Pause for thought

The apricot horizon – a peeping edge of silk beneath a sky the colour of a two-day bruise, evidence of a punch dealt by a man who swore he loved you – put me in mind of a petticoat, worn beneath a frayed and mud-thrawn skirt ferreted from a bin  by a long-unwashed bag lady.

Perhaps a souvenir from a past life of material luxury whose constraints – parental inquisitions – she found unbearable.

Wishful thinking? That the high can fall as far as I who, almost, had to climb to reach even here? Whatever, the edge  – The End – was where I headed now. 

Unpredicted serials

The tabs above this post are links to pages where I store serials written in response to weekly prompts posted on the Prediction Fiction blog which I currently host .

The first - 'The Blacksmith's Wife' - ran to forty episodes and became an illustrated book.
I brought it to an end partly for fear of boring readers but also because I recognised that in several ways it is easier to generate the continuation of a tale than think up a new one each week, and thought I should try harder.

However, characters frequently refuse to die. 'From Rhodes' continued the 17th century 'The Blacksmith's Wife' while 'A change in focus' picked up and ran with characters who first appeared in a short story (John Pettinger so vividly that he also forced himself into a novel).

I did try to write a singleton. 'Threshold' was intended as a one-off. But, its narrator still nameless, it today lurched to its 139th episode. And I can't see an ending for it yet.

What I can see is the benefit of a weekly exercise wherein there is a necessity to incorporate three random words into an entertaining tale which extends to no more than 100 words. I've been practising on and off, under different hosts, since 2011 and kno
w how much my writing has benefited.

John Pettinger at the Khakbethian embassy

This, episode 22 of the serial 'A change of focus', was voted last week's winner of the Friday Prediction challenge by host  Colleen Foley.  
Predictioneers were required to incorporate 'articulate', 'whorl', 'pelt'  into a  sci-fi, horror- fantasy or noir tale of no more than one hundred words

‘Excellency!’
Strangled articulation announced the entry of  the pensioner hired to disguise the whorls of dirty espionage which hung about the Khakbethian embassy.

Skull-knuckled hands clutching the double doors, he hung for a moment then slowly sagged until his badger-pelted head lay on the carpet, arms perforce rotated back- and upwards,  nine inches of knife-handle protruding from his spine.

The ambassador  and his officially-unacknowledged brother turned as one to watch him, their  mutual observation interrupted by the appearance of the man presumed responsible, the sight of whom brought relief to one brother, terror to the other, in roughly equal quantities.

 
Earlier episodes can be accessed by the 'A change of focus' page link above.

The blacksmith's wife

Now avalable from Lulu - this forty-one episode illustrated tale which was generated from weekly three word prompts appearing on the Friday Prediction [which will on 1st February relocate to http://predictionfiction.blogspot.co.uk/]

Thinking Ten is back again!!

After a few weeks hiatus, when Life and it's myriad challenges got in the way of its hitherto smooth and enthusiastic operation by Travis, Kerry Logan has volunteered to resurrect Thinking Ten.

Since 2010, previous to which I could write efficiently and grammatically but had done nothing in the way of creative writing, I have relied on three different sites to develop and hone those writing skills:  Six Sentences was the first, leading me from surprise that so much could be said with (apparently) so few resources to the making of many good friends, several of whom I have met at various gatherings in America (another first for me)

Thinking Ten requires a different approach.
Themed prompt words: On Location (Monday), Take It Away (Tuesday), Words, Inc. (Wednesday), Plot Thickens (Thursday), The Friday Times (Friday)
Canvas (Saturday), Capstone (Sunday)   each  spur a quick thought of a subject and then a frantic ten minutes trying to get the beginning middle and end mapped out.   It IS worth sticking to the rules, because that's the challenge of it, but there is then the opportunity to edit and tidy, thus avoiding embarrassment.

And I have found a third, equally and immensely valuable, site to be Phil Ambler's Friday Prediction where the challenge is to write just one hundred words which incorporate three prompt words and require writing in the 'genres of horror, fantasy or science fiction', none of which I could do, or was interested in doing, to begin with but the stretching of imagination allied to the very limited word count - and there's a week in which to hone it - has proved extremely beneficial, as well as, with 'The blacksmith's wife' a lot of fun, (not to mention the enjoyment to be had from reading all the other posts.)

It's not me, it's hymn - Friday Prediction runner up!

I’m not immortal, only feel like I’m invisible and, God knows, not at all wise, none of which would normally make a blind bit of difference, but that article in the paper, the one about divorces amongst the over-sixties being on the rise really made me think.

It’s galling to have been married for forty-plus years and realise that we never talk, never touch, never communicate in any meaningful way whatsoever.   What happened to the dreams we had, the expectation that the fun, the laughter and the love would last as long as we did?

