Writing and reviews with an environmental, science fiction, and fantasy touch
It Came from Nether Smocking – some Flashback fiction as I was delving into the past short stories on my blog, cataloguing them. This was no idle self-confidence boost. I plan to make a collection of them, for publication and
I’ve not done any Friday Flash Fiction for a few months now. You may (or may not) have noticed. I started doing a regular flash fiction on Fridays way back… I have 301 posts tagged as ‘short stories’, the first
The End is in the Beginning is this month’s fiction in fifty words prompt. Fi50, or fiction in fifty words, is the ultimate in flash fiction. Get the whole story into fifty words, and make sure your reader’s imagination fills
Real Estate. That’s Chuck’s theme of the week. It seems a common problem at present; several of my blogging friends are moving, or thinking of doing so. I’m too busy at present to have written a flash fiction for today,
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
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
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
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
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
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
Long Way Home dates from February, when Chuck Wendig got us to devise some three word titles, then picked the best and asked us to write flash fiction to them. My choice that time was All Flags Fall, but today I’ve
Friday is Flash Fiction day on my blog. I usually get prompts from a great guy called Chuck Wendig, who has his own style, with a lot of rude words, but he’s inspirational despite that. For today he offered us
‘Hesperides’ sprang to mind when Chuck Wendig challenged us to a prompt involving gods and goddesses. Why I should think immediately of the Garden of the Hesperides is beyond me. I even had to look up Hesperides in order to
“A monster that has never been seen or imagined by anyone before.” I doubt whether such a one exists, in truth, but that was the gist of Chuck Wendig’s challenge this week. And last week I left our hapless colour-blind
The Ranger’s Tale emerges from last week’s flash fiction coupled with the original story Too Much of a Good Thing. Chuck Wendig gave us a prompt to choose one of two well-known sayings (well, one was well-known, the other its cause and effect opposite).
The Road to Erebor from David Colombo Photography is a random Flickr photo that I picked in response to this week’s Chuck Wendig prompt. I’m grateful to the photographer for such a moody, intense subject! Today’s flash fiction is just over 1100 words; it
As mentioned last week, Chuck Wendig invited us to provide three word titles from which he’d select ten for us to pick from for our 1000 words this week. The (awesome) winning selections were (with owners): All Flags Fall (lbstribling)
Chuck asked us to give a three word title this week, from which he is going to select ten to give us our prompt for next week. I’m sure he will say you have to choose something other than one
The prompt from Chuck Wendig for this week is ‘Rebellion’, which is about where I am in planning the Princelings books, at present, although I’m currently re-editing The Perihelix. This is an excuse for my mind not switching into a third
Chuck Wendig’s challenge this week was to face our fears: take a something we were scared of and use it as a basis for our story. I’ve returned to one of my earlier characters for this one, Johnson, a hobo
Welcome to this month’s Insecure Writers Support Group post. You can join in by signing up at insecurewriterssupportgroup.com where you’ll also find the long list of people to visit each month. I tend to visit all my ‘follow’ blogs and at
Chuck Wendig‘s back on the case, and challenged us to come up with a real life (non-fiction) spooky tale today, so something that really happened to us. My really spooky tales, where something happened that I can’t explain why I