An easter gift from Gisborne…
As we in Australia move into Easter Thursday, my novel’s main character and I would like to wish you all a safe and happy Easter break. I’m off to write more Gisborne and walk the beaches. And Gisborne? That’d be telling!
The dirt stained the cloth that had been left for me and the water in the bowl looked as if it had been collected from a moat. I craved a warm scented bath, for my nails to be clean, for my hair to once again fall in a silky swathe. But it was not to be and I could see myself arriving before my father so travel-stained that I doubted he would recognize me. There was a chance he might not recognize me anyway as it had been three years since I had seen him. But worse, I had gleaned a subtext from Vasey’s words; that my father was not himself. He could have lost his mind with grief, he could be a soak, he could be anything but the man my mother had loved. I turned from the bowl to reach for clothes . . .
When I began the journey to hold a Masked Ball on Mesmered’s blog, I never dreamed that a story would emerge from it, two stories in fact. One is a short-story called The Masked Ball which is entirely different than the blog-story and which Pat from Bo Press Miniature Books is using in one of her brilliant limited edition creations. But here on Mesmered, another story is developing and it’s exciting for me to see what my co-conspirators come up with each day. Till now, we haven’t communicated a story-line with each other, we have just run off with the last line of the previous submission to write our own submission and move the story forward. It’s become an exercise in fleet wordage and spare detail for me and I find I am learning quite a lot about the craft of writing and getting the message across in the shortest possible time. Please sit back now and enjoy Pat Sweet’s continuation of her part in The Masked Ball as Parthenope Neroli:
