November Blog Chain – Book Blurb
Yep, it’s the November Blog Chain, and this month’s prompt is to write up a back cover blurb for a book you have written or would like to write. It should be short, sweet, yet give a sense of people and events without totally spoiling the ending.
Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 — link to this month’s post
Ralph Pines — link to this month’s post
MysteryRiter– link to this month’s post
AuburnAssassin — link to this month’s post
Jarrah Dale — link to this month’s post
SinisterCola — link to this month’s post
dolores haze — link to this month’s post
pyrosama — link to this month’s post
Alynza — link to this month’s post
Cath – You are here!
Stu Ayris
Inkstrokes
egoodlett
LadyDae
SuzanneSeese
Anarchicq
The Girl Who Sold the World
Sam Jones is bored – bored of his boring job, bored of his boring apartment, and bored of his boring life. For fun he starts answering ads in the local newspaper, and when he sees a message “ForSale: World. $1″ he can’t resist checking it out. But beautiful Amy Gold isn’t entirely honest when she sells him the old globe. Before long, Sam discovers he has the world in his hands — quite literally.
With responsibility for keeping the world turning, angry Greek gods to placate, and a missing Goddess to find, Sam’s boring but very very safe life is quickly endangered – can he find Amy Gold before he loses everything?
October Blog Chain – Halloween Horror Stories
This post is part of the October2011 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to compose a dark story with Lovecraftian words. I may have gone a little overboard with the Lovecraftian words.
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As a young man, I was less than I am now, and tempted by those bad ways I was drawn to the life of a wrecker. Now before you judge me, know this. I never did set a light, or profit from the misfortune of others. That night, that unfortunate night, was my first and last in that wretched career.
Even at that tender age, I knew some things had a danger to them. But being young and being naive about the nature of this earth, I paid it no mind. Oh what a piteous beast I was, arrogant, with not a thought to the fortunes of others, but caring only of my own. I was in love, you see, with a lass called Sally whose parents thought me too lowly for their daughter to wed.
This loathesome night not even a sliver of moon lit our way. My companion hung a lamp in front of us, stomping his cane on the ground to test if it was sound and mumbling to himself as wallowed in his decrepitude. ‘We are late’ he muttered, striking his cane in front of him. ‘We will miss the lighting and the night will be done before we cross this accursed moor.’ I was tempted to ask him what was the hurry, but the wind was biting and my coat was poor and the cold clawed at my bones and made my teeth chatter and, if truth be told, I was afeard of what he might say.<!–more–>
It was not for a while that I realized we were heading not down, but up. A narrow path wound precariously along the cliff tops, above the vicious cliffs. The sea roared below us over needle-pointed rocks and a foetid smell crept up from below. ‘We must hurry’ the old man said ‘or we will miss the lighting’. He hustled further ahead of me, stooped like a hermit and wrapped his lamp in his thick oilskin cloak. I hurried to keep up, careful not to stumble on the rugged path.
We arrived at a point, not on the shore as I expected, but above. On a cliff which looked down to a small cove. The sea roared below us over needle pointed rocks. We were on the headland, beyond the wrecker’s cove and across the cliffs, on the opposite headland, a flicker of light burned.
‘It is lit.’
Those words put a chill in my bone that was not caused by wind or weather or water. There was a quality to his voice, a raw, hideous glee as he watched the light. He stood, perfectly still, for just a moment, seemingly closing his eyes and sucking in the noisome air. Then he started talking in a wordless language, a chant, which wrapped itself around me and held me fast. I could not move.
My arms clamped by my side, and my feet would not move. I tried to work my muscles, to wrench them into action. But the more I tried the tighter the ropes of that chant bound me, until I could no longer breathe. I dropped to my knees, and then to the ground, writhing like a snake as the charmer howled his curse.
In an instant I was aware of everything. The light, and the cliffs, and the wreckers in the cove below. I could see the ship off the shore, struggling in the winds. And then I was above it all, soaring on the wind — I was the wind — blowing the ship, and whipping the sails, and shepherding it towards those terrible rocks. And I could hear the cries of the captain and the first mate, pointing towards the light and shouting of safe harbor. And I willed them to stop, to turn away, but they would not listen.
Then, all of a sudden, I was back in my body with air gulping into my lungs. My companion was howling, but it was not that rhythmic howl that had me writhing like a snake. It was cacodaemoniacal, torn from his very soul.
The light had gone out.
He turned to me. ‘Your fault,’ he hissed ‘your fault. The wreckage requires a sacrifice. You were weak, lacking. Insufficient. Your fault.’
He struck out at me with his cane, but the move caught him wrong footed. His rotten foot twisted under him and he fell, driven by his swing, backwards over the cliff.
I crawled to the edge, but it was too dark to see. Instead I imagined the fall, imagined the twisted body speared on the rocks below. I crawled backwards, as far away from the edge as my nerves would carry my exhausted body and collapsed, weeping.
I stayed there all night, until the sun illuminated the world once more. When my legs would carry me, I ran home without looking back and did not visit that place ever again.
