I'm published at last

 

Finally; after almost a year, my story has been published.

The story, Enlightened, was written for a short story competition ages ago and was shortlisted as “Highly Commended” against a whole host of other writer’s work, which is pretty exciting.

I didn’t actually win the competition but the award for making the shortlist was to be included in the resulting anthology.

And at last, after almost a year, I have my grubby little hands on it.

We (the winners and writers of the included stories) were invited to a bit of a do, last Friday. A tour of the synchrotron was followed by a couple of sandwiches and finally the presentation of the books.

The Diamond Light Source is one of those scientific research places where they twiddle with the very fabric of time and space itself, in a most ungodly manner, in order to further our knowledge of….  stuff. To be honest I wasn’t really listening because I was entirely focused on the free sandwiches but in a nutshell, they tweak light. Their PR idea was to hold the competition and the only remit was that you had to in some manner include the facility in your story. After that, it was all up to you where you went with the story.

I’m not much of a sci-fi writer and nor could I handle a thriller so I went with what I know and touched on the personal side. I wrote about people. I can do that. In particular I decided to write about a woman who might be working at the facility and the path her life had followed to get her there. What might push somebody to be so dedicated to finding answers? I also wrote about a coffee machine called Gavin.

It’s what I do.

The Oxford Mail has all the best stars in it

After the presentation I had my photo taken with other Oxfordshire types (winners were from all over the place, the actual 1^st place lady was from America) for one my County’s most celebrated journalistic treats, The Oxford Mail. I know!! THE OXFORD MAIL. First it was Clooney, then Cruise, then Pitt and now 

Staples. We’ve all been in it at some point.

I really enjoyed my day. I felt a little like an actual writer – a real one. In the book, I’m actually described as a writer – how class is that? Clearly they didn’t want to over-sex the book and put my actual occupation of “Telecoms Engineer” down, in case it attracted all the ‘50 Shades’ readers in.

During the day I spoke to a hot biologist who had also made the book. Hot and clever girls, I hope, are always impressed when you spill a load of hummus down your shirt because you can’t multi-task eating a free buffet and trying to sound intelligent.

I also met a very likeable and like-minded couple who were there. The fella was in the book too, having written a mighty impressive Flash Fiction piece. His wife hadn’t entered though she is also a writer with a couple of published stories behind her, so they were a talented couple as well. They were polite enough to laugh at my joke and I never ask much more than that from the people I meet.

So there you have it. My story is finally in a book. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll post it here too. It’s called Enlightened and it’s about 3000 words long so it takes a bit of time. I’m too proud of it to post it here if nobody cares so let me know. I have posted links before but have never actually posted it here.

Surely you want to know about Gavin? 

Where's Wally?