The White Review Short Story Prize

Hi all,

just a quick note to let people know about The White Review Short Story Prize. This is a competition for writers resident in the UK and Ireland who do not have a publishing deal. There is an impressive prize fund for this contest and a number of bonus prizes for the winner. The deadline is March 1st and full details can be found here.

Darkness Comes

Ok, so Rachael Harrie's First Campaigner Challenge is running all this week, until Friday February 24th.

 The Challenge is:

Write a short story/flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “Shadows crept across the wall”. These five words will be included in the word count. 

If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), do one or more of these:

• end the story with the words: "everything faded." (also included in the word count)

• include the word "orange" in the story

• write in the same genre you normally write

• make your story 200 words exactly!

I'm posting my story below. If you read it and you like it, please click here and vote for #89. Thanks!

 Darkness Comes

Shadows crept across the wall behind her. They shifted and churned, vying with each other, edging irresistably forwards like the tide.

She felt them, even though she could not see them. She could almost hear them, whispering on the edges of her consciousness. They were always there, always creeping behind her. Some days they grew closer than others.

The two women were seated across from her, talking. Sometimes they glanced in her direction. They did not meet her gaze. Were they talking to her, or about her? She didn’t care. It was so hard to hear them when the shadows were whispering.

She watched them contemptuously, their nervous chatter grating against her hearing. They were pretending not to hear their own shadows, trying to drown them out with meaningless noise. The desperate undertones in their conversation both amused and annoyed her at the same time.

The shadows surged closer, clouding the edges of her vision. She could hear them clearly now, their seductive voices stroking her thoughts.

The women stopped talking as she began to smile.

She stood up. They had taken her weapons, but that did not matter. She would make them face the darkness.

The shadows danced. 

Don't forget to comment! Want to vote for this story? Please click here. I'm #89, thanks!

This Week: Writing, Working

So today is Monday, the start of yet another week. After quite a few years of having a very haphazard and inconsistent working and writing schedule, I've finally realized that the standard 9 - 5, Monday - Friday work timetable might exist for a reason. Funny how the bane of the working man might just be an efficient time management tool...

For the last month or so I've been getting off to a good start with Mondays, in at my desk for about 9:30am, like a good little worker bee. (Ok, there may still be a bit of lingering resistance to this approach.) So far today I've gotten a good bit of work done and even had time to browse my favorite writer's forum. I'm planning to get some writing in later, once I've sorted out my various work commitments.

For this week my overall writing aim is to finish the first draft of a short story I'm working on. I've written about 1,000 words so far, so I'm still more or less at the beginning. There's some plot details that still have to be worked through, and minor character development that needs clarifying, but overall I'm happy with how it's shaping up. Once it's done I'll post it online somewhere and put a link here.

                           

The Kill

First off, here's a link to a short story I published on http://www.sffworld.com.

Sffworld is a great site for writers and fans of science fiction and fantasy. It has a great selection of author and discussion forums, and also allows members to read and rate each others' work. If you want to catch some emerging authors and get some feedback on your own writing, this is a good place to start!

Personally I tend to read a lot of fantasy, and most of the stuff that I write would be classed as fantasy too. At the moment I am working on the first novel in a trilogy, a few short stories and another one-off novel, all of which  would fall into the fantasy genre. More on those later!

Aish