Hear the sun-tinged shapes.
See the youthful spirits sigh,
Feel the colours shine,
Breathe in the cool autumn air.
Our task is to greet the dusk.
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This was tanka poem written in response to the five word prompts for The Secret Keepers Weekly Writing Challenge #108.
This week’s five words are role, shape, quiet, spirit and youth. Join in and/or read the other entries. Synonym substitution is allowed, so I substituted ‘role’ for ‘task’.
“What Pegman saw” is a weekly flash fiction challenge prompt inspired by google maps, using the 360 degree view of the location provided. Bloggers write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 150 words. You can read the rules here. You can find today’s location on this page, from where you can also get the Inlinkz code.
This week, our host, Karen, takes us to the Sambor Prei Kuk Temple in Cambodia.
I’ve been meaning to take part for some time. I checked today’s prompt and started writing my story at once. Here it is! Its’s a little sentimental, but that’s where the image took me.
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I peered over Marian’s shoulder. “What are you looking at?”
“Sambor Prei Kuk Temple,” she said, her eyes fixed on the screen.
“Shall we go there?”
“We’re already there, can’t you see?” She smiled and nodded at the image. “We’re walking along the paths, looking up to the grey sky through the leaves of the tall trees.”
I stared at the image. “Can we smell the moss growing on the Temple, or stroke the time weathered walls, or go inside?”
Her eyes shone. “You know we can’t.”
I squeezed her frail hand. “I’ll look it up on the Internet. We can afford it.”
My thumb wiped the tear sliding down her cheek. “In summer, your hair will have grown back and we’ll say a thank you prayer inside the Temple.”
“Next summer,” she whispered mesmerised by the image and turned to me. “If only, Jack.”
“We’ll make it happen, Marian, together.”
****
I’m thrilled to be back with a new flash fiction episode for Friday Fictioneers featuring Alice and her best friend, Bill, and her parents Marsha and Kevin. Kevin has been in serious trouble for the last two weeks, and matters are getting worse.
Thank you Rochelle at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple for this week’s prompt and for hosting this fabulous weekly flash fiction challenge. Thank you Sarah Potter for this week’s picture prompt, below.
Mum came back at last, face drawn and shoulders hunched.
She slumped on a chair and dropped her head into her trembling hands.
“Where’s dad?” I asked.
She opened a travel bag and placed two worn shoes on the table, wiping her tears.
“He went inside as instructed. I waited. He didn’t come out, so I followed and found his worn shoes on the floor, Alice. Nothing else. No-one else.”
“It’s time to call the police,” said Bill. “They could help us, find evidence…”
She shook her head. “There was a note. Look.”
This has to end here. Don’t look for me.
****
All my ‘Alice’ flash fiction stories, written for the Friday Fictioneers Challenge, can be read as standalones, but if you’re interested in reading previous stories of Alice’s adventures, here they are!
This week’s prompt has inspired me to write a romantic tale. So far, we’ve seen Billy and Alice as inseparable, childhood friends. This week we’ll be looking at how their relationship might develop.
Leading on from last week’s story, in which Alice’s parents were in some sort of trouble, Alice will need Billy, now Bill’s, help and support.
Thank you Rochelle for the prompt and hosting the challenge. Please check out her blog for more information on this weekly challenge. https://rochellewisoff.com/ and thanks to © Kelvin M. Knight for the photo prompt.
The smell of toast and coffee wafted up the stairs and into Bill’s guest room, where I lay, eyes squeezed shut, holding back my tears, hoping my parents would return.
Downstairs, Bill’s mum was laying the table. He stood by her side, turned and warmed my heart with his smile.
When had my skinny, playful, childhood friend become the anchor which held my world together?
‘Breakfast’s ready,’ he said, placing a piece of toast on my plate, and this time, my tears flowed.
‘We’re in this together, Alice,’ he whispered and kissed my temple.
♡♡♡♡♡♡
Thank you for reading and I hope you’re having a great weekend❤
I’m thrilled to be with you yet again with my Friday Fictioneers story of Alice Pendragon and her adventures, thanks to the photo prompts and inspiration provided by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields at Friday Fictioneers. Check out this weekly challenge here.
