Old Friends, New Stories.

Hello everyone,
     This week sees a chance of publication from Massacre magazine, who, via e-mail invited me to submit a short story for their summer contest around the theme of road kill. I jumped at the chance and began my story straight away, so yet again the poor novel is having to take a back seat. It's not often you get an invite, so when you do, you grab it with both hands.
     I'm also scribbling away frantically with a second short story for another competition with Saga magazine, they are looking for a ghost story to be included in their anthology, so I've not got much time for anything else at the moment, I seem to have gone a little competition crazy.
     Also this week, my best friend from school tracked me down via facebook. We lost contact over 20 years ago when she moved to Devon. It was nice to hear from her again, (I've been trying to trace her for years) We used to get up to a lot of mischief back in the day, you know the sort of thing . . .bored teenagers, abandoned buildings, police cells . . .I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
     It also sparked a lot of memories, some I'd forgotten about completely and some I can use, although a few of the more incriminating ones I'd rather not commit to paper. But dredging my memory like this is helping me with my novel; as it's centred around teenagers and set mainly in a school, I got thinking back to when I was that age and reliving those memories and feelings both good and bad and the intensity of emotions that went with them. How everything gets blown out of all proportion in a young mind; how a tiny little glitch can suddenly become a super heated mega storm in seconds. Teenage years are hard, rampaging hormones, insecurity, zits, but if you don't fit in like my poor character, you're in for a rough ride and one really bad day at school can feel like an eternity of torture. A careless throw away remark can haunt you for the rest of your life, going round and round in your mind. It eats away at your self confidence, undermining your abilities. But these feelings and emotions, however unpleasant, can be used. Turn them to your advantage, nurture the pain, at least for the duration of the story. Relive the hurt, the fear and humiliation and remember, a lot of wonderful things can grow out of shit.