I recently returned from the gorgeous south Aegean island of Kos, which inspired a some writing. I sat on the beach on a beautiful, cloudless hot day and looked across the ocean towards Rhodes and the clipped mountains of Turkey, and a poem, Sky Blue, popped into my head.
I am a sucker for Greek mythology, and since I was staying in the land of the greatest of mythological characters, I couldn't resist having a play.
Sky Blue
Indigo hue replete
She ripples and glistens
Reflecting her silvery charms
A Goddess, bathing beneath
The sultry breath of Helios.
Her shimmering emerald hints
Refract his light
And summon sapphire shards
That quicken across her supple surface
With a darkening, sensual allure.
She is sky blue in all her beauty
Sky blue beneath the waves
Voluptuous around Ionian Islands
Her subtle whispers in the surf;
Amphitrite, ascending.
Runner Up...
Thanks to Lily Childs for picking my little flash piece, Just Another Echo, as runner up for the Friday Prediction challenge over at the Feardom.
It's reflection of something that happens on most streets in most major cities around the world, and the title reflects how society perceives those who find themselves coping on the streets, and how they are victims of our ignorance.
Just Another Echo
The wretch in her eyes shrank behind the shadows that swallowed her sullen flesh.
Shapes oozed into focus before vanishing into a dull blur, leaving her squinting.
Sounds...slipping in and out of her velvet-tinted haze with a slow coiling resonance, like a soft burr, an aching hum.
Muscle fibres tautened around her torso, rippled around her ribs. Vomit spilled down crumpled, soiled clothes but she barely noticed.
She looked up from her stooped position; people drifted by, unaware of her pain.
She was just another echo through the cold damp streets.
No matter. She lifted the bottle, took another sip.
It's reflection of something that happens on most streets in most major cities around the world, and the title reflects how society perceives those who find themselves coping on the streets, and how they are victims of our ignorance.
Just Another Echo
The wretch in her eyes shrank behind the shadows that swallowed her sullen flesh.
Shapes oozed into focus before vanishing into a dull blur, leaving her squinting.
Sounds...slipping in and out of her velvet-tinted haze with a slow coiling resonance, like a soft burr, an aching hum.
Muscle fibres tautened around her torso, rippled around her ribs. Vomit spilled down crumpled, soiled clothes but she barely noticed.
She looked up from her stooped position; people drifted by, unaware of her pain.
She was just another echo through the cold damp streets.
No matter. She lifted the bottle, took another sip.
Available anthologies
Two recent anthologies have been published by Static Movement which contain some of my short stories. Driftwood - a dark take of death on turbulent seas - first appeared on Lily Childs' February Femmes Fatales, and is now published in Tales of Salt and Sorrow, available from Amazon.com
Nocturne, another tale originally featured in the February Femmes Fatales series is about things that go bump in the night, and features in another anthology called Comes the Night.
A second seminal short story is also included, called Watched. This originally appeared on Thrillers, Killers and Chillers under the original heading of The Watcher.
Both anthologies are edited by Dorothy Davies. If you like your stories dark, then these are for you. Happy reading...
 |
| Available from Amazon.com |
Nocturne, another tale originally featured in the February Femmes Fatales series is about things that go bump in the night, and features in another anthology called Comes the Night.
A second seminal short story is also included, called Watched. This originally appeared on Thrillers, Killers and Chillers under the original heading of The Watcher.
 |
| Available from Amazon.com |
Both anthologies are edited by Dorothy Davies. If you like your stories dark, then these are for you. Happy reading...
Good things come in small packages
It's been a very busy few months with the second novel in its third draft, short stories and poems for various anthologies, critiques for clients and various competitions. A writer's work is never done.
A flash fiction story called Resurrection won first place over at Lily Child's Feardom, inspired by and using three words - Legionnaire, envelope and scry. Not exactly the easiest words to work with, but a challenge nevertheless, and writers love a challenge.
Resurrection
Shallow thoughts and sallow eyes - she stared at the churned earth, scrying ghostly images in her mind, wresting death from its muddy hole to invite the light.
