It’s Short Story Month!
It’s that time again my lovelies, I’m back to writing, the sun is shining and I am looking for your short story prompts, ideas and opening lines to inspire the next offering to the club members. (In case this is your first time here, hello! The idea is that I pick a prompt, write a story and the person who gave the prompt gets to read it before the rest of the club members. It’s all free and you can join here.)
I’m delighted to announce that we now have 150 members, hooray! But as some of you know, I’m keen to get to 300 by my birthday on August 2nd. (Not because that matches my age, but because of the Spartans. No really. No, shut up!)
This call also corresponds with a rather lovely thing I stumbled across on the interweb: Short Story Month, which is May apparently. How lovely! It’s been started off by a chap over at the Emerging Writers Network, which I plan to explore very soon.
As it’s Short Story Month, I want to do something grand (you know I like doing that), but I need your help. I want to write an extra story – I already have one in mind which will be set in the Split Worlds – but this won’t be sent out automatically to my club members. Instead, I’ll send this one out to any kind soul amongst you who does one of the following:
• Writes a post (or a chunk within a post) about the Short Story Club with a link to the sign-up page, preferably encouraging people to join
• Writes a review of a recent story, or of my Split Worlds flash series that I can use on my site (with a credit to the writer of course) as I find talking about my own stories so hard!
I’ve given the second option as I know some of my readers don’t have blogs and I didn’t want to penalise you. If you want to do both, I’ll send a big virtual kiss with the story.
When you have done either of the two, send me a link/the review through the contact form so I can add you to the list of recipients. The deadline is the end of May.
It’s my hope that between all of our efforts we’ll start building the club up to reach 300 members, and giving you a story in return is my way of thanking you for your help. Sound good?
So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pop a prompt into the comments below, and if you want to read the extra Split Worlds short story, to choose one of the other tasks above. Over to you…
My prompt for this month Em:
She glanced up from her mug of tea and watched in horror as he aged thirty years in a matter of seconds, wrinkes deepening across his forehead as his glossy raven black hair turned grey right before her eyes.
Jarvis sighed at the familiar sound. It had fallen off again.
Morning, Em! Here is my prompt:
She said, ” Yes!” As the word danced from her lips, Maxim smiled and took Lily’s hand. He longed to make her happy, just one more time.
Searching the bank at the bend in the river for what had washed up had become a daily ritual. He’d found nearly anything one could imagine. The nearly dead girl topped them all, though.
Searching the bank at the bend in the river for what had washed up had become a daily ritual. He’d found almost anything one could imagine. The nearly dead girl topped them all, though.
~Had a small goof in the first one. Never good to repeat the same word so close together.
With but one breath left in her lungs, she knew what she had to do. When close to the divide between the living and the dead, everything is eerily clear and calm. If not for that moment, she might never have known.
I’m guilty of fearing all prompts more than three words long. So my suggestion:
“Finally, she fell.”
She shoved, and watched it fall slowly into the sea far below. She despised doing it, but now she was free. She knew it would be worth it.
My first prompt for Story Club! How fun is this? 🙂
Sitting having tea outside a cafe in a busy town centre daydreaming when she suddenly realised there was no noise, no traffic and no people!!!
He took the pill as it said on the bottle without water. He concentrated hard and yes she had stopped. He tried again and she was now coming over…it really works!!!!
“It’s not the gun that worries me, it’s the cookery book,” said Jojo.
He hated the way the paint seemed to writhe like colourful worms on the palette, but it was a necessary precursor to the order he imposed with his brushes.
Great ancient oaks bent, forced to yeild to her power. Tin flapped and clanged atop the better than 100 year old structure. Clouds of dust, mixed with anything else the raging winds snatched from the ground, swirled several feet into the air. From the cliffs, she watched them scrambling for shelter. A bitter smile on her face.
There was still a drop of blood on his shoe.
Here I am sitting in the dark. Not sure what to do, as the electricity has been off for three hours. It is curious that the phones will not work as well. I go to the door and look out. My house sits on a hill and I can see down into the valley. There is not a light to be seen for miles, except for a large fire up in the smokey mountains miles away. Hum!