Party Time!

Actually, it's no longer party time. Simmer down, people, simmer down. It's really nothing to get excited about, the party is over. You can either pack up and leave, or you can stay and read on to find out what I'm talking about.

What I'm talking about: this will be a blog post about a 21st party I went to on Friday.

Okay, I went to a joint 21st birthday party last Friday, the 13th. Joint between one of my sisters and a friend. It was Tim Burton themed, costume dress up. You had to dress up as someone from a Tim Burton movie -if you hadn't guessed that already. You may be wondering who I dressed up as, well I'll tell you. I went as Ichabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow. And let me tell you, I look dashing in a black waistcoat and boots with my hair swept back.

We spent like three months preparing for this party. It took so long because the birthday girls decided that not only did they want a dress up party, but they also wanted to decorate the house Tim Burton styled. There were three main rooms on the downstairs floor, which were set for different themes. The first, the living room, was a Dark Shadows theme. It had a coffin, 70s disco ball on the ceiling, and a portrait of Barnabas Collins staring out over those that decided to brave the dance floor. There was also a fog machine to add to the effect.

The second room, the dining room, was an Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter's tea party set. They'd set up a bunch of tables in a row, covered it in different coloured table clothes, spread utensils, cups, bowls, and tea pots around the place. It looked quite nice. In the spot of honour in the middle of the table was the birthday cake made by a professional cake maker, Flower and Fondant. It was a cake, two tiered, a chocolate, cherry ripe cake on the first layer and a Bailey's white chocolate cake for the second. Covered in purple fondant on a black and white checked board, with black vines and a black rose swirling it's way up the side. Sitting on top were about four or five, purple/blue, seeming to glow, toadstools. It was quite impressive.

The third room, lounge room #2, was made up for Sweeny Todd. There was a sign with Mrs Lovett's pies, with blood streaks across it, and instruments of pie making were spread around the room. Including an old, metal meat grinder we found all ready to grind human flesh.

Outside the front door was Corpse Bride land. We had candles along the path, a great deal of fake cobwebs with spiders, snow, a hand reaching out from the snow with a ring on its finger, and a mound of snow with the green maggot -whatever its name is- peeping out from it watching you as you bang on the door requesting to be allowed entrance.

Around the back of the house was The Nightmare Before Christmas. We had pumpkins, carved of course, the dog -whose name I also cannot remember- hanging from the ceiling. It was fake, it was a ghost so don't be alarmed. And a board, 3D pop out, of the purple tongue with Jack Skellington striding majestically across it on the wall. All props, all over the house, were made by us. It was a fantastic display.

Upstairs, the final decoration, was the scarecrow from The Nightmare Before Christmas, pointing the way to the toilets. A degrading job for a majestic, gentlemanly scarecrow such as him, but there you go. He wasn't allowed outside in case he got rained on.

As for costumes for the night. They were quite good. My family is a bunch of Cosplayers, so we know how to make good costumes. I'd name all that were there but too many to count. I can't remember how many people were there either. It was a grand affair.

For sake of decency, and respect for certain friends, though they really deserve none, I won't mention the foul ruffians who desecrated the party with their obnoxious foul language, drinking habits, and smoking of certain substances, and slutty performance from the girls. Or the music we were forced to endure.

Besides all them, everyone else at the party were fantastic. I had a great deal of fun talking to friends, and making new ones, stuffing my face, and just looking plain dashing in black. I look dashing in all colours, but the black certainly suited me more than anything else. It brought out the colour of my eyes, you know.

-Peter.

A Pleasant Surprise

The middle of last year I self-published my first book The Story of Silence, I did it mainly to get the five free copies CreateSpace were offering if you won NaNoWriMo. I spent six months editing it, rewriting chapters, changing characters, etc, before publishing. It was a long road. But never once did I think people would buy it and read it, I thought the only people to read it were my friends who I lent my copies to. Two weeks ago I was proved wrong. Random people I have never met before are buying and reading it.

I had been looking at the paperback sales, which were zero. Then for some reason I decided to look at the Kindle sales. That's where I discovered over 40 people had bought copies of my book.

My reaction to see the sales was 1. my jaw dropped, 2. my breath stopped, 3. my heart seemed to stop 4. everything seemed to stop while I digested this news. Gradually life returned to my limbs enough for me to search further into it to see whether what I was reading was correct. It was correct but it's taken me these two weeks to actually believe it to be true. I never really believed that people were buying it even after I saw the sales because there were no reviews on the Amazon.com page. My thought was that if over 40 people had bought the book, like the sales said, then surely one of them would have posted a review of what they thought. Then last night I had another look and I noticed that I was viewing the Amazon.com.us page, but people had bought my book from the Australian page. So, I found that Amazon page and looked at my book and low and behold there were 3 reviews! That made me believe it was all true.

It's really an amazing feeling to know that something you worked really hard on, but never believed it would sell, sells. I don't know if the people who bought copies of my book on Kindle found out about it from my blog, or if they even read this, but I want to thank them all so much. It means a lot to me. And to those three people who posted their thoughts of The Story of Silence I want to thank them too. They were all great to read, two were positive while the third wasn't quite so much. However, the non-positive one is the one I hold dearest. As a writer, I cannot improve if no one ever points out the problems. This person did and because of it I can improve, and that's what I want to do. So, once again, thank you all so much.

April Camp NaNo complete!

April Camp NaNo 2014 is done. It is the 1st of May today, the first of a lot of things, I think for American's today is the first of spring? If I'm totally wrong then please excuse me, I'm just thinking of the May Dance. Or is that English? Just ignore me here. Moving on.

My goal for this camp, my first ever camp, was to write 20,000 words, and complete two of my stories. One turned out to be a novella instead of a short story and the other is still incomplete. So out of my goals, I hit my word count with a shining 20,008 words, completed my novella, wrote a poem, and also wrote a whole new short story. My play is still incomplete and I will focus on finishing that later sometime. On all, what I managed to do in April, I'm happy with everything.

Camp was an interesting experience, totally unlike November NaNoWriMo in every way and feel. It had a completely different air about it. The air wasn't good, it weighed all of us in my cabin down and out of the twelve I was the only one to hit my goal.

I will not be returning next year, I've decided virtual camping is not for me. My cabin was a big disappointment, I am sorry to say, but that was all due to the fact that people underestimated how busy life is. My fellow campers were all upset about not being able to finish, but it just wasn't possible for them to finish. There is an option to leave your cabin and they will put you in a new one, but just as I decided to leave the chat slightly became active and I felt it rude to leave. And then it stopped being active and by then there was no point leaving because camp was almost at a close.

It may have been a disappointing camp, but I'm still glad I participated in it. It was a new experience and I'm mostly all for new experiences.

I am hoping that I will see my fellow campers this November, of which I will be participating, I have a very interesting story idea in mind that I want to write, unless things change and I can't write it, and I hope that they will all be able to complete their goals.