She held a sullied, rotted leather pouch in her hands, like a prayer book, careful not to disturb the disintegrated envelope scattered inside.
The suffocating cloud of time slowly lifted on the Legionnaire’s last days; broken words on perished paper to loved ones back home; now lost and forgotten and blemished.
Urged by a breeze, the garnished green fields of Champagne wafted at her feet.
As one by one, his bones emerged.
A flash fiction story called Resurrection won first place over at Lily Child's Feardom, inspired by and using three words - Legionnaire, envelope and scry. Not exactly the easiest words to work with, but a challenge nevertheless, and writers love a challenge.
Resurrection
Shallow thoughts and sallow eyes - she stared at the churned earth, scrying ghostly images in her mind, wresting death from its muddy hole to invite the light.
She held a sullied, rotted leather pouch in her hands, like a prayer book, careful not to disturb the disintegrated envelope scattered inside.
The suffocating cloud of time slowly lifted on the Legionnaire’s last days; broken words on perished paper to loved ones back home; now lost and forgotten and blemished.
Urged by a breeze, the garnished green fields of Champagne wafted at her feet.
As one by one, his bones emerged.
Repetition and Sibilance in poetry
A recent poem for the One Word Challenge over on Writer's Talkback made me examine the relationship between two devices used in fiction - repetition and sibilance - a way of teasing and toying with a reader, and I wondered how I could apply these together in poetry.
Repetition is well known in poetry, but for Something Hidden, I wanted to create a sense of creeping tension, of drawing the reader to wonder what that Something was, and why it was hidden. I used the sibilance on each opening stanza, coupled with repeating the something hidden mantra to try to give it that dark quality.
Does it creep beneath the skin? Judge for yourself.
Something Hidden
Slithering, simpering
Something hidden
Facade built, your
Pearlesque crust
Smiling from within.
Soiling, spoiling
Something hidden
Cleaving your way
Through life, and
Slicing with passion
Heaving, leaving
Something hidden
Sharp words, your
Forked tongue
Mocking with fashion
Bending, folding
Something hidden
Blunting your blade
Around soft throats
Betrayal bidden
Creeping, masking
Something hidden
Your deceitful sheen
Stretched tight
Across a burnished
Expression.
Repetition is well known in poetry, but for Something Hidden, I wanted to create a sense of creeping tension, of drawing the reader to wonder what that Something was, and why it was hidden. I used the sibilance on each opening stanza, coupled with repeating the something hidden mantra to try to give it that dark quality.
Does it creep beneath the skin? Judge for yourself.
Something Hidden
Slithering, simpering
Something hidden
Facade built, your
Pearlesque crust
Smiling from within.
Soiling, spoiling
Something hidden
Cleaving your way
Through life, and
Slicing with passion
Heaving, leaving
Something hidden
Sharp words, your
Forked tongue
Mocking with fashion
Bending, folding
Something hidden
Blunting your blade
Around soft throats
Betrayal bidden
Creeping, masking
Something hidden
Your deceitful sheen
Stretched tight
Across a burnished
Expression.
Getting it right
It's good when a writer gets feedback on stories. We know whether we're doing it right, or whether we're a little awry. With a recent little number for the One Word Challenge over at Writers Talkback, I pushed my writing ability with a 200 word piece drawn completely from imagination alone.
Butterflies and Beginnings is my take on the feeling of childbirth. I could not write from experience because I've never given birth, this would rely on my writing ability to capture what it might be like.
The feedback has been amazing, that women would identify with it so personally. It's good to know that sometimes our writing doesn't just reach out and touch people, or entertain, or move them, it makes them believe it's real.
Butterflies and Beginnings
Wave after wave, the tumultuous pull; the gravity of invisible hands tugged at her insides and ripped at her muscles.
Perspiration oozed from her gleaming skin; veins slithered beneath the surface, full with pressure.
Then, as though to break the intense fog of pain, ripples of rapture came and went like a fleeting butterfly in slow motion, drawing her into the feathery ether.
But the calm didn’t last long - the pain returned once again, clawed at her. A bright glare pressed against her eyes, blurred faces hovered over her, lips moved, yet she could barely hear herself think above her shrieks.
