Published Work: The Scott Prize

The Scott Prize  is an international competition for a first collection of short stories by a single author, run by the renowned independent publisher Salt Publishing.

For the last year or so, I’ve been working on New World Fairy Tales – a collection of seven short stories based on tales from the Grimm brothers’ Kinder und Hausmarchen, re-told in contemporary American settings. They were originally written as Christmas and birthday presents for a group of seven much-beloved friends and family.

OMG! I made the shortlist!
So in March this year, I was thrilled to discover that New World Fairy Tales had made the shortlist. Because this is the twenty-first century, I found out this out in what is clearly the only proper way to learn anything these days, which is to have someone you’ve only met once tell you via a comment on a mutual friend’s Facebook feed. I think we were discussing cake recipes or trolls in the attic or something, and then my once-met friend-of-a-friend suddenly posted the following:

“PS are you the Cassandra Parkin who’s just been nominated for the Scott Prize? If so, congratulations!”

So I went to the Salt blog, and, blimey – I had made the shortlist.

A Hundred And One Things To Do While You’re Waiting For The Announcement To Be Made

On May 9th, possibly the longest day of my life so far commenced. I waited as patiently as I could for the announcement, but I’m really not very good with patient, so this was “patient” in the very special sense of “haunting the Salt blog, muttering, eating stuff and pressing F5 a lot” . Having been caught napping on the shortlist announcement, I was determined that this time at least, I was going to be the first to know what was happening.

Hours passed. F5. F5. F5. Several boxes of raisins. F5. F5. F5. F5. Prawns in filo pastry. F5. F5. F5. Fruitbread. F5. F5. F5. Elderly chunk of marzipan found in the back of the cupboard.  F5. F5. F5. F5. F5. F5. F5. F5. Nothing.

I went out for a long walk, just me and the sunshine and my BlackBerry. Browser – favourites – blog.saltpublishing.com – refresh. Nothing. Repeat for about five miles. Still nothing. Finally return back  home to continue stalking activities.

F5. F5. F5. Fourth Diet Coke of the day. F5. F5. F5. Oh my GOD, it’s a new post. Here we go. Take a deep breath…remember, it was an honour just to be shortlisted…

…and…it’s not the shortlist. And I have no more reserves in me. This is honestly all the cyber-stalking I am capable of undertaking. If I keep doing this I may actually die from the pain of anticipation.

Now what happens?

So I went to the supermarket, and did the shopping, and came home. And just as I was unpacking the yoghurts, my lovely husband rang me, and said, “You’ve won.” He’d been keeping a sneaky eye on the Salt Twitter feed, and had exited his meeting at maximum velocity to tell me the news.

So, in November 2011, New World Fairy Tales will be published. And I feel like a proper writer at last.