{"id":10299,"date":"2015-05-22T17:05:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T07:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=10299"},"modified":"2015-05-22T17:05:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T07:05:49","slug":"a-story-written-especially-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/a-story-written-especially-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"A Story Written Especially for Me!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shapter<\/a>Last weekend, it was my birthday. It was a special birthday too, and I was so very lucky that my entire day was… perfect! Not only did family and friends join in to celebrate my special day, but I got to spend hours with bookish people whom I treasure. And they surprised me too…<\/p>\n

Every month, I lead a critique group called the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group. We help each other improve our writing and share bookish news. You can read more about us here<\/a>. I started the group five years ago and now I love Saturdays down in Manly talking all things writing, reading and books!<\/p>\n

\"Shapter<\/a>Last Saturday, we had our usual meeting and a few members suggested hanging back afterwards for a celebratory drink. Great idea! One of them also offered me a lift home (because I don’t drive \u2013 see here<\/a>!!), as long as I didn’t mind first popping into Hemingway’s<\/a> (a Manly cafe) to pick something up. No problem.<\/p>\n

Except… there was nothing to pick up! A group of members had snuck into Hemingway’s to surprise me with lunch, drinks… and a story written especially for me!<\/p>\n

\"Shapter<\/a>Each member had each written a part of the story, which features an ancient being soaked in the blood of millions and a woman sitting astride a giant mechanical ant (I think she was supposed to be me!).<\/p>\n

I have never ever been surprised like that before, and my face was soon soaked in tears of gratitude.<\/p>\n

Thank you so much, NBWG, for the hundreds of emails it apparently took you all to write and organise this story, for my lovely champers, yummy lunch and chocolately cake. I will never forget my special day!<\/p>\n

\"Shapter<\/a>

Presented to Zena Shapter by her friends in the NBWG, for her tireless dedication and outstanding leadership. Mirabile Scriptor.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, it was my birthday. It was a special birthday too, and I was so very lucky that my entire day was… perfect! Not only did family and friends join in to celebrate my special day, but I got to spend hours with bookish people whom I treasure. And\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1259,1260,1262,1261,394,443,455],"class_list":["post-10299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-news","tag-birthday","tag-chandon","tag-g","tag-hemingways","tag-manly","tag-nbwg","tag-northern-beaches-writers-group"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10299"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10312,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10299\/revisions\/10312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}