She felt someone’s hand on hers - a familiar touch. She saw his face, remembered who he was, but the fire raging in her abdomen made her wince; muscles contorted and instead of words, the sound of her voice echoed in her ears like a strained violin brushed by wires.
Nearly there. Another voice, somewhere outside her haze.
Another ethereal butterfly wafted by.
It felt as though the bottom half of her body had ripped away, then the pain slowly subsided, settled.
Someone placed something against her breast.
She gazed down. Ethereal butterflies gathered around her newborn baby.
Butterflies and Beginnings is my take on the feeling of childbirth. I could not write from experience because I've never given birth, this would rely on my writing ability to capture what it might be like.
The feedback has been amazing, that women would identify with it so personally. It's good to know that sometimes our writing doesn't just reach out and touch people, or entertain, or move them, it makes them believe it's real.
Butterflies and Beginnings
Wave after wave, the tumultuous pull; the gravity of invisible hands tugged at her insides and ripped at her muscles.
Perspiration oozed from her gleaming skin; veins slithered beneath the surface, full with pressure.
Then, as though to break the intense fog of pain, ripples of rapture came and went like a fleeting butterfly in slow motion, drawing her into the feathery ether.
But the calm didn’t last long - the pain returned once again, clawed at her. A bright glare pressed against her eyes, blurred faces hovered over her, lips moved, yet she could barely hear herself think above her shrieks.
She felt someone’s hand on hers - a familiar touch. She saw his face, remembered who he was, but the fire raging in her abdomen made her wince; muscles contorted and instead of words, the sound of her voice echoed in her ears like a strained violin brushed by wires.
Nearly there. Another voice, somewhere outside her haze.
Another ethereal butterfly wafted by.
It felt as though the bottom half of her body had ripped away, then the pain slowly subsided, settled.
Someone placed something against her breast.
She gazed down. Ethereal butterflies gathered around her newborn baby.
Imagery in Fiction
Over at my other blog I have been writing about creating imagery and how to do it. As readers we don't think about these things, we just want to relish the fictional world that has been created for us and jump right in.
Lily Child's Feardom is a great place to cut one's teeth for this kind of writing. Because it's flash fiction, it forces the writer to choose their words carefully - there's only a 100 to play with, and this means being very selective with what you want to convey. It's great practice for writers - newcomers and veterans - and a must for refining your writing talent.
My short piece Execrate appeared last week, and I wanted the imagery within the narrative to speak for itself, which I think it did, to queasy effect.
Execrate
Clammy arches, insipid with a dark pervading sense of fear, glistened beneath the firelight; the sweat of men filled the stone hallways with a bitter musk.
He drank from a lustreless flute; extracted juices warmed his roseate lips, thick like oil down his throat, and yet it could not muster sensibility from a marbled expression. His phobia of clergy was just; swift.
The monk’s strangled gurgle permeated the stone hall. A strange coloured liquid dribbled from his mouth; dark coloured slurry spotted with blood. Eyes bulged, veins squirmed.
The long wooden spike emerged from the monk’s mouth.
Vlad finally smiled.
Lily Child's Feardom is a great place to cut one's teeth for this kind of writing. Because it's flash fiction, it forces the writer to choose their words carefully - there's only a 100 to play with, and this means being very selective with what you want to convey. It's great practice for writers - newcomers and veterans - and a must for refining your writing talent.
My short piece Execrate appeared last week, and I wanted the imagery within the narrative to speak for itself, which I think it did, to queasy effect.
Execrate
Clammy arches, insipid with a dark pervading sense of fear, glistened beneath the firelight; the sweat of men filled the stone hallways with a bitter musk.
He drank from a lustreless flute; extracted juices warmed his roseate lips, thick like oil down his throat, and yet it could not muster sensibility from a marbled expression. His phobia of clergy was just; swift.
The monk’s strangled gurgle permeated the stone hall. A strange coloured liquid dribbled from his mouth; dark coloured slurry spotted with blood. Eyes bulged, veins squirmed.
The long wooden spike emerged from the monk’s mouth.
Vlad finally smiled.
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