a bit of a novel(ty)...

Wow. It's pretty amazing how quickly the Internet can work its magic.  I mean, I should know, I work with it every day, but I wasn't expecting such a fab response to yesterday's posting.  OHMIGOD! So far I have had over 40 email requests from people wanting to read my first chapter, so I hit up a copywriting website, paid the tenner to cover it, (well, you never know!) and sent it off to skip across the endless fields of cyberspace.  WITH FINGERS CROSSED. I really don't know where it might end up. Maybe nowhere?!? Again, I guess you never know....

Oh, in the end I decided to put the first two chapters out there instead of just the first. It goes much further into the story and I also figured that if people couldn't be arsed to go any further than the first, they'd have all the more reason to comment accordingly on here.  I HAVE PROBABLY INVITED IN A RIGHT SLAMMING SESSION NOW!  I forgot to mention, it's a romantic fiction with a dash of fantasy, aimed at 18-35 year old women.

Anyway, I have pasted below the first page, (plus a bit before the unicorn shows up), so this is how it starts.  If anyone else wants more please do email me

CHAPTER ONE

"The first thing I did when I realised I was dead, was scream. And then I went back home to bed. Well, what did you expect? I wasn’t exactly prepared for the situation and just as old people reach for the Hobnobs in times of crisis, I always bury my head under my Urban Outfitters duvet (with the embroidered elephants on it) and drift off back to la-la land, where none of life’s problems can wind their sticky fingers round my fantasies. Don’t you think the world gets infinitely better when you’re unconscious?

Being dead however, is not exactly the same as being asleep. And dozing my way out of this one was particularly difficult because the tiny unicorn on the end of my bed was bleating incessantly about my room like a very annoying alarm clock on helium, forcing my eyes to open and acknowledge its existence. I’d been ignoring it for twenty minutes, convinced that there couldn’t possibly be a live, miniature unicorn on the end of my bed. But until that Saturday afternoon I’d been equally convinced that a tower of tuna cans, stacked in cardboard boxes on a wonky palette in the back room at work, would never actually fall on my head and kill me.

God, even saying it makes me angry. I wasn’t supposed to… eeew, it sounds so weird… die. Well, not yet anyway. Not at age 25. I’d only just stumbled through my quarter life crisis, for god’s sake – the one where I’d moaned to anyone who’d listen about how I had a degree and a “phenomenal talent for photography”, but was still somehow stacking supermarket shelves for just under six quid an hour in my home town - not doing much about it. (Oh, I can’t tell you here which supermarket chain it is that piles their tuna cans up waaaaay too high out the back where no prying public eyes can ever see them. But it was on the news after it happened so you’ve probably heard by now anyway. And yes, there are legal consequences. And yes, I am embarrassed. Even though I’m dead).

Anyway, like I said, this was never meant to happen. There were so many things I should have done, like:

a) Phone E-beth and tell her yes, she could have her stupid Morgan skirt back, and no, just because I’d had it (and worn it habitually with my cream cardi) for the past three months, it didn’t mean I was trying to nick it. It was in my wash-bin with her red retro Care Bears t-shirt, so now she’d find them both and know I was lying. Dammit.

b) Move the vibrator from my underwear drawer. It was clean, thank Christ, but surrounded by used batteries thanks to me running them out and fumbling around in the dark to change them without ever throwing any away. Mum would probably find the lot now and her grief would be quadruplified at the shock realisation that not only was I by no means a virginal princess, I was also a Rampant Rabbit abusing sex maniac who was single-handedly (literally) keeping Duracell in business. Great.

c) Hide (or smoke) the pot of green I kept in the kitchen cupboard with mum’s other herbs.  At the back of course but… oh alright, I know it was a stupid place to put it but really, the woman’s got an uncanny knack for finding the things I keep most hidden and completely missing what’s right under her nose.  To be honest, I kept it for emergencies and fast relief from ‘work-catastrophes’. I’d smoke it out in the tree house – it’s way better than Anadin, which really gave me a headache. Oh, and by catastrophes I mean… like, when the kids came in on Saturdays to mess up the sweetie aisle ON PURPOSE. It took me ages to straighten it all, which they knew. I could picture the little pot, nestled amongst the nutmeg, looking pure amongst the parsley. Until mum, assuming her ‘waste not want not’ policy, would dutifully sprinkle the lot over gran’s next bowl of Ragu. Hopefully Ben would find that one before she did…

See, so many things left undone. So many ends untied. Being squished by fifty boxes full of brine in the back room of S…. (oops, almost said it), was simply not on the agenda for 2006, nor for the subsequent 70 years for that matter.  Sometimes life is so unfair..."