Reviews of My Stories from Narrator Magazine

I received an unexpected email from the staff at Narrator Magazine on Thursday night. It was part apology and part notification.  The email went like this.

Good afternoon,

Just a quick email to let you know we haven’t forgotten about you! Congratulations on your piece winning a prize in our Spring edition! We’ve had a busy week, so we’ve not had a chance to send your certificates and magazines through the post, but not to worry, we will have them in the mail for you first thing tomorrow morning.

Kind Regards

Leah

Hey, I was happy enough that both of the stories I submitted to the magazine were accepted for publication. I didn’t really expect to win any of the prizes.

Needless to say, I jumped onto the website to see which one of my stories won, and which prize it was. I certainly didn’t expect what I found.

Both of my stories placed in the judge’s choice prize. “Always the Children” placed second and “The Dancing Suit” placed third. I was blown totally away.

Today, we had our Writers’ Group meeting and one of the group members congratulated me on the great review of my stories in the latest edition of the magazine.

I’ll add another needless to say here. I came home from the meeting and fired up the computer to check out the reviews for myself.

“Always the Children”

-         A moving, heartfelt story. The life of an ambulance officer is sympathetically drawn and the unimaginable grief of dealing with the loss of a child is beautifully evoked.

“The Dancing Suit”

-         The characters of Robert and Beckett are strongly detailed to create a rich descriptive air of the period. A seemingly innocent and charming anti-hero soon becomes the readers worst nightmare in a surprising twist in the tail story.

They were a little off the mark with the first review as it was the life of a police officer but still, I don’t think I could have asked for a better review.

As an added bonus, I discovered that the prize not only consisted of a certificate but there was a monetary component as well. So this makes these two stories my first official payed literary endeavours. I don’t think I’m anywhere near ‘in profit’ yet, but when the editor loves my new novel once I finish editing it, I may just be on my way.

If you want to check out the review visit:   http://www.narratormagazine.com.au/index.php 

You can also read the stories online at the same site. Just click on the "Central Tablelands – Spring Edition" icon or the "Best of the Best 2011" anthology. The stories are in both.  Let me know what you think.