What’s the World Without A Little (Zombie) Love?

One of my brother’s favourite stories about me has to do with my absolute laziness when it comes to going to the shops when there’s no food in the house. He came home one evening to find me hunched over my laptop, a half-empty plate of undistinguishable mess on the table beside me.

“What did you have for dinner?” my brother asked, ever-concerned that I wasn’t feeding myself properly.

I barely glanced up from my laptop, intent on writing. “There was nothing to eat, so I invented this kidney bean and rice thing.”

“Oh? How was it?”

A frown crossed my face. I looked up. “Weird. It was really weird.”

(Somehow my successful experiments — like the sausage & avocado scrambled eggs — never get mentioned. Figures.)

What does this have to do with zombies, you ask?

I’d like to present to you my latest release:

Introducing Hungry For You, a haunting speculative fiction short story collection.

This is the result of hours of experimentation in the ~~kitchen~~ living room with only two ingredients: zombies, and relationships.

Are you curious to discover the results? Trust me, it tastes better than kidney beans.

EDIT: Grab a copy today from Kindle (US) or Kindle (UK)! (Other retailers to follow.)

Reaching For The Stars

I recently picked up a book and was thumbing through when I came across the author’s biography. Like many other bios, it said something along the lines of:

Ms Author always dreamed about being a author. She’s been an avid writer since before she exited the uterus, tracing stories on the womb’s lining with her barely formed fingers. She won writing competitions at the tender age of 3 for her insightful dinosaur adventures and never looked back. She could never imagine being anything other than a writer. Bow down and envy her awesomeness.

Okay, okay. I’m guilty of writing a similar bio myself.

But to tell the truth, while I’ve been writing stories for a long while now, I never really began to dream about being an author until recently.

Why? I’ll let you in on a secret: as a child I was a terrible reader. I was slow to learn; my parents had to sit down with me every evening to help me catch up with my classmates. I hated reading (or so my parents tell me — I don’t remember).

Then something in my head clicked, and from having to shove me in front of a book, my parents couldn’t get my nose OUT of one. By the time I hit middle school, I had devoured most of the books in the school library and even made a point of telling the librarian which books I wanted her to get.

And when I couldn’t find the stories I wanted to read, I scribbled them out. I lived them, I breathed them. The stories filled my head with dreams: dreams of being invisible or being able to fly or shapeshift, or being a secret undercover spy who had to save the world. I dreamed about unfamiliar situations and adventures and about anything — anything — that would take me away from real life. I wasn’t writing stories because I dreamed about being an author; writing was just something I did because it was the only way to get at all close to my dreams.

The reason I love writing is because it is my chance to be the things I’ve always dreamed about. To be magical. To be a heroine. To find meaning and beauty. To be part of something greater than myself. To be involved in a story worth hearing about rather than my humdrum life.

But I’ve come to realize that something in my mind has clicked again. Something has changed. And now the dreams of being magical and heroic and worth knowing have competition from a new dream: being an author.

I’ve been writing about my dreams for a long time now, but it is only recently I’ve begun to dream about being an author. Why? Because I want to be the person who can give others the gift of dreams, as so many authors have given me mine.

New Year’s Resolutions

I’m sitting in the kitchen next to an oversized bowl of sangria. The heady scent of fruit and wine is already going to my head and it is only midday; there is much cooking yet to be done before I can begin to celebrate properly.

Olive Penguins! In Italy it is tradition to have a cenone (large dinner) on New Year’s Eve. We’re making around 10 different appetizers, including the cute penguins on the right (photo creative commons via Vlad B).

Then there’s lasagne as a first course, followed by the must-have cotechino con lenticchie (pork sausage with lentils) which is traditionally eaten on NYE to auger good fortune in the new year. Desert is pandoro layered with mascarpone and forest fruits.

All of this has required a lot of preparation and planning, which has made me realize that I haven’t done enough planning for what happens after NYE — the entire year of 2011.

As such, here are some of my goals for the new year:

Find a way to keep my room tidy at all times.
Re-balance my sleep cycles so it’s easier to get up in the mornings for work.
Publish my current WIP, a short story anthology, in February.
Edit and publish Above Ground as an ebook before October.
Read and review 24 indie novels as part of my indie reading challenge
Replace this year’s phrase (“I can’t be bothered”) with “Sure, why not?”
Negotiate a pay rise during my annual review in January
Throw a fancy dinner party for no reason whatsoever
Update this blog and Qazyfiction more regularly
Donate monthly amounts to a charity promoting literacy

This list is a starting point. Of course, many goals get blown by the wind of possibilities over to the shores of neglect and forgetfulness, so my first step will be to make more definite, measurable plans in the start of January.

What about you? What are your resolutions for the new year?

Seven Swans A-Swimming

Over on 12 Days 2010, Jim Bronyaur has organized a fun initiative to give you a daily double dose of fiction for 12 days, inspired by the 12 Days of Christmas song.

Every day since December 14th, two short stories by two different authors have been posted. December 14th featured two stories inspired by the line “a partridge in a pear tree”, the next day’s prompt was “two turtle doves”, and so on.

My story, Swan’s Act, went live today. Swan’s Act is a short story about zombie swans and a couple in love, and a longer version of this tale will feature in my upcoming short story anthology.

Hats off to author Cecilia Dominic as well, who was my co-partner in today’s prompt and cleverly twisted the seven sins and the seven swans into a romping little tale.

#Reverb10 – Friendship, Lesson Learned, Try & more

December 16 – Friendship: How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? (Author: Martha Mihalick)

This is a tough one. I have no idea. If anything, I think I’d like to thank all the online authors I know. Being active on blogs and on twitter has really made me realize what an excellent network of support there is for writers, and seeing other people’s work inspires me to keep at it. Writing has gradually changed from a solitary endeavour to one I can discuss with others, and as a result I think the last year has been one of my most productive by far.

December 17 – Lesson Learned: What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? (Author: Tara Weaver)

That my writing really is the most important thing to me, and so I should learn to say no. I have a tendency to want to be involved in everything — people approach me with ideas and I nearly always say yes. Then I end up with too much on my plate and the first thing that goes (other than sleep) is writing. And if I don’t have enough time to write, I get frustrated and low without knowing why. So I need to be a better planner, and be more careful of what I take on.

December 18 – Try: What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn’t go for it? (Author: Kaileen Elise)

I wanted to try the 100+ Reading Challenge this year, and to my surprise I managed to complete it. But now I realize the reason I completed it was because I planned carefully and made sure to set monthly goals so I could track my progress.

See, I also really wanted to get Above Ground rewritten this year, but I didn’t set myself any deadlines and got involved in far too many projects. So for next year, I’ve already begun planning my schedule and setting down some goals and deadlines to get it done.

December 19 – Healing: What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? (Author: Leonie Allan)

I don’t know whether I have been healed this year. I think if anything, it’s been a year where I’ve realized where I need healing, and that is the first step towards improvement. As to whether it was sudden or drip-by-drip, perhaps it was a combination: a lot of little things added up till one day I realized something needed to change.

December 20 – Beyond Avoidance: What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?) (Author: Jake Nickell)

As I mentioned in the December 18 prompt, I wanted to get Above Ground edited and published. But I got distracted by a myriad of other projects… and also I think I wasn’t ready to tackle the project. I finished AG in March 2010 and I think I needed to shelve it for a while and work on other projects. Now I’m already feeling re-energized and have begun making plans and outlines for its rewrite.