They died?    Or did he?

Thank you to Phil Ambler for providing the prompt words gall, invisible and  touch, and a great deal of enjoyment, both in the writing of pieces and the reading of the very high standard offerings of others.
I also feel obliged to stress that this is wholly fictitious.

A change of focus [2]

Suspicion, and a single question, swelled like a tumour:   why?  
Why her?
Why now?
She’d been due to return tomorrow, to the farm she’d vividly described, red earth, big skies and far distant horizons.
But someone had prevented that;  at least, not permitted her to return alive.
He’d understood she knew nobody here.
And only mentioned one man there:  Jake.
Who, she’d said, in the lucid moments between waking, guilt-entwined in the furrow-sheeted dawn and her engulfing him again, would never forgive what she had done.
‘Need he know?’ he’d asked, matching rhythm.
‘He always knows,’ she’d told him, distant-eyed.

Took some time but this is a response (one of three - the others are already posted)  to Phil Ambler's Prediction prompts:  farm, tumour and lucid]

A change of focus

The scarlet handset appeared to have spewed a map of South Africa, matching stain spreading and disappearing beneath the sprawled body of the dark-haired woman.

‘What’s that godawful noise?’  

DS John Pettinger, concentrating on fixing first impressions in his mind, didn’t hesitate.   ‘Bad Company.’

‘Well obviously that’s  what she’s been keeping... oh, you mean the music.   Looks like some film I saw once, where the telephone  sucks the blood from its victims ...’

‘I doubt that’s happened here.’

Pettinger’s exasperation at the DC was muted as he failed to divert the sick feeling permeating his gut.   

‘I know this woman.’

[This has been posted in Phil Ambler's Prediction in response to the prompts telephone, sucks and company and is possibly, possibly the start of a new serial.   Certainly it continues from a tale written in response to this year's House of Writers, and a follow-up episode which was posted on MuDSpots #48, under the title 'Interrogation'.]

The blacksmith's wife [part 41] (prompts: hip, owl, burst)

Now-completed story can be accessed from the tab at the top of this blog

Prediction prompt : 'post', 'shield' and 'immoral'

A forge-like image created for 100 Orkney Days of Summer and this week's post on Phil Ambler's 'Friday Prediction'

The blacksmith's wife [part 34]

Gabriel’s ever-fluctuating sense of filiality returned him to accusative.

‘Your callous immorality shocks me,’ he complained, days after he’d willingly posted his limp and green-shit-leaking brother through the side-slats of the dead-dog cart while I shielded him by offering soup to its malodorous driver.

My own concerns were several:   I was with child to a man I’d wed most willingly but now wondered if I should have second thoughts; the Earl was like to demand both letters and retribution for my alleged releasing of Mathias, and now approaching with a needing-shod stallion was the speedwell-eyed youth I’d once lain with.

The blacksmith's wife [part 33]

Post his immoral interlude with the tavern-doxy, how would Gabriel now view my past philanderings?   Given that he’d also seen me taken by his brother, he surely couldn’t now complain?

The boy was beautiful, which was why I’d wanted him.  Finger to my lips I directed him to the meadow behind the forge, trusting that the meadowsweet would shield us.  

Led the horse to Gabriel, smiled sweet and said ‘No hurry.’

But I was mistook to think that all was fair, that because there was no danger of foisting onto Gabriel a bastard brat, he would not mind.

He did.

Hypochondria

The words for Phil Ambler's Friday Prediction this week are vaccine, ground and address and since vaccine wasn't invented until a century after the time of the blacksmith's wife, I had to abandon them this week.
Herewith my alternative:

Hypochondria

‘Vaccine?  Don’t be ridiculous!’

Contempt in every angle of her sprawled limbs, the flare of her nostrils and her lightly-raised eyebrows, the depth of her slutty depravity further exaggerated by the slatted shadows which striped both her and the screwed-up sheets.   Another half-hour and there’d be sufficient light to turn this chiaroscuro soft-ground etching to something more common-place.   For the moment he was both mesmerised and horrified as was apparent from the higher-than-usual pitch of his voice, addressing her from where he stood naked by the sink.

‘I’ve run cold water on it’ he said plaintively, ‘and it still stings.’

The blacksmith’s wife [part 29] - runner up for last week!

Written (I think) in Pueblo, or maybe Fort Collins, Colarado, this was declared a runner up by Phil Ambler over at his Prediction page today - thank you for that,  Phil! - but less so for next week's words which are vaccine, ground and address 

The blacksmith’s wife [part 29]

Fearing malevolence, and assuming I could thwart it, the earl insisted on my presence at the birth.

His lady gave no flicker of acknowledgement, too sharp-speared with labour pain, the like of which, before winter, would be mine to suffer too, but I trusted my son would not appear so goblin-like as this wizened little red-haired gnome, the image of its father.  

