A slice of heaven

'A slice of heaven' was the original title for my short story that is out in this month's in Take-a-Break Fiction Feast (TABFF May issue), but they've changed that to 'Spoilt for choice.' However, I did notice it's used as the tag line for the story so I shouldn't grumble. I read it again over the weekend and thought what a good story it was, even though I wrote it! Funny isn't it how over time you forget the detail of a story, as I literally could not remember writing most of it. When I re-read it again and compared it to the original I realised they'd tweaked and changed a few things. The wine waiter is now Theo rather than Rene. The milkshake is strawberry rather than vanilla (ok, that makes sense but I love vanilla) and Miss Perkins' perfume has been upgraded from Lily of the Valley to Chanel No 5 (since she was the main character's maths teacher I'm so sure about this change).

The story was originally written early in 2016 for the Mogford Prize, which is always themed around food and drink. Now food and drink are some of my favourite things (you'll know this if you regularly read my posts) and the story was a joy to write. Basically, Aiden finds himself in a classy restaurant where the menu has all of his favourite foods. The waitresses are all the women he had crushes on when he was a boy ... including Miss Perkins and Yeoman Janice Rand from the original Star Trek series. I wrote in Yeoman Janice for my hubby - we're both fans of the original series and hubby had a bit of a crush on her himself. 'Spoilt for choice' is a sweet little tale about cherishing the important things in life. It came nowhere in the Mogford Prize and I put it away. Later in the year I wondered if it would be suitable for TABFF and sent it off with hardly any revisions. It took a few months but then I heard they wanted to buy it. It's always a pleasure to see a favourite story in print and the £250 payment doesn't hurt either!

April has started well with several bits of good news and you may have heard me shouting on Twitter and Facebook about this: Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlisting for UK and Canada category, click here to read more. I'm incredibly honoured to have a story on this prestigious shortlist (it's also my second shortlisting, first in 2014) and am now nervously waiting to hear if 'The naming of moths' makes it through to the next stage.