This week's judge, and last week's WINNER is Tamara (Feaky Snucker)!
Here are her answers to my "getting to know the judge" questions:
If you are currently querying right now, please tell us about your book. (If its a WIP, tell us about it too!)
I'm querying a commercial fiction about a lead singer and her band. She's trying to move on in her life via musical comeback, but a sabotage happy rival band are getting in her way. It's about healing through music, but has a lot of raunchy musician humour. The title says it all - RAPTOR SNATCH. I'm also neck deep in a YA urban fantasy which I am super psyched about! My devotion to it is making my other WIP green with envy.
How long have you been writing?
Since I was three, but I no longer snap the crayons when I use them:)
Tell us about your writing style. Are you a plotter/outliner, or do you fly by the seat of your pants?
Bit-o-both. Usually I know a few things I want to happen, but it's a surprise how it's going to get from point A to B.
What is one piece of advice you would give new writers?
ALWAYS consider 'WHAT IF.' I think as we get older, it's hard to retain that childlike imagination. But the best ideas come from following that 'WHAT IF' scenario. What if a girl goes tumbling down a rabbit hole? What if there was a boy who was really a wizard? What if there was one ring to rule them all? Consider the what is, and then follow through with it!! Don't give up on it:)
The three words Tamara picked for this week's word prompt are ...
... uh oh ...
Where are the words!? Has anyone seen the word prompt!?
Oh.
Silly rabbits, she picked a picture this week! She's a tricky tricky judge!
"I know that somehow there's been some hype about what words I'm going to choose as the prompt for this week's Flash Friday. Therefore, I've chosen an image prompt instead. *evil cackle* Sincerely, Feaky Snucker."
Check out the picture below, taken by the VERY talented April Elizabeth!
THANKS TAMARA (and April)!!!
And good luck to all who enter!
*Remember, the winner of this week gets to judge next week AND pick the prompt!
FLASH FACTORY FRIDAY #3
5/11/12
PICTURE PROMPT:
Ready ... set ... FLASH!
To Review:
3 word prompt (OR PICTURE!)
50 word minimum / 350 word limit
24 hours
GO!
*Remember, post your entry right here in the comments, please! Don't forget word count and Twitter handle! (Or another way for me to reach the winner!)
Why Do You Weep, Willow
ReplyDeleteRaymond C. Morris
“Shhhh, here she comes,” James whispered, his voice cutting through the low conversation his two friends were having. At once they quieted and moved up beside him. Through the veil of vines they hid behind, they saw her walking unhurriedly down the path. It was as if she measured each step, and walked to the rhythm of a slow, steady beat.
They held their breath, for on the wind they could hear the soft words of the song she sang. It was haunting, chilling, and brought to mind movies in which ancient kings were sent out to sea in boats aflame.
As one, they shrank back when she came abreast of them, a mere ten yards away from their place of concealment. Just as James had told his friends, she was amazingly sexy, though even to their adolescent minds that word seemed to fall flat. In later years they would remember her as stunning, exquisite, breathtakingly beautiful. Her raven-black hair fell in a glossy mass down her shoulders. In deep contrast, her skin was ivory pale and wrapped in a sheer crimson dress that looked almost transparent in places.
“Daaaaaaaaamn,” one of his friends said under his breath. James elbowed him in the side, but he didn’t even notice. They shifted slightly as she passed them. She continued on for another minute or so, and was far enough away that they could speak without fear.
“Every day?” The boy on his right asked.
“Every day, same time.” James replied.
“That’s creepy,”
“Maybe for you,” his other friend said, eyes transfixed.
As James told them she would, the woman began stripping as she walked. He shifted and cleared his throat at the sight of her bare hips, the supple swell of her buttocks. As each time before, the woman came to stop at the base of a large willow tree. She knelt before it, then spread her arms wide and pressed her bare body to its naked bark.
They heard soft sobbing, and embarrassed, crept back the way they had come, leaving the woman to her misery, before the hanging tree.
350 words
@iwrites
ADDICTION by @darci_cole (346 words)
ReplyDeleteI clenched my leg muscles to relieve the stiffness. I dared not move to stretch. I didn’t want to disturb the leaves and branches hiding me. I sucked on a long piece grass to distract from my hunger and desire for a cigarette.
The sun had gone down. I knew she would appear soon. I always came here as often as possible just to see her. It’s an addiction – one of my many. Smoking, drinking, sex – I’d give them all up for one look into her eyes. Sometimes I think I only do those things to numb the pain. She never looks at me.
And why should she? I’m not the captain of the football team, or even of the chess team. I’m just a nobody that the high school girls don’t pay attention to unless they’re drunk.
A light began to glow beyond my hiding place. My eyes fixed onto the top of the stairs.