Having been three days away I hastened home, to find Gabriel speared between the goblin-gnarled, lard-flickered thighs of the tavern-keeper’s wife, but could not judge who screamed loudest from the bucketful of still-hot cinders I emptied over them.

The blacksmith’s wife [part 22]

What if Gabriel’s consanguineous concern was counterfeit, a facet of his love for me, callous-skewed for my protection?   I’d swear his anguish genuine. 

Did he believe killing his brother would jeopardise his own immortal soul?  

Or was it Mathias who yet pulled the strings?

At whose instigation had I set forth?   How urgent this message?

Did Gabriel mean to prevent me witnessing his revenge?   Or was  his perfidious sibling plotting murder prior to my pursuit?

Suspicion’s wings dispersed my fury – I turned back, electing to save Gabriel rather than the country from invasion.

And arrived to find the forge ablaze.

This week's continuation - 100 words incorporating 'wing', 'immortal' and 'facet' - of the tale which can be read in its entirety on the page above

The blacksmith’s wife

Parts 20 and 21 - 100 words using 'supervise', 'cash' and 'mare' - at the The Blacksmith's wife page above

Friday Predictions / The blacksmith's wife / winner!

A big thank you to Phil Ambler who had adjudged my episode 17 of The blacksmith's wife as last week's winner.   The words to incorporate were averse, ink and trunk and were used as follows:

I’d extricated sovereigns and well-hid papers, ink damp-smudged, before Gabriel returned home with his brother, his arms and trunk blood-bruised from more than falling off a horse. Face less pretty too.

Unaverse to slander, he’d implied I’d satisfied until Gabriel threatened branding. He confined him tight-bound in the cellar, asking only ‘Did he lie?’ before we finally slept.

To be hauled awake too soon to harsh-grained hands at throat and thigh and Gabriel’s eyes near-blind with blood, stifled roaring from behind the cloth which gagged him.

But not so blind he did not see what his brother did to me.

This week's words - labyrinth, twin and churn -  have already been incorporated into part 18 which is on the Friday Prediction page

The blacksmith’s wife

Now up to episode seventeen on the Friday prediction / Blacksmith's wife page above.

This week's words were ink, averse and trunk - check out Phil Ambler's site to see what a dozen or so other Predictioneers make of them between now and 9 p.m. next Thursday.

The blacksmith’s wife [part 13]

Slipping from his grasp I swam away then surfaced, shaking water from eyes which pleaded a repeat performance;   speedily, satisfyingly supplied.   As reward I promised to renounce all stripling lads, but no sooner spoke than from the trees emerged, moonlit, a veritable full-grown lusty man who’d been spying on us from the bank.  

More than just my conscience pricked, but he surprised me, shouting  ‘Gabriel, if that’s your wife, I vow you did not over-paint this lily – remember, Brother, share and share alike!’

Gabriel’s fury roared:   ‘By Christ, I swear you’ll try cockles if you lay a hand on her!’

Friday's Prediction is now hosted by Phil Ambler over at Phlambler's world    Phil's first three words were shake (all variations), lily and cockle and I was delighted to discover, from Brewer's Phrase and Fable, that 'to try cockles' meant to be hanged.

Big grin

I'm both delighted and relieved by today's news from Lily Childs' Feardom  - delighted to have been awarded winner for last week's Prediction Challenge and relieved that, following Lily's decision to spend more time taking up the challenge of her own writing, Phil Ambler will be continuing what she had built - I trust it will continue to be as absorbing, entetaining and supportive a community in his world.

Continuing episodes of The blacksmith's wife can be read on the Friday Predictions page at the top of this blog.

The blacksmith’s wife [part 6]

‘Jenever,’ he said, ‘from sloes, not Amsterdam.   You’re not enough a mother to be ruined.’
He tipped the glass, watched me drink, sloe-eyed himself, inscrutable, all personal emotion hidden, yet knowledge of the hurt I’d dealt caused blood to hammer in my head, tears to flow for what I’d lost.

Not the child, that never had existed, but his belief in me.

Another touch upon my back, forewarning.  ‘Charcoal, to mark the placing of the letters.’  
But gin-loosed tongue took me past sanity;  contemptuously ‘Can you spell?’  
His face hardened.  ‘Trollop, wanton, Jezebel, jade – there’s space to write them all.’

Parts 8 and 9  on this weeks Friday Predictions

Images for Blacksmith's wife

Having a yen to perhaps produce an illlustrated version of my Blacksmith's wife serial - currently to be found on the Friday Predictions page and running to six parts - I have been playing with imagery.

This idea is a mixture of original collagraph and carborundum prints, digitally combined with drawing.
I had originally visualised something strongly black and white but it would be a pity to lose the idea of the flames of the forge.