Wow – hasn’t this year started on a great note? My ten minute Anne Boleyn play is a finalist in the Eltham Little Theatre’s Ten Minute Quickie Ten Minute Play Competition. I feel like I’m a winner already. My short play will be performed over three nights! Below are the details for the call out to actors.
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Copied from the Eltham Little Theatre Site:

The Ten Minute Quickie
Ten Minute Play Competition
Produced by Paula Armstrong

Proudly sponsored by the Nillumbik Council

14 - 16 May 2009

Synopsis

Details of the selected ten minute plays will be announced next week. A reading of these plays for interested directors and actors will be held mid-February. Date to be announced soon.

Play reading to be held in mid-February followed by an audition the following week.
Eltham Performing Arts Centre
1603 Main Road Research
Melway Map 22H1

Cast Requirements

Males & Females of all ages.

Inquiries can be made to the coordinator Paula Armstrong,
Email: miss.pejay@gmail.com

Once upon a time, back when I was a child and teenager, I spent all my spare time drawing, painting and writing. I married as a teenager – and very soon discovered wifedom and motherhood didn’t allow me the time to be a renaissance woman – able to do all things. By the time I had my third child I was back at study and the paint box was coming out less and less. Then I entered my 30’s knowing I had a novel within me, demanding to be written. Realising that I was far better at writing than painting, I decided at that point it was better to aspire to grow in one artistic area rather than spread myself too thin and not grow at all. I also wanted to ensure my family wasn’t too neglected in the meantime. Thus, the paint box was put away while I focused on writing.

Those years of attempting visual art enriched me as a writer. Painting and drawing teaches you to use your eyes – really use your eyes. Landscapes and seascapes become more than matter of green hills and blue seas. You see it as a skilled observer of the world around you. The surf pounds the rocks in fury, its white froth tossed into the air by power and wind. Skies evoke the change of time and season, and emotion.

On the table beside me is a book with the painting by Ford Maddox Brown, The last of England (1855) on its cover. In the painting, a young, married couple huddles close together. Pensively, the man gazes seemingly unseeingly ahead and not at the woman beside him, as if unable to turn to her and witness her face. She holds his hand, nursing their baby, hidden under her heavy grey cloak. Nothing is seen of the child but a tiny hand, held in comfort by the mother. The faces of the man and woman are pinched with cold and unspoken grief – the grief of those who will soon be exiled.

I close my eyes and instantly my imagination conjures up a girl of about sixteen. She sits in a window-seat in her long, white shift. If I was to draw her, I would show her with her back against the stone and hugging her legs to her. The growing light behind her comes from the break of dawn; as yet there is not much colour in the scene. She hears a sound and lifts her face. We come closer to her and her eyes look straight at us. At first, she seems frightened, but then she breaks into a welcoming smile. By seeing the picture in your mind, you can paint, like they say, a thousand words.

The Tudor Ghost Story Contest is on again for 2008! Entered stories need to be at least 1500 words and no more than 3000 words. All stories must involve a Tudor Ghost(s) or Tudor characters.

Lara E. Eakins has very kindly agreed to help keep this great contest running. This year we are doing it a little differently than in past years - there will be a five-dollar ($US) entry fee for stories via the donation button on this page. This covers the costs of the contest (first prize is a signed copy of the judge's book); anything left over will be donated to World Vision.

Publication will be at Lara's very respected Tudor England site, on The History Bookshop, as well as on my web home at www.wendyjdunn. com.

This year's judge is Sandra Worth. Due for release in December, her fifth novel, The King's daughter, is about Elizabeth of York.

The contest will close on November 1, 2008 and the winning stories published in time for Christmas.

Please free to contact me (Wendy J Dunn at wjeandunn@yahoo. com.au) for further information.

Read the winning entries from other years here:


Wendy J. Dunn Author of DEAR HEART, HOW LIKE YOU THIS? Awarded the ABPA 2003 Glyph for Best Adult Fiction and First Runner Up for Commercial fiction in the 2004 Writer's Notes Book Awards. Seriously one of the best novels ever written about Anne Boleyn's life. Jennifer Lodine-Chaffey, reader.