This week I’ve written a suspenseful flash. Alice’s father, Kevin, seems to be in trouble. What’s the problem? Where is he? Can Alice and her mother help him? Will they arrive on time?
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The Deserted Path
Our car bumped along the deserted path. ‘Are you sure this is the right way?’
My mother nodded, her lips pursed and her eyes glued to the road.
Above us, dark, heavy clouds loomed as the sun’s last pink-tinged rays faded into the horizon.
‘Will we make it on time?’ I asked. She didn’t answer.
The flash drive he had asked me to bring was hidden in my pocket.
‘What’s daddy doing here?’
A drop slid down her cheek, splashing on the hand that was grabbing the steering wheel with all her might.
Her voice trembled. ‘I don’t know, Alice.’
****
All my ‘Alice’ flash fiction written for the Friday Fictioneers Challenge can be read as standalones, but if you’re interested in reading previous stories of Alice’s adventures, here they are!
I surprise myself every time I pick up my pen, because I (almost) always jot down my ideas on paper before I sit down to the ‘real’ work of giving shape to my untidy notes on my laptop.
I always carry a pen and notebook, ready to capture the idea on the spur of the moment, before it escapes forever… Many of those ideas are never transformed into complete stories, although they may become part of a story. I use the same notebook until all the pages have been used up, which usually takes about a month, and I keep them at hand, just in case, for years.
I’ve written three historical novels and have started a fourth, but my heart isn’t in this fourth novel, at least not yet, so it’s resting on my shelf for the time being, because I wanted to write something different, but I haven’t known what for a long time.
I felt lost, not knowing what kind of novel I wanted to write. I kept filling notebooks full of ideas which never came to fruition. It wasn’t writer’s block, because I had plenty of random creative ideas, but I felt I lacked purpose. I needed to find a project that would absorb all my creative thoughts and energy. I was getting worried. Although there were many ideas, not one pulled me obsessively, which is what I need to immerse myself in a novel completely.
It has taken me about a year to feel overwhelmed by a new project, but it has finally happened, when I least expected it, on a long car journey, as co-pilot, the seed of an idea dropped and flourished. When I arrived, I had a rough outline, main characters, setting, and a sense that ‘this was it at last’.
Throughout the following month of August, at a holiday flat by the sea, the plot grew and the characters came to life. It’s not a historical novel and it’s not a family saga. It’s a type of novel I never thought I’d write. A contemporary, romantic thriller simmered for 30 days, in a whole notebook of ideas. I’m back home now, and the proper, chapter by chapter outline is almost complete.
I’m a plotter, mostly, although I enjoy improvising, too. I love it when a character I hadn’t planned surprises me by popping into my mind and taking over, or when a plot twist happens unexpectedly as my characters are thinking or speaking. I can deal with these surprising characters and events and rework my original plan. On the other hand, I find it impossible to write without a destination, and that’s where plotting helps me focus.
I welcome surprises as a writer. I never know when or how a creative idea will take root in my mind, and I love the challenge of continued surprises as the novel unfolds.
A famous Spanish poet, Antonio Machado (1975-1939), wrote, “Traveler, there is no road; you make your path as you walk.” I agree with Machado’s idea, but I also like to know where my destination lies.
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Do you like surprises as a writer?
Have you ever surprised yourself?
Today on #TuesdayBookBlog I’m reviewing The Missing Wife, suspenseful, contemporary women’s fiction by Sheila O’Flanagan.
My Review
One day, insecure and shy Imogen vanishes into thin air without a trace. Everyone is shocked, especially her doting husband. Nobody knows where she is or why she has gone, but Imogen has a plan. As the novel unfolds, we gradually discover why she left and where she’s going.
Imogen embarks on a journey of self-discovery and liberation. I don’t want to include spoilers, so I’ll just say it was easy to sympathise with Imogen’s need to break away and go back to understand her past searching for answers to her present predicament and as a way towards her future. Drama unfolds as she finds out the truth about her past and starts to live a new life, but not everyone is willing to let her move on.
Various family dramas unfold and eventually collide in the end when Imogen will have to decide who she is and where she wants to be, and prove to herself that she’s strong enough and ready to move forward on her own.
