I have a confession to make – I have not worked on my novel for the last two weeks. I had been busy with my other gig, particularly with setting an examination paper from scratch and also preparing my student for the examination. With limited time and me not wanting to take away time from my kids and my volunteering, the writing had to take a backseat.
On the upside, the feedback from my readers relating to the draft of “The Pirates of Temasek” has been pretty good so far. There is a lot I have to work on for sure, but I do feel that I remain on the right track. Current word count puts me just above 20,000 words, which is where I wanted to be after modifying my timeline for the project to take into account the short term teaching project I undertook. The pace of writing should be picking up in the next couple of weeks as the end of the teaching job approaches.
The organisers of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2021 have informed me that “Happy New Year” has not made the shortlist. It was disappointing in the first instance but that is a natural reaction. I got over it pretty quickly. The process of writing that story was enjoyable and I think I might revisit it at a later time.
I have been wanting to draft more stories for submissions, but I find myself unable to decide on where to submit. After much hemming and hawing, I decided to submit a piece for “Galaxy # 2: The Inner Circle Writers’ Group Sci-fi and Fantasy Flash Fiction Anthology 2021”, to be published by Clarendon House Publications.
The story I drafted, titled “Stereotypes”, is a flash fiction piece telling the story of an engineer making his last stand against an unexpected invasion. It was a simple idea which I fleshed out just in time for the submission deadline.
Last night, I received an email from Grant P Hudson, founder of Clarendon House Publications, informing me that the story has been accepted for the anthology. When the anthology is published, I will let you all know where you purchase a copy for yourself.
For now, I will celebrate this minor success and use it to fuel more of my writing efforts.
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