My stomach’s hurting. Writing this on my carefully balanced laptop, I am lying in bed feeling ill and very sorry for myself – wondering why I have such problems with my insides. My daughter would say, “There’s nothing wrong with your insides except what you do to yourself. Stop eating silly things and exercise.” All right, I admit it; I am my own worst enemy.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to go to Neil Gaiman’s literary dinner last night. Spurred on by the discovery there were available seats at the dinner and it was too late to book in for his free talk at the State library, I decided to drag my husband out for a literary night. But when I booked, it would have helped if they had told me that the 7.45 pm start on Neil’s web journal was wrong. The dinner actually started at 6.45 pm, which meant we ended up having a very rushed meal. Maybe that’s why my stomach kept me (and my poor husband) awake last night and is still giving me grief today.

I am a Neil Gaiman fan – and have been since going to a fantasy conference three years ago. I was there at the suggestion of my friend Gillian Polack, who was taking part in the August Author Festival, a children/ youth online literary festival I coordinated for Melbourne University. Gillian thought the conference was a good opportunity for me to network with other authors and see if I could add a few fantasy authors to my group. With panels on a range of fantasy topics, I thought it sounded a fun way to spend the weekend.

Second day, I ended up in the audience listening to "the Neil Gaiman enriched" panel talking about folk lore, myth and legend. I thought, this man really knows his stuff; it would be absolutely wonderful if he agreed to take part in the festival. Poor man. He finished the panel, got off the stage, and then found me hounding him. It was only afterwards I discovered that Neil Gaiman was a literary star. Strange thing about Neil, his fame seems one the world’s best kept secrets. Most of the time, life keeps me so busy I forget I am one of his many fans, too. Yet I have read with great enjoyment and admiration most of his books.

Star dusted with success, Neil is the complete author package – articulate, witty, multi-talented, and the list goes on and on. I will never be the complete author package. What I enjoyed most about last night was listening to my husband laugh beside me, laughing as I laughed, knowing he was as just as caught up in Neil’s storytelling as I was. Remembering how my son’s eyes lit up at the mention of Neil Gaiman, I patiently stood for about hour, waiting my turn to have our three books signed. Amazingly, my husband stayed patient, too.

Neil’s readings last night really brought home to me that comedy artfully weaved into tragedy is the perfect meal for reader and audience satisfaction. D’oh – no wonder Shakespeare is as popular now as it was when whoever first wrote it.

Note to self – be funny and write funny; might help my stomach, too.

Late Sunday morning, after spending time with another cousin, we left the caravan park and headed back to Eltham. We got stuck in a traffic jam only a few miles from my cousin's home. It seemed to take us for ever to cover that short distance.

Before we left for England, I had arranged to meet two fellow Anne Boleyn devotees for a pilgrimage to Anne’s last resting place at the Tower of London. By the time I arrived in England, the arrangements had taken on the flavour of a true family affair. Alan, my husband’s cousin (and also our son’s godfather)had kindly set into motion a very special, behind the scenes tour of the Tour through one of his friends – a bon fide Beefeater.

After meeting up my two online friends at the scaffold, we raced off, with moments to spare, to a re-enactment of Richard III's coronation. Alan joined us then with his friends. Whilst the re-enactment was purely an entertainment for tourists, it still included a bit of history and was a lot of fun to watch.

After that, we were taken back to wait for Alan’s friend to finish work. Once he did, we ended up having one of those ‘pinch me, am I dreaming moments?’ life moments. Our own private Beefeater took us to the prison chamber of Sir Thomas More. I will never forget walking in this chamber, thinking I was actually in the place Sir Thomas spent the final days of his life. I am still in awe just thinking about it. But that was not the end to the day’s excitements.

On our first morning in London, I came down to my cousin’s kitchen wearing my pink hat. ‘You’re not wearing that!’ she cried.

‘Why? What’s wrong with it?’

‘You look like a tourist!’

‘But I am a tourist!’

‘You look like an America tourist!’

I laughed. ‘That doesn’t matter!’

‘A silly American tourist!’

I really love my pink hat. I deliberately bought it for the trip because it is bright and bold – and my son would be able to see me easily if we were ever separated from one another. The hat also offered a way for my online friends to identify me without any trouble. It turned out my cousin wasn’t really putting down Americans, only that my hat might cause me to be mugged. Not a nice thought. But I’m too much of an Australian to go out on sunny days without a hat. Every day so far in England has been blue skied and warm. It feels like a very warm autumn to me, but it is really an English spring.

