I’m somewhat late (long story) but my drabble, Aftermath, is up at The Were-Traveler. A drabble, for those who haven’t come across them before, is a story that is exactly 100 words long – not 101, not 99…100. From Wikipedia: The concept is said to have originated in UK science fiction fandom in the 1980s; the 100-word format was established by the Birmingham University SF Society, taking a term from Monty Python‘s 1971 Big Red Book. In the book, “Drabble” was described as a word game where the first participant to write a novel was the winner. In order to make the game possible in the real world, it was agreed that 100 words would suffice. The Were-Traveler has a whole issue of drabbles, well worth a look. [The article Out Now – Aftermath by Philip Harris originally appeared on Solitary Mindset on May 3rd, 2013]
We Have a Winner – Aftermath
Great news to start off the week, The Were-Traveler has accepted my drabble, Aftermath. Now I’m off to answer some questions from an editor – which may or may not result in another acceptance – time will tell.
Another Aftermath
The story I started three weeks ago, Bottled Lightning, is now sitting at 4,356 words – a little over 1,500 words shorter than the first draft. I read through it again yesterday and tweaked it a bit more. I’m happier with it, but still not happy. In fact, I was more disappointed with it than I remembered. It was kind of demoralising actually. Never mind. I did write a new story yesterday, Aftermath, a one hundred word submission for an upcoming anthology. It’s actually the second piece of flash I’ve written called Aftermath. Apparently, I’m fond of that title. In other news, I’ve been playing a lot of Letter By Letter recently. It’s a word game on iPad and iPhone that’s sort of Othello with letters. You score points by placing tiles onto the board to make words but you can also use letters your opponent has played. Doing so changes them to your colour, giving you points and taking points away from your opponent. That simple mechanic means that the lead swings back and forth between the players and games often come down to the final turn. You can get Letter By Letter for free on iTunes and there’s a bit more info on the … Read More
Free Fiction – Aftermath
Aftermath “This is what happens?” said Nathan. The creature nodded. A thin trickle of frozen green pus dangled from the scratch Nathan had left in its cheek. “But I didn’t realize.” The creature shrugged. “Is there anything I can do?” The creature looked around the frozen wasteland and scratched its head. Grimacing with concentration, it poked around in its ear for a moment and then tugged a few wiry hairs free. Nathan watched the creature twist the hairs into a tiny braid. The creature opened its mouth and mimed swallowing the braid and then handed it to Nathan. Nathan shuddered. Story originally submitted to the Tuesday Tales 17 Flash Fiction competition. This is an example of a story where I took Anne McCaffrey’s advice so there’s a detailed back story behind those 100 words. Maybe one day I’ll extend it into a full length story.
Unexpected Flash
Some unexpected writing yesterday, 100 words worth to be exact. I happened to catch a tweet directing me to a Tuesday Tales challenge on the Glitter Word blog. The challenge was to write a one hundred or less word piece of flash fiction inspired by the image below and including the word Twist. It happened to be lunch time and I was taking a break from my day job so I noodled around for ten or fifteen minutes and wrote a story called Aftermath. This was the first time I’ve taken part in this type of challenge and I really enjoyed it – it was a nice to be able to take a quick creative break in the middle of the day and the one hundred word limit forced me to keep the writing focused. The Tuesday Tales challenge takes place every week so I’ll be dropping back next week to see if Ethel the Muse has anything to say about next week’s photo. You can find my story, along with the other entries here.