Book Chat

Should you deign to, you can get yourself a copy of a book that includes a short story of mine! When Amazon get it back in stock, anyway. This book is an anthology of work by writers that graduated from my MA programme at Goldsmiths between, I think, 2006 and 2009, selected by some of the staff. I would list the contributors, but there are forty.

My story is 2,846 words long and is about a girl with a strange name (‘The Secrets of Millennia Nolan’), no real friends, a fair-sized secret, and a longing for a decent summer. Everybody else has quite dull names, as names go. I guess I was running low on name-fuel that day (I have since bought another baby naming book. The first one really freaked my mum out when she saw it. The conversation went something like this: ‘Li, I’m not sure I want to ask this, but why is there a copy of Baby Names For Dummies in the boxroom?’ ‘Because I’m a writer. I have to name characters.’ ‘Oh. Riiiiight.’). It is set at a party. There are only two references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the story, which shows remarkable restraint on my part. Nobody dies. There is vodka.

My sister said it was really good, if that encourages you, though I’m quite sure that precisely nobody reading this will buy the book. Then, years later, obsessed fans of mine will be trawling through the blog archives, and they’ll read this and kick themselves. ‘Where was I in 2011,’ they’ll say, ‘before that tiny print run ran out?’

And they’ll pay £££££s for a copy on eBay. Two months later, I’ll announce a collection of short stories about girls with strange names, which will include a reprint of ‘The Secrets of Millennia Nolan’, and they’ll kick themselves. HAHA! Don’t worry, it’s an investment for your (great?)grandchildren, when in the centuries to come my work is rediscovered and all relevant paraphernalia becomes worth gazillions of creds.

I have read too many sci-fi books in which the currency is ‘creds’. Why isn’t it Earthos, like Euros? Possibly because ‘Earthos’ sounds stupid, and kind of like a breakfast cereal. I think the universal currency should be called the yen, like the current Japanese currency, because then, in English, ‘I have a yen for that’ would take on a whole new double meaning! Just me?