Over twenty years ago I wrote a short story for a church magazine.
I called it ‘Just Desserts.’ It was the story of a forty year old woman, Clara, moving into a small Australia town and trying to make a home there.
A small part of the story was about a failed cake which had to be repaired in order to keep a promise for a church stall.
Ten years later, I was a little surprised to find highly abbreviated versions of this story appearing on the internet as ‘The White Lie Cake.’ The story had been translated to the US, and stripped of everything I had meant it to be about.
I tried to get in touch with people who had reprinted the story, not to complain, but to set the abbreviated version in its proper context, and to ask for some acknowledgement. I registered the copyright in the US, something that is not necessary in Australia.
Eventually I gave up. It was in the wild, I had no control over it, and it was gone, a vagrant child.
Hollywood actor Barbara Kerr Condon found the story somewhere, and asked my permission to make it into a short film as a training exercise for her students. I was glad to agree, although there would be no financial remuneration. It’s a good little film, although Barbara’s version is much closer to the internet fable than to my original story.
By this time I had learned there was a one act play called ‘Just Desserts,’ and to avoid any confusion, changed the name of my story to ‘Sweet Vengeance.’
And here it is as a pdf file: Sweet Vengeance. Please enjoy!
