Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Happy Valentine's Day and...

Happy last day of work, Zoe!! Good luck with the throwing off of the corporate shackles. Zoe is one of the number who has decided to chuck it all in and become a teacher. My parents were teachers and always told me not to be one. In fact all teachers of my parents generation told all people of my generation not to be teachers. Then of course there was this whole big crisis because now there aren't enough teachers. So we are anyway, just 10-15 years later. Well, I'm not. Yet. Just my generation.

And, in honour of Valentine's Day let's talk about things that are shiny. Shiny is a new e-zine seeking submissions:

Shiny is looking for fresh, entertaining stories between 2000 and 8000 words long. The style and substance of Shiny stories should be up there with the best current YA fiction, and should (for the most part) feature teenage protagonists. We're mostly interested in stories with speculative elements - science fiction, fantasy and horror - but we're open to non-speculative stories that would appeal to genre readers. We prefer a contemporary setting and/or feel to our stories, but will not let this restrict our choices. Shiny is aiming to appeal to teenagers, but also to the wide body of adults who read and enjoy Young Adult fiction. We look forward to reading your submissions!


Follow the shiny link if you think this is for you. I think submissions close in July but they say they might fill their quota before then (yeah, because writers are such before the minute people and never rewrite whole stories the day before they're due.)

(By the way, in the interests of being open and honest about my interest, they sent me an email, said lovely things about my writing and asked me to contribute. If you want your gig/zine/toenail promoted on Eglantine's Cake, apparently that's all you have to do).

Here's a story Martin came across to whet your appetite. Or, like, kill it forever. You do know they're talking about you, don't you?

7 comments:

  1. Thank you! It is INDEED my last day! And I'm working hard right up to the last minute, as you can see! I have a fine work ethic...fine as in a thin, weak strand!

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  2. Ahhh .. teaching degrees are the new Moogoo ;-)

    Good on you Zoe. Primary or Secondary? I did my DipEd in 1996 and it's such a hazy memory. I will, will, will use it one day. One day soon. I swear. Mine is secondary so therefore terrifying.

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  3. Zoe's doing primary, at Latrobe which is where you did yours, wasn't it Jojo?

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  4. Anonymous10:53 PM

    Thanks for the plug:)

    I remember the "we need more teachers" drive! It lasted right up until I applied for Austudy... then it was all "yeah, we don't need you *that* much":)

    (funny, reading your post the first time I thought, oh yeah, your generation, must have been like, ten years ago... then checked your profile and saw we were born in the same year... funny how the subconscious likes to cast successful people as so much older!)

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  5. My pleasure Ben.
    I'm actually feeling all giddy at being called successful - though I always thought success came with more money than this.
    Hooray for the year of the tiger. Apparently we're short tempered, indecisive and don't deal well with authority.

    "Ideal jobs for tigers include entrepreneur, military officer, politician, musician, writer, poet, artist, theater director, stockbroker, athlete, film star, trade union leader, company director, stunt person, explorer, and lawyer."

    So not a teacher then.

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  6. Crap. Because "they" are right on all the other counts: short-tempered (as in "I kicked the washing machine very hard for not working, then had a tanty cos I had a tanty); indecisive (see entire blog based on inability to commit to a decision) and bad with authority(unprofessional conduct in heirarchical corporate setting). But "they" might not have the suggested careers fully sussed. Maybe 'teacher' was next on the list, but they had a limited word-count and had to drop it. Or maybe I'm going to end up an indecisive, short-tempered authority-bucking teacher. I can live with that.
    :-)

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  7. you could always fall back on being a stunt person. Or a company director.

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