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This can possibly seen as another writing update 😉 Oh, we had a lovely storm on Sunday which meant no internet or electricity – in case you were wondering why this is a day late 😉

I promised you last week that I’ll share photos of last Saturday’s INK Gala evening.

Ta-da! (More photos can be viewed on INK.)

As you can see, I once again won a couple of prizes.

  1. I placed second as writer of the year (I won last year).
  2. One of my stories placed second as story of the year (none of my stories did that last year).
  3. And I won the third writing competition which meant my anthology of stories about Faerie got published!

Awesome, right?

Anzé Bezuidenhout – founder of INK – told me that my anthology is “fairy tales for grownups”. Talk about hitting the mark.

There’s a lot of things I had to do to get it just right after winning my prize, you know POD (print on demand) and ebook – which will take a bit of time before I can share the links, but it’s in the works 🙂

I also decided that I will publish this anthology in English. Which means I’ll have to rewrite it in English first (translating won’t be enough – there are some things that get lost in translation). I’m thinking that it will be ready for sale in January. I’ll share details with you once it’s more than just me and the cursor in a staring contest.

Thinking about how fast I had to write the stories, rewrite, edit and proofread them before entering them into this contest and then how fast they got published makes my head spin.

So back to the Gala evening.

I somehow managed to finish my dress the day before, get it washed and dried (thankfully it’s very warm here and chiffon dries quickly). Let’s just say that the new pattern I used wasn’t as clear as it could have been and that between the broken needles and the slippery fabric it’s a wonder everyone survived.

You know that feeling you have after you’ve worked on a book for months – yeah, the one where you want to burn it, or worse – it was kind of like that. It came out beautifully, yet you still feel a bit of resentment for all the effort it made you go through to get there.

I do like my dress – don’t get me wrong – I love the fairy tale feel of it. And I like the blurry look I have on some photos because of the light refracting from my dress – it creates the illusion that I’m one of the Fae I write about 😉

I had asked several friends to go with me to the Gala evening – you know, make an evening of it – but none of them could make it. We couldn’t leave the horses or Rottweilers alone at home – who knows what kind of trouble they’d get into? – so my dad stayed at home to take care of the children and my mom went with me to the Gala. We had loads of fun.

I met some of my online writing friends in person – one even won writer of the year this time. And I made new friends too.

The official photographer – Jantjie Cloete from JJ’s – did a wonderful job of capturing the beauty of my dress without all the blurriness. I’ll have to order photos…

The entertainment was done by Elle (the two ladies in one of the pics in the collage) and by CH2 (the two guys with guitars in the collage above). I had a blast trying to place the songs 😉 I wanted a signed CD, but they got lost in the crowd – and you know how easily I get flustered in big groups. Oh, well. I’ll probably see them at another event (if I’m lucky). I even got inspired to add new characters, settings and scenes to a story I’ve been working on for months. Listen to this song and you’ll know why.

Though I didn’t walk away with any trophies this year, I did walk away with gorgeous certificates motivating me to work even harder and – of course – my awesome box of books. FYI, I’ve already sold a few to people who insisted that I write an inscription for them (mere days after this event).

I’m still figuring out the whole “being a self-published author thing”. The business side of writing had always seemed a long way off. This week I’d learned about the publishing stuff, the financial stuff, the tax stuff and even the marketing/sales stuff. Thankfully my steady diet of reading awesome blog posts for self-publishers, indie publishers and trad-publishers have paid off.

I think I might’ve found new writing music…

On a different note: because I’m now feverishly working on getting this anthology rewritten in English, there’ll be no folklore posts for the rest of the year. (Remember: I’m offline during the months of the Equinox and the Solstice – March & September, June & December.)

I’ll do a big splash once the books are available in both English and Afrikaans (POD and ebook).

CH2 is amazing, right? How is your writing going? Have you ever sewed your own dress – hoping that the mice/rats will do it like in Disney’s Cinderella?  Any tips you’re willing to share about the business side of writing?

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