I was proud to record myself reading my children's story, 'The Nurgle Of The Elms' (insert creeeeeepy, scaaaary noises) from the anthology 'Once Upon A Whoops! Fractured Fairytales And Ridiculous Rhymes' published by Anthology Angels. Click to listen. You might want to hold your teddy close, or the nearest squashy pillow....
​
Anthology Angles is an organisation that works with aspiring authors, from school age children to adults, throughout Australia and the world to give them the opportunity to be published in a professionally produced anthology and gain an introduction into the world of being a published creative writer.
Each year they create an anthology book, showcasing a collection of short fiction, poetry or nonfiction works (or excerpts) by a variety of authors.  The judging panel is made up of experts from the publishing sector. Each year Anthology Angels chooses a new theme and charity, and all proceeds from the sale of these books are donated to not-for-profit organisations who provide support to the local or international community.
The 2021 anthology Once Upon a Whoops! is raising funds and awareness for premature babies with Life's Little Treasures Foundation's Sibling Story Time. 

​I hope you enjoy the story! :-) 

 EEek! It's thrilling to be interviewed, even more so to read it online. Enjoy!
​

•  THE OPPOSITE OF DISAPPEARING: AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH DEBORAH HUFF-HORWOOD

The Opposite of Disappearing: Author Interview with Deborah Huff-HorwoodPosted by Rhiza Edge on 15th Jul 2021

Writer of The Suitcase
1. Other than the theme for the anthology, what was your inspiration for your short story?
During lockdown my life did not change much, in fact it was quite a relief to have to keep to myself, as I was going through an insular patch and wanted to just dwell in my thoughts and write. I wrote several stories about my grandmother who’d married a man twenty years her senior and was widowed young, then changed perspective and wove this tale around the few bare facts I had about my grandfather’s life before they met. At the time of writing this story, my father was dying of brain cancer, so this seemed a special way to honour him too.
2. Did you learn anything from writing your story? Is there something you hope people will learn when they read it?
This story emerged in quite a complex form with the protagonist hearing a voice in their head that acts as a second character, and another character who takes three quarters of the action and moves in and out of different time zones. Imagination plays a huge part in this story. I did not feel in control of the story as I wrote it but was aware that something special was appearing on the page, so I learned let go and trust myself to let the story just flow. and the narrator guides the narrator
3. How did your character/s come to you? Were they difficult, were they easy?
The character of the young man was easy for he was completely me, and the voice in his head was also easy as that voice lives within me. The grandfather was a mixture of imagination and that which I knew from family stories and old photographs, and writing him was quite emotional as I felt each stage of what he was going though. When he jumped, I felt him fall, and as he starved, I felt hunger gnawing at me. His marriage brought me ridiculous joy. 
4. What kind of writing style or preferences do you have? Are they similar to your short story?
I tend to write in a heartfelt, fluid, lyrical manner using poetic devices. My characters are usually honest and sensitive people who are a little perplexed at the world around them, or alternatively are single-mindedly determined to assert their own style. Many are solo introverts, like me.
5. Do you have a favourite genre that you love to read? Or perhaps a favourite writing style?
I spend much time thinking about the texture of the prose and the creation of the atmosphere in my stories, whether I am writing picture books, my middle-grade novel or short stories. I read widely across all genres and have a vast collection of children’s literature, especially loving realistic fiction set beside or on the water.
6. Without giving too much away, could you tell us a little about your short story?
This story honours anyone who has battled mental health issues and celebrates the small (and large) acts of courage that permit life to go on.

• #Deborah Huff-Horwood
• #Short Story Anthology
• #Author Interview
• #The Opposite of Disappearing

Hello friends, readers and fellow writers,

Welcome to my birthday month...just two more weeks till I get to eat my favourite cake! 

Once again I'm thrilled to tell you that I've had more success: I've been published. Two of my short stories (written for adults) are now in printed anthologies, which I'm hugely thrilled about. I'll receive a copy of these in the post  in the next week — perhaps even today. 
So, drumroll........
Here's the link to the famous Sydney bookshop, Better Read Than Dead, who ran the competition and printed the best stories in their anthology:
https://www.betterreadkids.com/product-page/better-read-than-dead-writing-anthology-2020

And here's the link to Hawkeye Publishing's Anthology 'Reset', containing the best stories from the Sydney Hammond Short Story Competition.
anthology/hawkeyebooks.com.au/reset-sydney-hammond-short-story-comp-2020-anthology/

I also won 3rd prize in the Port Stephens Literature Award 2020... AND been Highly Commended in the Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award with ACT Writers (Dec 2020). So once again I had to update the Awards And Commendations on my webpage.

I hope you enjoy these stories if you choose to purchase. I can't wait!

Back to the keyboard now to continue on with a rollicking, rhyming picture book I am working on.  It's such fun, and I bounce as I walk beside the lake during my breaks, feeling the rhythm of the stanzas. Sometimes I even solve niggling rhyme quandaries. Exercise is definitely good for me. 

Go well, 
​Deborah x

IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS I've been focused on improving my health as well as improving my craft as a writer. I've always loved walking but now running takes priority until I'm too puffed to continue, and then I walk. 10,000 steps the goal. It's good to be active, then come home for the bulk of the day in front of my keyboard, but those first few hours —which generally includes a coffee in the sun by the water — have set me up with life and colour and scents and snippets of people's conversation after which I'm ready to write in a quiet space.