The first day in London day was purely and simply for my son. We went on a flight on the London Eye, listening to a New Zealand guide as he pointed out all the famous places from our high vantage point. No matter in what direction we looked, the city of London was spread out in all its glory. Then we met an online friend of mine for lunch, before heading off to meet my cousin and her children at the London Dungeon. That’s another place my hat got me in trouble. It got me a starring role in one of their mini plays when I found myself in the docks and being accused of running naked and acting in a strange and witch-like manner at Bexley Heath. I pleaded insanity (citing hat proof of that!) rather than go with the suggestion of baring my breasts for public inspection.

My cousins have been giving me very hard time about my Tudor obsession. Even so, they drove me hours and hours to Petersborough just so I could visit Katherine of Aragon’s last resting place at the beautiful Peterborough Cathedral and took us to Dover Castle for exhibition on Henry VIII. Dover Castle was not too far away from the park where my cousins have a caravan.

The day and a bit we spent there was earmarked family. Strangely, I have never met my cousin's mother - who is actually my real cousin. We have a complicated web of family in England that extends out far and wide. When we first came out to England in '94, my uncle put the word out and asked who would like to put us up for a week of our time in England. The cousin I'm staying with now is the one who kindly invited us into her home. She and her family have stayed with us in Australia a few times since then, and the bridge between our two families has strengthened over the years.

Anyhow - - it was really time I met her mother. At first, she was unable to see the markers of kinship between us. But soon she was able to identify lots of physical traits common to the family. Funny how much that comforted me. I am feeling so much at home with my English cousins they might find it difficult to get rid of me!

April 5th

Nowadays, the word ‘Journey’ is bandied around so often I sometimes wonder if we tend to over use it. But 5a.m. in the UK, listening to the songs of English birds greeting the dawn, journey is the word I am mulling over in my mind. This overseas trip is taking me on so many different journeys.

First, there is the journey of leaving your own country for another land. If I remember right, journey comes from the French for 'day.' It took us far longer than a day to take us from Melbourne, Australia to my cousin’s home in England. The last time I travelled to the UK was in '94. Then I was with my husband and our three older children – all now grown adults. This time it is only me and our youngest child. He is almost the same age our next youngest was when she came with us to England in ’93. I must say, so far my son has been a delightful travelling companion. Only in the last two hours of our flight to England did he jokingly begin to chant, ‘Are we there yet?’

Travelling in the discomfort of economy hasn’t changed that much. Casting my mind back all those years, I think smoking was allowed then. Thank God that has changed! I also remember BA being very generous with their alcohol consumption. In fact, all their drinks seemed to be on tap. That was the time you could summon a flight attendant to your side and ask them for snacks and drinks. My older three enjoyed this so much that soon one wise flight attendant showed them where they could get go and get there own stuff. This time, they served you one spirit drink and, if you wanted it, gave a small bottle of wine to have with your meal.

Of course, the last time I went overseas was before 9/11. Now going through customs has given us a few interesting moments. We were sent off the plane in Singapore (first and business class could stay put, while those economy, like it or not, had to gather all their bits and pieces for a wander around the Singapore airport.) They assured us we would hear the announcement when it was time for us to return to the plane. We didn’t. I think we were just fortunate that we decided to do a toilet stop and opted for the toilet closer to where we would board the plane. I was busy in the 'ladies' when I heard my name called for the flight. Subconsciously, I think I have always wanted to hear my name called for a flight…as long as I didn’t miss it! But it did put us into a fluster, and the fluster became more so when my glasses set off the customs alarms again. This time I ended up with feet apart, having a nice customs girl check me over with that strange hand device. I dashed off without my handbag, and customs were nice enough to chase after me to hand it to me. Then in the plane we couldn’t find one of the UK passports. My heart started thump rather crazily, thinking we might end up holding up the plane while we went to find it. I breathed a very long sigh of relief when my friend found it amongst her travel papers.

I am also journeying in another way. Writing any kind of book is a journey in itself, in so many different ways. Sometimes I wonder if the journey has really just started.