Tag: Just a Kiss

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Posterity

I’m averaging a post a post a month since this blog started in March 2012. That’s regular, right?

Some updates:

  • Come June I will be free of uni work, come July I will have graduated, and the adult world beckons. Erp.
  • Submitted various things I had hanging around to various places, will be on the lookout for more places to send and waiting on any of it popping back up.
  • Thanks to superhero comics, I’m ahead of schedule on my Goodreads target.
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Writer’s guilt

One thing I have a lot of trouble with is writing on any sort of schedule. The corollary of this is that I feel guilty when I don’t, which can serve to delay getting back on the horse even more. It’s been a long time since I last blogged, so I’ll fill in some of the gaps.

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Religion and World-building, and some updates

Keeping regular is difficult for me (no jokes please), so I’m just going to throw out the draft blog I mentioned last time as a few thoughts rather than something coherent. I may get back to the subject someday. Alongside it, I’ll update you on a few things.

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Summer

Summer has been spent mainly reading sci-fi for my dissertation. Not much writing has got done. Even my grammar is slipping, as the previous sentence shows. However, I’ve got a few updates and notes for you:

  • I have finally started the play I’ve been threatening since the inception of this blog, which will most likely be called Just a Kiss – now two scenes in. I am pleased, because I need to be able to say I’ve finished a playscript, and more importantly I want to get it out of my system so I can write a play about robots. Please therefore bug me on Twitter to get it done (I’m only planning to to seven scenes, so it can’t be too difficult).
  • I’m drafting a blog post about the use of religion in imaginative fiction, which is partly inspired by the 2/3rds of Dune by Frank Herbert that I’ve got though (I’ve decided to move on, I’ve lost a fortnight of time by not reading it. It is good, but heavy-going). It’ll go up when it goes up.
  • I’m directing an evening of one-act plays for LUTheatre, performing 29/30 November/1 December. The programme is two by Anton Chekov – A Marriage Proposal and The Bear – followed after the interval by Still Life by Noel Coward. More promotion and thoughts nearer the time, I suppose.
  • A quick plug for my good friend Nick Palmer’s Tornmile series. It’s a fantasy flash fiction serial, told from multiple perspectives. He posts a short yet hearty chunk every Monday over at http://nickpalmerwriter.com/ – we’re eight instalments in, so fill your boots.
  • Pretty much everything I have worth reading is now up on the site, so have a poke around on the pages  above to catch up with my writing so far. Anything new, I’ll post it on the blog so you don’t miss it.
  • Finally, speaking of new, I mean to finally do some writing for the ULSU’s newspaper The Ripple in my final year. I’m hoping to do some music journalism, but I’ve also submitted an extremely short story for the Arts and Creativity section. If it gets published, I’ll be here preening like a proud mother. But for now, for loyal readers of my blog, and as a reward for getting through the infodump, here it is. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to Edward Spence for his advice – his site over at http://sovereignstudios.tumblr.com/ is well worth a perusal.

♦

First Day

Laura waited in her bedroom until she stopped shaking. Her parents had left a while ago, but she was still sat in her chair, looking at the door. All the Freshers advice said to prop it open, so people would drop by and introduce themselves. Laura’s door was firmly shut. She was starting to think coming here was the stupidest idea ever.

She wasn’t cut out for university. She wasn’t smart enough – she only just scraped in on her General Studies grade. She had no idea what clothes she should be wearing, what music she should be listening to, what was cool and what wasn’t, and she felt like just some provincial kid from a nowhere town that had no business being in this city. She couldn’t call her friends back home – she’d be so embarrassed and ashamed of herself. They were busy anyway, gone to their own universities in other cities far away, making new friends, living it up, and forgetting all about Laura. She didn’t want to be here, she didn’t want to do her course, she didn’t want any of this any more. She had never been this scared in her entire life.

There was a quiet rap at the door. Laura froze. She got up very slowly, and walked over to the door. She opened it. A boy with messy hair was standing in the corridor. He smiled at her. Laura smiled back.

‘Hi.’

♦