I waited for the news, but it did not come. No ships were wrecked that night, and no people were found missing. Knowing they were safe, I fled to the city and worked in the docks, dedicating my life to ensuring the ships stayed in good repair and safe from the wrecker’s lights. Many years later I heard a sailor tell the story, a myth of the sea, he said, of a demon who took the form of an old man. Legend tells that he drew ships to the shore with the sacrifice of a virgin boy. I know not why he would make that mistake, but every day when I wake I thank the Lord for the young lass who was my salvation and who is now my wife.
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Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
Ralph Pines
Cath
Diana Rajchel
Alynza
lufftocraft
robeiae
pyrosama
dolores haze
leahzero
AbielleRose
pezie
MysteryRiter
JSSchley
Inkstrokes
Alpha Echo
Proach
Nighthawks – AW September Blog Chain
This month’s prompt: A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words
Write a brief response to this picture: Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper.
Do they know how lucky they are?
Another step towards the light. Any closer and my nose will be pressing against the glass and the blond-haired behatted soda jerk will be shaking his fist and chasing me away.
They don’t like my kind around here. Even in the depths of night, after the jazz clubs have closed and the only customers are the late night stragglers too lonesome or too wretched to return to their solitary cells. Even in those few silent hours when the city almost sleeps, before the sun clambers into all but the darkest places, there are no open arms to welcome us; the hungry, the homeless, the voiceless unseen.
The wind is blowing colder now. I would like to travel south, but travelling means money or respectability and I have neither. And it is far too late to walk. I should have started a long time ago. Years ago. When I was still young and my legs would carry me further than the next dumpster or the next soup kitchen or the next mission.
Instead I will go to Our Lady of Mercy and pretend to pray for a black and white miracle to bring me shelter in the hardest of times. And if God himself turns me away, I will die on the streets like the rat I am.
Do they know how lucky they are, these nighthawks, that all they have to prey on is themselves?
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The perspective of the picture caught me as soon as I saw it and I knew I had to write this from the viewpoint of someone who envied these people and their connections – however tenuous.
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Visit the other participants in this Blog Chain:
orion_mk3 - (link to this month’s post)
BigWords - (link to this month’s post)
robeiae - (link to this month’s post)
pezie - (link to this month’s post)
Ralph Pines - (link to this month’s post)
AbielleRose - (link to this month’s post)
Darkshore - (link to this month’s post)
dolores haze - (link to this month’s post)
Alynza - (link to this month’s post)
pyrosama - (link to this month’s post)
lufftocraft - (link to this month’s post)
Cath – You are here!
A change of pace.
Virginia Lee, is running AW’s Flash Fiction Carnival the Third. The theme is transformation.
Death of a Muse
by Cath Smith
Rusted leaves float on the surface, bobbing up and down like tiny sail boats on wind-blown waves. I watch them from the front porch, wondering how cold the water felt on her skin, and whether the dying leaves remembered.
It was our favorite place, here on the porch. From the wooden swing seat you can see to the east, out across the lake. On the far side, the mountains rise blue in the mornings, and burn a brilliant red at sunset. We used to watch them together.
I don’t know when it ended. Or I can’t remember.
There’s no one time or place when it stopped, no new beginning, no butterfly transformation. It was a gradual shift, slow as the creeping continents. I almost didn’t notice she was gone.
I try and remember that sweet smell of jasmine. For a blissful moment, I think I have it. I reach out in hope. But it slips, it slithers away. It hovers out of reach, taunting and teasing me with a memory too faint to grasp. The bush behind me lies dead, its barren branches eating into the fragile frame of our nirvana.
She would whisper to me here, tell tales of the breeze murmuring in the tips of the trees, or sing about the birds, circling high above. She gave my world texture, painted it in vibrant hues. She gave me fever, passion, a lust to hear and sense and feel everything – everything there was to know. I devoured it, every tiny sensation, every tingling hair. I knew the embarrassment of love, and the soothing stab of pain. I knew the obsessions of mice and the playfulness of snowflakes. Nothing was beyond my grasp.
But the fevers burned brightly and fast. In a shudder they were gone, and I would tire of her stories, told over and again. They lost the sweet shimmer of morning dew. And then, I’d brush her off. Close her down and walk away. Then come back hungry as the sun broke the sky, thirsting for her and sucking her dry.
And it strikes me only now, after all this time, that I never once gave anything back. Like the jasmine, she remained untamed, cared for only by the weather and the open skies.
I always knew she would leave. Or I think now that I did. Perhaps that is why I hungered; perhaps that is why I drank so fast. Perhaps, in some tiny corner of my soul, I knew her time was brief.
Or perhaps I drove her away. Perhaps my moods and my insolence became too much to bear. Perhaps I devoured her too fast.
And perhaps it doesn’t matter any more.
Because it’s too late for apologies.
I never saw her leave, not really. I only saw the ripples on the lake and half-wondered at the fractured reflections. And I pretended to hear her voice.
But it was only an echo.
