writing – simone said what?

Arabian Nights Has Been Published!

February 27, 2023by simone shiraziLeave a Comment

Well, it took a while after Once Upon a One Night Mistake was published for us to get here, but we’ve finally arrived! Arabian Nights, Book 2 in the Fairytale Series, has been published!

The published book is the original story I wrote in 2014/2015. The bonus chapters will remain exclusively on Radish. Currently, only the ebook is available, but hopefully we’ll have physical copies in the future!

Here are all the links where you can buy a copy:

Or you can use this link to see all the places it’s available! And of course, Arabian Nights will always be available on Radish.

If you’d like to leave a review on any of those sites, please feel free! The book is also listed on Goodreads if you’d like to add it there as well.

Thanks for joining me on this journey, and hopefully you’ll be seeing Dryland and Roses & Thorns published in the future as well.

Here’s to more books!

My Writing

Once Upon a One Night Mistake Has Been Published!

December 30, 2021February 27, 2022by simone shiraziLeave a Comment

I will tell you all straight off the bat: I never expected this to happen.

Once Upon a One Night Mistake (previously titled Once Upon a One Night Stand) was just a silly little story I started writing for fun—and escape—at 14 in 2007 on a website called FictionPress. It was my first foray into writing original fiction on the internet, an exercise in creativity for a teenager who really never thought she’d go anywhere with writing.

But more than 60 million reads later, that silly little story has changed the trajectory of my entire life. It would be funny to go back in time and tell 14 year old Simone, “Hey, you know that story you’re writing right now just for kicks? Yeah, it’s going to be the start of your entire writing career. Surprise!”

When I sold The Fairytale Series (Once Upon a One Night Mistake, Arabian Nights, Dryland, and Roses & Thorns) to Radish Fiction in 2019, I never thought this would be a step along that journey. I always thought this series would only exist in its little, sheltered corners of the internet, but Radish decided its reach was going to go further than that. It’s both exciting and terrifying, simply for the fact that I never intended this story to have any sort of reach, and now it’s going to be available for a much wider audience. Cool? Very. But also a little scary!

Again, this is a book I wrote as a young teenager. It has been lightly edited a few times since then, yes, but its plot, its characters, and its essence have never changed. It is a marker for who I was as a writer at that age. And I will say, it no longer represents me as a writer and storyteller today, but it’s where I started. I think that’s important to acknowledge.

As many of you know, OUAONM has been continued on Radish and is currently in its 13th season there. This published book is Season 1, aka the original Once Upon a One Night Mistake that I wrote years ago. Currently, only the ebook is available, but hopefully we’ll have physical copies in the future!

Here are all the links where you can buy a copy:

Or you can use this link to see all the places it’s available! And of course, OUAONM will always be available on Radish.

If you’d like to leave a review on any of those sites, please feel free! The book is also listed on Goodreads if you’d like to add it there as well.

Thanks for joining me on this journey, and you’ll be seeing Arabian Nights, Dryland, and Roses & Thorns published too in the near future.

Here’s to more books!

My Writing

Once Upon a One Night… – New Title, Same Story!

July 15, 2021by simone shirazi4 Comments

How many people here can claim that they got their publisher (temporarily) banned from advertising on Facebook? Anyone? No?

Well, I can!

Let me start by saying it was an absolute accident. I didn’t mean it, I swear! But as it turns out, a lot of advertising companies and sites don’t like promoting anything that they believe to be “mature content.” And with a title like Once Upon a One Night Stand, I can see why they’d think my book was mature and want to pump the brakes. The thing is though, that book is Young Adult and non-mature—yes, there are mentions and discussions of sex and sexuality, but all mature scenes are fade-to-black and no acts are discussed in detail. Thus, making it a non-mature story.

But…not all advertisers see it that way—which is why I and the team at Radish decided it was time to change the title to something a little less, well, provocative.

Let me start by saying that its original title was just the first thing that popped into my mind when I needed a title for a story that was a Cinderella retelling with a one-night stand thrown in there. So why not Once Upon a One Night Stand? It combined both of those things and, hey, it made me laugh! What more could teenage Simone want? I still think it’s a fun title that really encompasses the story, but if changing it to something that didn’t include the words “one night stand” in it means that I can reach a wider audience and more readers, I’m more than happy to change it!

Which is why today we’re rolling out the new title…

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My Writing

The Return of All That is Gold

March 27, 2021June 15, 2022by simone shirazi5 Comments

Back in January 2020, I removed one of my most popular stories from Wattpad. That story was called All That is Gold. I wrote a post about why I was removing it, but the gist of it was this: it no longer made me happy to have it posted online. So I took it down.

I’ve gotten hundreds of messages asking me why I took it down and if it would ever come back. For the longest time, I directed people to that post where I said I wasn’t sure if it would ever be back. And for a year, I really wasn’t sure if it would ever return to the internet. I didn’t want to open the document. I didn’t want to go back to that world. For an entire year, I wanted nothing to do with that story or those characters. It had all been tainted for me.

And then, one day, I realized I was ready to go back to it. The bad taste had finally left my mouth and I was ready to tackle that project again. I missed the story and those characters—a lot.

So here we are: All That is Gold will be coming to Radish on May 1st, 2021! Keep reading for all the details about its return!

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My Writing

Once Upon a One Night Mistake – Story Seasons & Updated FAQ

September 9, 2020July 1, 2022by simone shirazi2 Comments

If you’ve been keeping up with the new chapters of Once Upon a One Night Mistake (previously titled “Once Upon a One Night Stand”) or Roses & Thorns on Radish, you’ve probably noticed how those stories are now split into a little something called “seasons.”

What are these seasons, you ask? Well, it’s a new organizational tool for stories. Think of them like seasons of a TV show, only for books! For longer stories, grouping chapters into seasons can help break things up so you’re not so overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. For series, writers can combine several books into one, so that readers don’t have to exit the first book to find the others in the series. So “season 1” would be the first book in the series, “season 2” would be the second book, etc.

I think it’s a fantastic way to help both writers and readers feel more comfortable with stories that might have hundreds (or even thousands) of chapters. I’m a big fan of it!

Now, I want to explain how I organized the seasons of Once Upon a One Night Mistake. If you’ve been reading the story, you might have already noticed, but here’s a full breakdown of the seasons and an updated FAQ about the story!

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