There can't be any purer form of storytelling than relating one's own adventures to the grandchildren. As a grandmother, or Nanny as I'm called by my grandchildren, I love sharing a tale with them, embellishing a little on the details, and giving them something to remember about me, long after I'm gone. When a story is completely real, it's even better, and right now, I'm involved in one of the best adventures of my life.
It all began when I read an article about some guy in South Africa who wanted to attempt an official writing record for the Guinness Book of Records. It made interesting reading, and so I posted it to my Facebook page A Literary Liaison. A few days later, I attended my writing group and a fellow author Mouse Diver-Dudfield said that she had entered her story after seeing my post. She thought it would be a great idea for New Zealand to be represented.
I had to agree, and went home to browse the several short stories I had written for writing exercises. The requirements for these World Record stories was to be between 3000 and 8000 words and in any genre. I still wonder if they would have accepted one of my erotic short stories, but I also recognised my chance to write in one of my all time favourite genres, crime fiction.
Our wonderful writing group has often challenged me to extend myself and one of the exercises we had done during the year was to write a film noir type story, much like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe or the film The Maltese Falcon. I really enjoyed writing the basic story I had contributed, and so I opened it up again and decided to do a full re-edit and build it into something bigger and better. Once I was happy with it, I sent it off to the organiser of this world record attempt, Shaun Jooste of Celenic Earth Publications.
It was only a few days later that I saw my name on the list of authors whose stories had been accepted. That really got the excitement going, especially as Mouse had already had her story accepted and we were the only authors from New Zealand. Later the great Kiwi poet and storyteller John Irvine would also join our ranks.
Over the last month, I've watched more authors take interest in this amazing project and as of today we are at 100 authors, in record breaking territory and in for a real shot at this record. You can read more about it here but even better, you can support us by pre-ordering the book. To achieve the record, we need to print and sell 1000 copies.
While it will be amazing to achieve this record, the greatest part of this whole adventure has been seeing authors supporting authors, coming together from all around the world to help one another get this thing done. Friendships have been forged, and Shaun Jooste has worked incredibly hard to give us this opportunity and I'd love to see his dream come true. To Shaun and all of the authors involved, thanks for the fun and for an incredible adventure to tell my grandkids, of that time Nanny attempted a World Record. #storytelling #amwriting
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