts on these.

Thanks for your interest.
Cheers
Suzanne

One Beautiful Night

Click Here for a PDF

My story in Amazon Shorts

Hello everyone

As I have mentioned in my previous post, I am entering the Amazon Shorts Story Competition.

If you are interested in voting or publishing a story in the competition, you need to join Gather.com and then you can vote and post.

The below link is for my entry :

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976860205

The Wall (story).

My story will be live for fourteen (14) days from the date it was published. At which point Gather will remove the entry and tally my votes.

How to vote? Read, vote and comment through the following:

1) Join Gather.com so you can vote for my story. join link.

2) Click on the link to the story and vote.

Thank you very much for your interest. If you wish to notify me of any stories you are posting. Let me know.