Once again I joined a Freefall writers workshop for a richly immersive week of writing in community. Ordinarily these are run as a gorgeous residency in Daylesford, Victoria, but with COVID-19 we were participants via Zoom, supported with tea-and biscuit chats using the platform Slack. It was a superb week, challenging as ever, and took me far from my children's book writing and deep into exploring my personal stories of the last twenty years. Barbara Turner-Vesselago as our tutor —stuck in Canada, her home—was superb once again, inspiring and suggesting, guiding and offering insights into story, intent and craft. I recommend discovering the technique of Freefall writing to anyone keen to plumb the richness of their life through words. Kirsten Cameron from Love Street Writers was the Australian coordinator for Freefall and facilitator of the day's readings and discussion, and another three cheers for her. A shout-out to the incredible people in the workshop who trusted me with their stories too. A full week of feedback from a trusted crowd is a powerful thing, exhausting yes, but the benefits ripple out and out and out. 

I've had the delight today of updating my Awards And Commendations on my webpage!  I'm so proud. What an excellent year it's been for my career as a writer! To receive a WIN for a children's picture book manuscript is a hard-won success: Lily McGileagh's Colourful Ways has been written and rewritten from the inside out and upside down and back to front since March when I first invented her, a feisty little girl with very distinct ways. There's a lot of me in Lily! I won the prize for not just the story but for my ability to rhyme well and to work in metre (the beats/rhythm as you read aloud). Hip hip hoorah ;-) You can read a good chunk of the story on my homepage... HERE. 

Happiest of Christmases to each and every one of you! Take the time to doodle and dawdle, mix and muddle, concoct and create, and write! Ho Ho!

Deborah

​Here's some more creativity for the sheer fun of it! A completely useless pendant assembled from tiny tomatoes and a flower. That's a carpet it is lying on, not a shirt. It seemed like a fun thing to do at the time;  I was at a friend's house, picking veggies over summer, hundreds and hundreds of tomatoes of all colours drooping over their garden beds, exhausted by the heat but unable to stop producing fruit while the ground had water. That kind of effort impressed me, nature's compulsion to produce, produce, even if it spelt eventual death. The desire to reproduce, to leave something of itself in the world is something I relate to. ​My stories are like that, my new offspring. I'd like to think that once publishers find me these mini-mes will exist when (one day) I do not. So, that summer's eve, after filling several bowls with tomatoes, we went inside to the cool of the fan. I was banned from the kitchen while dinner prep began so I curled up with a book on architecture and idly nibbled—and fiddled with—tomatoes, for the sheer delight of it. My friend found me on the floor a while later with my casket of vegetable jewellery.  :-) 
​

Allow yourself to play! Experimenting, doodling, warbling or finger-knitting, sculpting, hammering or theorising, inventing recipes, stories or words, whatever brings you a sense of delight: get into it. No-one needs to see it, no-one needs to know. This is your time. Bake your name in rolled worms of nutmegy-gingerbread. Draw little faces on all your bananas. Give yourself a giggle and smile a private smile.

​ :-)

Till next month, 
​Deborah

Welcome to my Blog


This is Blog Number 1 and YOU may be the very first reader.... congratulations!

'When I write, I step into the world. And I want to stay as long as I can. 
But when I read, I step outside my world for a period and become a tourist in another’s life, or place, or time.'  

That's what I wrote a few months ago and it is true, each and every day.  I do both, every day... write and read, (and then write and read some more). There are SO many books to read and the wonderful bookshop Paperchain  (Manuka, ACT) makes them look so enticing, it is hard to resist. The pile of books beside my bed was looking a little teeter-tottery yesterday and came down--crash!  I don't expect the bunnies in  'Fierce Bad Rabbits –The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books' (by Clare Pollard,  pub. Penguin 2019) were very impressed; they were probably fiercer and badder (oops, worse) for being dropped on their heads! (Sorry, bunnies.) 

Yesterday I took delivery of a bundle of books from Ford Street Publishing. Oh, the fun of reading 'Colin Cockroach Goes to Caloundra', by Chris McKimmie!  I ordered it a month ago and have been just itching to get my hands on it, but it was still at the printer's. The book has only JUST been released – hot off the press. Chris McKimmie's illustrations make me giggle (and wriggle a little bit, for the hero IS a cockroach...) and I recommend this story 100 percent for any child over the age of four, for it really is adorable. The little guy must make a dash for safety when the owners of his home spy cockroaches in the kitchen. They panic! They have the bug spray! They're going to fumigate! OH NO! Colin and his relatives rush to safety on their spindly little cockroach legs and young Colin (our hero) jumps in a box of groceries and gets whisked off to Queensland on a road trip.
Does he have fun? You betcha. Does he see some pretty incredible sights and even fall in love? Of course, he is totally adorable (once you get to know him and see beyond his shiny brown flat body.) Will I tell you what happens next? NO way!
Buy the book ;-)... and:
 'step outside (your) world for a period and become a tourist in another’s life, or place, or time.'
​You'll be in Queensland, hooray—even if you're stuck behind the border in the ACT like me right now. 

Okay, now I'd better write. The story I'm working on today is about a little seagull who wants to be human. It is called SEAGIRL. I was chatting to my favourite seagull beside the lake this morning, and she told me to get on with it! 

Happy READING!
​Deborah

I will read picture books forwards and backwards and inside out if they are as much fun as this story!  Each page is an artwork in itself.
Colin Cockroach Goes to Caloundra', by Chris McKimmie, published by Ford Street Publishing, August 2020
​