Author of the Princelings of the East fantasy and Viridian System scifi series
The Cassini Conundrum emerged on the day the Cassini mission ended with the probe plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere. Chuck Wendig’s prompt that weekend was “You have to break something before it can be mended” (or something like that). I wrote
The last Friday of the month is FlashbackFriday, started by Michael D’Agostino and recently fallen by the wayside. I’m trying to keep it going, so if you want to join in, add the link to your FlashbackFriday post in the
I thought you’d like an excerpt from The Princelings of the North this week, since I used the first sentence of the 21st page in my Challenge example on Monday. I was hoping to work on an idea for Chuck
Oops! is a little early for the Fiction in Fifty Words #Fi50 meme this month, but I wanted to have it ready to link to Rebecca Douglass’s new page for the Challenge. Rebecca has relieved the inventor, Bruce Gargoyle, of
Good versus Evil. That’s what Chuck wants today, and that’s what he gets. I stopped at 800 words; it was what I wanted to do, and I don’t think it needed more. Any genre, he said. I have no idea what
We Never Heard Them Coming is a type of Random Title or Must Include flash fiction offering. Chuck Wendig has been collecting titles, first sentences and last sentences from his readers, ten of each. Now’s the time to select from
Willoughby is the hero of book 7 in the Princelings series. He is stranded in the Realms, and has to work out how to make a living. After meeting up with some like-minded young people over the summer, he and
Daniel’s Starfish is my choice for Flashback Friday this month. I wanted something summery, and that to me is beach related. This 500 word story was originally written to a title picked from two lists from Chuck Wendig, in December
Blessing in Disguise is the prompt for #Fi50, Fiction in fifty words, this month. Once I got the idea of a missed bus, the rest of it wrote itself. I’m back to doing my story the week before Bruce sends
Ghosts of the Sea Queen: With no particular prompt this week I went back to the list of titles Chuck Wendig gave us a few weeks back, and picked out this one, with various Marie Celeste images floating through my
A unicorn from the future appears at the marriage of a Scottish queen. It says: “I am here to talk to you.” This quote is from the Magic Realism Bot – something someone found and sent to Chuck Wendig, and
‘Far music’ reminds me of lying in bed listening to a steam fair echoing across the fields when I was maybe twelve or thirteen; the following year my brother took me and I went on some of the rides –
Spaghettification started out as an independent short story in February 2015, and then became the key to the second book in the Viridian System series. That’s Curved Space to Corsair—I’ve just started the main edit. It’s my offering for Flashback
After Dinner is Monday morning’s offering for the Fiction in 50 (words) for this week. I usually do these a little earlier, to make sure I put them on the BookShelf Gargoyle’s page as soon as he puts it up
‘Fanwester loses it’ is an extract that I really enjoyed writing. The original version (first draft, not the one that got published) was a lengthy rant by the character about people and things that my reader had no idea about
Camp NaNoWriMo week 2 was going well… until I read the latest Adirondack Publishing advice on The Story Reading Ape – about Voice. As you know, I’m re-editing The Perihelix, especially the first ‘half’ which had, let’s call it, ‘deficiency
An extract from The Perihelix (or whatever I’m working on at Camp NaNoWriMo) is my best offering for Flash Fiction this month. This 550 word section follows on from the snippet I gave you on Wednesday. Of course, you don’t
GhostGum Creek: I’m going back to June 2014 for this one, which surprised me as I’ve never rerun it before (I checked). It is a venue that I integrated into the end of the Perihelix (and has stood the test
The Vintage Explorer is a title I gave Rebecca ages ago during the first Chuck Hiatus. Today I wanted to do something involving flying machines since I hadn’t told you I have a Goodreads Giveaway on for my father’s memoirs White
A Change in the Weather is this month’s prompt from Bruce Gargoyle in his Fiction in Fifty (Fi50) meme. You can join in this fun communal story-telling any time you like. Bruce posts his own offering next Monday, and then
This week Chuck gave us a list of random titles. One leapt out at me, The Thief of Moons, although after I’d written the story I amended the title to The Thief of the Moon. I wanted to feature a
Nether Smocking: a tiny village in the middle of the countryside – British, but anywhere will do. Chuck’s given us a lovely prompt this week, to celebrate his new book Invasive, we have 1500 words to come up with our own invasion-type
Deadbeat Cannibals on Tour is this week’s 1100 word flash fiction. I continue to be a week behind Chuck Wendig’s prompts. This week he suggested an excerpt from Twitter, but I picked two numbers and applied them to his previous week’s list
It’s Fridayflash time! I’m a week late with this one, as I explained last Friday, but I think this one’s worth it. Chuck Wendig is back with a subgenre mash-up – and you know how I like those. I got
Old Wives’ Tales is the prompt for the month’s Fiction in Fifty words #Fi50, the brainchild of the BookShelf Gargoyle. I enjoy doing these miniature stories, the purpose of which is to create a full story in exactly fifty words.