Within the white light appeared a shimmer of pink. It stretched to the height of the woman before the dark line of her hair broke through. She materialized before my eyes.
I didn’t know what she was. Some of my guesses included nymph, faerie, dryad, or siren. Perhaps she was Calypso, or Aphrodite reincarnated. All I knew for certain was she was beautiful, and I could not be satisfied until I spoke to her.
Slowly, she descended the stone steps. Her dress was sheer. It always gave me a knot in my stomach. I’d seen women unclothed before, but this was different. It gave me chills. I felt like a hormone-crazed fourteen-year-old again.
But it wasn’t her body that brought me back so often. It was those eyes. Dark, deep black eyes. I could never see any white in them.
She flowed. Every movement purposeful, yet patient.
Then she turned toward me. Her black eyes fixed on mine for the first time.
I froze.
Whether I could not move, or would not, I couldn’t tell.
Then she spoke, “You will die.”
I felt sure she was right. I didn’t mind.
Closure BY @AngiNicole722 (345 words)
ReplyDeleteI hid deep in the bushes. Only my eyes were not covered by foliage. I blinked rapidly, trying to hide even my shining eyes from her as she floated down the tracks. Or appeared to at least, her movements being so smooth.
I had waited my entire life for this chance. Years of training, most of those days ending with sore muscles and bloody blisters on my hands and feet. Missed holidays, months of deployments with others like me, all leading up to this one moment in time. A chance to kill the monster I hunted. A chance to prove to my father that his having a daughter instead of a prized son would no longer shame him.
I studied the thing in front of me. It looked like a beautiful woman. Some cultures might say faeries, some would call them sirens, but I knew them as Lygos, the givers of the dark. As she stepped closer, the features of her face came into view and I became even more frozen in my cramped hiding spot. She looked like my mother. What a clever trick! Stifling a gasp and steadying my shaking hand, I slowly drew out my silver tipped dagger from its ornate leather sheath, desperately trying to not make a sound.
She turned my direction and even though I was well hidden, her eyes bore into me. My heart twisted inside. I had longed to see my mother’s face once more at least fifty times a day since I held her hand as she died fourteen years ago. How could she look like my mother?
Unless she knew I was here.
My heart raced as I made my decision. Bounding out from the safety of the trees, I struck one strong blow. The Lygos shuddered and fell beneath me as the dagger sunk deep in her chest. Revealing her true form in her agony, the beauty of my mother fell away. I stood above the monster that had claimed my mother, finally able to put her ghost to rest once and for all.
Release Me
ReplyDeletewords: 188
There had been many days that had passed, where the shimmer of the light was but a memory. I descended down the broken steps, and felt the sun kiss my skin. I was unsure if the feeling was real, or if I'd fallen victim to yet another dream.
The forest offered shelter, I knew I needed that. I'd broken free from the wooden door atop the steps that offered the only sense of security I had ever known. Was this land filled with others who were the same as me?
I had the urge to push my hair from my face, but my true form would be revealed. What if I was seen? Would others see me as a creature to fear, or believe the fairy tales of the pixies that danced in the meadows. Was I harmless?
I was told of the ones who hunted us, the fae. We held the answers to the earths questions. Our race alone controlled the seasons that changed with the moon. Here in the clearing, on the rickety steps, the sun kissed my skin. I was free.
I am without brain to enter at the moment, but this is awesome!! Hopefully I can pop in on it next Friday!!
ReplyDeleteGood luck to everyone!!
I’ve walked the tracks so long that when I close my eyes, I can still see them: decaying, splintered ladders stretching out endlessly before me from horizon to forsaken horizon. Sometimes I can’t tell where the tracks end and I begin. Or maybe that’s a division that doesn’t even exist anymore.
ReplyDelete“You know how life on the rails is,” he used to tell me.
“Tell me again,” I’d say. Listening to him talk about the railroad made me feel like I was watching a master painter at his easel, as engines and grasslands and flags and coal swirled on his tongue in oily rainbows of color.
I hated the trains for taking him away from me.
I feared them for the inevitable day when they would refuse to bring him back.
“I’ll always come home,” he’d say, his carefree laughter dissipating my nightmares like puffs of smoke. “The tracks don’t own me.”
But one day he didn’t come home. A runaway car, somebody suggested. A faulty switch, an explosion, a broken bridge, bandits. All guesses, and all wrong.
The tracks took him, like I’d always known they would.
So I began to walk, looking for him. Days passed. Months. Years? Time flowed past me, under me, thick and black, until the tracks started crumbling beneath my feet, until I forgot my own name, forgot everything except the sound of his laughter.
Still I walk. Surely the tracks can’t keep him forever.
Not without keeping me too.
245 tardy words (thanks! finally got a second to sit down!)
@postupak