Publish Me!
I want to be a writer.
I have always created stories in my head, starting from when I was a (lonely) little girl. I have so many characters and storylines in my head it is not funny. The latest one, Ordinary People (working title), burst into my head fully formed, and I have already written several thousand words of content.
As well as writing just not my essay I have joined Inspired Writers and been looking into how a book is actually published. I don’t know whether it is a good or bad thing that there are so few publishers in NZ who publish young adult novels, but Harper Collins not only does, but it also has a track record for publishing vampire novels. And vampire stories never go out of style, and are currently a big thing: Twilight, Southern Vampire Mysteries (and the TV spin-off, True Blood) and many more.
So there’s a start.
Some of these stories I hear are putting me off a tad, but if people can publish crap like Cassie Claire, a known plagiarist, is churning out, then how hard is it to get something half-decent published?
Oh well. Finish first chapter, then work on building an internet fanbase.
My family has a secret.
It’s not like regular secrets, mind you. No one is an alcoholic. My sister, Bridget, didn’t get pregnant far too young and my parents secretly adopted the baby (that would be me). We don’t have a “funny uncle” or anything horrible like that. Even the fact that Adam, my eldest brother, is gay is not the secret (everyone knows about that). The secret concerns my other brother, Charlie. It really is his secret, but the rest of us – that’d be the rest of the family, plus a few select individuals – are burdened with it, too.
It’s one really big secret. Really, really big.
You see, Charlie is a vampire.
A “Real” Vampire Romance
This was written up very quickly, and is me poking fun at the fans of vampire romances (Twilight fans in particular).
I never understood why vampires were somehow seen to be these sexy, dangerous creatures. All right, dangerous, yes, but sexy? Unless you had a blood fetish, or perhaps had a leaning towards necrophilia (but with consent!), I just couldn’t understand it. So it boggled me when I overheard my friends discussing how Angel/Spike/Edward/Jasper/Whoever was “like, sooo hawt”.
Of course, that was before I discovered that vampires were, you know. Real.
My reaction was rather poor, I must admit. When he grabbed me, I screamed, kneed him in the crotch and ran for all I was worth. I didn’t get very far, and before I knew it, he had caught up to me. But he didn’t bite me.
He said he was impressed by the fact I hadn’t frozen. All the other girls he’d bitten - killed - had simply begged. None ever bothered to try and save themselves. Thus, I was impressive creature. Stupid, yes, weak, yes, but brave.
I intrigued him, he said. He wanted to get to know me.
Later on he wanted to really know me. In the Biblical sense.
What kind of girlfriend would I have been if I didn’t try to change him? That’s what we women do, after all. We try to change our men. My mother tried to get my father to wear something other than his sports shirts, my sister tried to get her boyfriend to shave, and I tried to get my boyfriend to stop killing people.
None of us, I am afraid to say, succeeded. But while my mother and my sister continued bravely onwards, I simply could not date a man who liked to kill people. Sure, he killed less people, now that I occassionally let him grab a bite from me, but I wanted that “less” to become “none”.
So I ended it.
He was not happy. He begged. He pleaded. He cried. But I had made up my mind. I just couldn’t continue to date a vampire. One that refused to reform, anyway.
It’s been three weeks now since I made my decision, since I told him. And every time I see him, he’s still wearing that look. Pleading with me to change my mind, to keep on loving him.
And he’s going to keep giving me that look. Until I figure out what to do with his body, at least. I need to do something fast, as he’s really starting to smell bad.
Well? What did you expect? A happy ending?