I enjoyed reading about Imogen’s geographical and emotional journey of self discovery. In spite of some very unpleasant events and circumstances occurring throughout her life, on the whole it was a feel-good read and an optimistic take on a very dark family drama.
****
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When you watch a film or TV series after reading a book, one of two things can happen, you either love the film version or hate it. This is my take on the novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith and the TV series, which has just been aired on BBC1.
A Cuckoo’s Calling is one of the books I read last summer on a friend’s recommendation and I was not disappointed. I also thoroughly enjoyed the first three episodes of the TV series which enacts this novel.
As far as I’m concerned, everything J. K. Rowling writes merits a five-star review because she is so talented at making characters and stories come to life that her novels are a pleasure to read. Thanks to her vivid descriptions, in this case writing as Robert Galbraith, I had ‘seen’ the whole novel in my mind before I watched the TV series, which was an almost perfect rendition of what I had imagined.
All the characters, major and minor come alive, almost jumping out of the pages. The only problem for me, and this is probably very personal, was that I wasn’t very interested in most of the characters involved in Strike’s investigation. He was hired by the bother of an old school friend to find out if his adopted sister, supermodel Lula’s suicide, may have been a murder. I thought it was such a pity that the author invested her talent in bringing such self-centered and mostly uninteresting characters to life.
Fortunately, the main characters, the private detective, Cormoran Strike, and his assistant or sidekick Robin Ellacott, are two extraordinary characters who made reading the novel worthwhile. I thought Cormoran was a complex and intriguing character, who will no doubt show more of his personality as the series progresses. However, Robin steals the show. She’s such a caring, clever, resourceful and engaging character, that she’s my biggest motivation to read on.
Both actors incarnate their literary counterparts brilliantly, again, Holliday Granger as Robin stands out because she’s so perfect for the part, coming across as vulnerable yet determined and sensitive yet tough. Tom Burke as Cormoran is also almost ideal, but for me, at times he came across as too attractive and young for the rugged, as well as physically and emotionally damaged, detective portrayed in the novel.
Cormoran and Robin’s relationship will obviously grow into a solid friendship, and who knows, there may be more, but first, Cormoran, who has plenty of unresolved personal issues, needs to sort himself out, physically and emotionally before he can commit to a serious long term relationship with anyone. On the other hand, Robin, who is already engaged, is not going to indulge in an occasional fling with her boss, even if she feels attracted to him.
The plot was well contrived, but again, to me it was lost on such superficial (and to me tedious) people. I’ll continue reading the series because she’s a brilliant writer, but I hope the rest of the instalments have characters and stories I can feel more invested in.
(You can watch the Trailer and some scenes on this YouTube video channel)
Regarding the television series, it was brilliant, exactly as I had imagined it. It was even better than the novel in some aspects. In the novel, the investigation was long and sagged at some points, whereas the series had a more even pace. For example, the end of the novel, where the murder, murderer, motive and method is methodically disentangled and explained by Strike, dragged a bit (after all, the reader had already figured most of it out), yet the final TV episode reduced the final scene, making it more effective.
One aspect the book conveyed far better than the series was the humour. I found it lacking in the series and brilliant in the novel. The humour, especially at the beginning of the novel had me laughing out loud, whereas the subtle humour throughout, was a breath of fresh air.
Finally, the streets, shops, stations, tubes, homes, people and weather etc. of London, as well as the fabulous music score and songs, added an extra layer of depth to the recreation of the novel.
I definitely recommend both the series and the novel, because on this occasion, the series really does complement, and in some instances even improves on the book.
I listened to the audio version on audible.
If you haven’t seen it yet and live in the UK you can watch it here:
I live in Spain, so I had to watch it on this channel for a small fee.
The second book, The Silkworm is about a novelist who has gone missing, and will be aired next Sunday at 9.00pm GMT on BBC1. This time, I’ll be doing it the other way round, I’ll be watching the series first and then reading the novel. I’ll let you know how that goes in about a month’s time, when I’ll have seen the whole series and read the book.
Happy reading and viewing!
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Rereading Jane Eyre 