I thought I was dead, then the pain came again, and I realised it was just wishful thinking.

Sleeping Beauty "retold". She "kissed" her Prince, but only after he'd signed a prenup and taken certain medical tests.

Romance isn't dead, but it is undergoing a brutal evolution.

90 Second Video - see the story unfold.

A RV Story in 90 Seconds from Nick Warren on Vimeo.

P.S. Extra points if anyone can tell me why the very last edit, a word substitution, makes me kind of a jerk.

Interview: Nick on Work, Play and Creativity

Yep, I was interviewed for Creative Pool last week by the amiable John Fountain.

Check out the results over on the Creative Pool website.

“Forgive me” the note said, “It’s not going to work between us. You want to tell stories, I want to live them. Don’t follow me.”

I love telling stories... but that's nowhere near as cool as living them. Gotta work on that...

“Creativity is bollocks”, she said. “A few people work at their art, most don’t. That’s it.”

One of the things I've learned doing this little side-gig... creativity isn't really a skill, it's a result. 

Yes there is the odd creative genius among us, and yes we all get flashes from time to time. But over any meaningful length of time creativity starts to look an awful lot like something else... hard work.

See the "confession" end of the Restless Voices eBook. 

Modern Day Prayer: Mighty Google, thy will be done. Deliver me from obscurity, and to page 1 of thy bountiful listings. Amen.

Google... like God, is unfathomable.

"I have the attention span of a butterf..." she said.

... Says the guy who writes 140 character stories...

"Our experiment to create telepathy in mice has failed," he said. "Once the females are given the gene they refuse to breed."

Telepathy will never develop in humans. Evolution will not allow it. To put it another way... no woman would ever sleep with a man if she could get inside his head. Just my opinion.

"I'm sure there's an important lesson to be learned in all this", he said, "but I've absolutely no intention of learning it."

I feel like this fairly often.

"I used to think he was okay," she said, "then I realised his body was just an asshole transportation system."

As it turned out the girl of his dreams worked in a jewellers... he met her while shopping for an engagement ring.

In 1999 I decided to propose to my girlfriend, and secretly snuck out before Christmas to find the perfect engagement ring.

The girl who sold it to me was beautiful... and even better... funny.

I don't think it's too strong to say that felt like a test at the time. Perhaps every man planning to get married should meet... oh whatever her name was. It was no problem for me, which kind of proved (albeit in a half-arsed way) that I was in love. 

I still am, but I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been... that would have been a story.

Jake's cravings hit earlier now, often before noon. He understood that he wasn't really drinking the whiskey anymore... it was drinking him.

There's a frightening point in any addiction, drugs, alcohol... love... when you realise that you are no longer in charge of the relationship. This story is about that moment.

She hated her father at that moment. He was loud, opinionated, and worst of all... right.

True Story: My wife has bravely gone on safari. "Brave" coz she left the kids with me. Her instructions. "Keep them alive until I get back."

Actually keeping them alive is really just the baseline... I'm supposed to feed and water them, and get them to all their schooling and activities. Tough targets sure, but I'm man enough.

"I may not have a tail", said the Manx cat, "but I have one hell of a story."

It was 3 hours later that he came up with the devastating comeback. Like most people, he was only truly brilliant in retrospect.

That night she finally went fucking crazy, accusing him of an affair. The irony was that he'd actually been working late... for once.

I hate this guy.

They'd been married 6 months when it happened. Her husband, in a moment of distraction, signed a name she had never seen before.

His goal in life was to offend no one, and this he achieved... if nothing else.

I'm pretty sure aiming to offend no-one is one of the roads to ruin and disappointment.