And that's why they call it fiction

Yesterday I took another tentative step in the direction of e-book self-publishing and put a collection of two short stories out there into the ether. You can check the collection out here or at Amazon.

One of these stories, the eponymous Cage Life, has been published before under the title Still Life by [untitled] magazine here in Australia. When it was released, published in print in a slim volume with a garish illustrated cover, I passed copies around to several people to inspire them to admire me (it didn’t work!) although several lovely people even coughed up for a copy.

The story is written in first person from the point-of-view of a young wife and mother and, without giving too much away, starts off charting her carefree, drug-taking university years and spirals into tragedy. My intention was to explore the gamut of a woman’s feelings about liberation and love. How often women feel trapped by their own choices, how often we overlook the signs of love and mistake them for something else, and often we inadvertently fail to prioritise the most important things in life, even while simultaneously trying to put everyone and everything else above ourselves. But when the book came out, so many times the reaction from those who don’t know me well—or well enough to realise that I am begrudgingly unmarried (yes, I know! Talk to my hesitant loving partner and baby daddy folks) and my daughter is just 15 weeks old despite the story being written more than two years ago now—is, “It’s so sad. It’s not based on real life is it?”

My answer is that it is fiction. I made it up. As a writer I am an incurable liar and I make shit up all the time. It’s what I do. So while it is entirely fictitious, it is, of course, based on real life. The events that take place in my character’s life are in part based on some of the experiences I have had. “The Cow” couch in the story, for instance, really did exist. Some of my best ideas were formed perching on its “furry flanks.” But now I get my inspiration the old-fashioned way (read: wine, or insomnia). I did, at some point, have an ex who was a lawyer and I did live in the “Dolls House.”

Having said that, the “crux” of the story, the tragedy that unfolds, thankfully never happened to me or to anyone I know and love, although such tragedies happen to families around the world every day. I suppose the story is a cautionary tale of just how easy it is to lose sight of the important things for just a few seconds in the midst of a busy life. Sometimes I need to remember that. Sometimes we all do. But hopefully it is a lesson none of us ever have to learn in such a painful and pointless way.
As for the second story … well I hope no one ever mistakes me for an 80-year-old!

Maternity Leave Multitasking — Finding Time to Write

Before I went on maternity leave it was suggested to me that, as a first-time mum, I may have been overestimating the amount of spare time I would have to spend on creative pursuits while on leave. “Ha!” I scoffed, imagining at least four-and-a-half months of what seemed to be “free time” stretching before me. I anticipated being able to write a blog post a day, work on my interactive social history project to pitch to the national library, knock off another couple of kids books, tap out a few magazine articles, submit some queries for finally completed works still languishing in my top drawer, and finish my long-overdue YA apocalyptic novel.

But first on the list were a few “housekeeping” items, such as learning how to animate using Adobe Flash or, better yet, how to create my own simple “apps” using the new CS Flash 5.5 once released. I also planned to convert some poetry, short stories and out of copyright content to eBooks for various platforms — as a kind of eBook sales experiment — and put them up on Amazon’s Kindle store and the Apple iStore. Then there was painting the downstairs granny flat, sanding the tricksy corners of the kitchen floor that were newly exposed after our recent kitchen renovation, and re-tiling the upstairs toilet. 

I’m sure it doesn’t take a genius to figure out just how many of these pipe dreams have since fallen by the wayside. If the lack of recent blog posts is anything to go by, just about all of them!

Now, not to make it sound like my child is a nightmare and I never get anything done —that is far from true. She is, for the most part, an angel. I have whiled away numerous lazy hours baby gazing; nappy changing; feeding her; playing with her; crying; cooing at her; showing her off to other people; sticking my fingers in my ears and going la-la-la-la while she screamed inconsolably for no reason; marvelling at her genius, beauty and sheer fabulousness; wiping the baby spew off my clothes; and just generally being “mum-ish”. 

On top of my new role, I have also managed to work on several paid editing assignments and manuscript appraisals, had a very talented musician set one of my children's poems to music to perform in schools (you can listen to it here as a sneak peek — just click on the little arrow below the cover) and wasted more than my fair share of time tweeting and facebooking (it being easier to do that one-handed on an iPhone than, say, write my magnus opum by three-finger typing on a laptop while balancing a hungry, squirming baby on my left breast). So the lack of free time to work on my own blog posts and creative endeavors is partly a result of my poor time management and my desire to minimise the mummy guilt and enjoy my little darling's first months. Having said that, two and a half months into motherhood I still find myself dreaming that I will eventually discover a rabbithole that will lead to several hours of uninterrupted  creative time (or, if not that magical rabbithole then at least a large bottle of gin labelled "drink me").

While working on the edits, I have been gobsmacked by (and more than a little envious of) some wonderfully entrepreneurial young authors who are embracing new media with fervour and seemingly have discovered that elusive rabbithole and have found the time to do a lot of the things I want to do — things I keep telling tell myself I will do eventually. Not only have they been doing this courageously, they've been doing it transparently, which makes it all the more interesting.
 
One of them, an Irish writer living in Sweden, David Gaughran, has just published his first eBook compilation of short stories, which hovered at rank 50 on Amazon shortly after release (up there with big-name authors like Stephen King) and is documenting his e-publishing journey on his blog (and managing to find the time to blog daily, lucky him). Those of you who are considering self-publishing eBooks should certainly check out his very informative blog Indie Publishing for International Writers, which has some great tips, advice and encouragement for “newbie” authors wading into eBook publishing.

Meanwhile, despite my patchy commitment to my blog of late, I’ve been asked to do a guest post over on Women Writers  later this month, and will direct followers to that when it happens sometime the week after next. As a result of that invitation — and now that the Dear Little Monkey is starting to be able to amuse herself for at least half an hour a day — I’m trying to get organised, get creative and get back into blogging and writing. If you are glad to see me back to my wicked writing ways, please spread the word as I continue to post, and forward or retweet anything you see here that takes your fancy. I promise to try harder this time! ☺