Badge Competition: One-Liner Wednesday

 

I’ve decided to participate in a competition for a new badge for Linda G. Hill’s blog and here’s my creation for it 🙂   Voting for the best badge will take place on Tuesday, May 23rd!

An Ode To Spring: A Contest Winner

Over at I held a contest called, “An Ode to Spring,” where writers could write poetry about the coming of Spring (or hopefully, warmer weather!).   Today, it is my delight to present you the 2nd Place winner, Tate Morgan, for his beautiful poem, Spring Love.

 

In spring lovebirds hover fancy

till morning lit by the dew

Takes back winter’s heartache

restoring the love in you

 

The desperate cries of anguish

from a heart that knows no joy

Feeds long upon its own regret

tossing the soul as if a toy

 

Give to me your heartaches

lie down in the meadow green

Let go the sorrow of past loves

have rain wash the soul clean

 

Always to blossom in springtime

love feeds us of our dreams

Washing away the winter sorrows

from each one or so it seems

 

Take all of what you’ve been given

set aside pieces in you there-of

No broken promise of joy’s embrace

can outshine a true heart in love

Enjoyed his poem?  You’re in for a treat then!  Visit his page for loads more. 🙂

A Christmas Story Contest Winner: M.E. Lyle’s Interview

Click on image to see the original contest’s page

Contest winner is M.E. Lyle for his humorous story, A Late Christmas Dinner.   Enjoy his interview! 

So, tell us a little bit about the piece you wrote, A Late Christmas Dinner, for this contest.

A Late Christmas Dinner was inspired a few years back and based, very loosely, on real events. Of course the story has been greatly exaggerated.  What good are imaginations if we can’t use them?

What else do you generally write?

I generally write light humor, tinted with a bit of romance. I enjoy making readers smile. I also tend to use a lot of dialogue. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.   I do very little poetry.

 

How long have you been writing? What inspired you to start?

I’ve been writing since 2007. My early writings are terrible, filled with punctuation errors, and verb confusion messes. I tend to use present tense when I should be using past tense.   I need to go back someday and clean those messes up, but there are so many, and I am so lazy.   I was inspired by Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. It’s always been a favorite.

 

Tell us a little bit about your hopes and dreams as a creative.

My hope is to live long enough to create something worthwhile.   Most of what I write is pretty silly.

 

Where else can we find you and your work?

My work is posted only on WritersCafe.

 

Are you on WritersCafe?  I have a contest called Best of 2016 that runs ’till January 13th.  For this one, the members get to vote on the top finalists.

Why I Write: Contest Winner’s Winning Work

Why I Write

 

(*From late August through end of October, I ran a contest over at WritersCafe.Org called “Why I Write.”  The premise of the contest was to write a 250-word essay (or a poem) on why you write.)

 

Our 1st place winner of the contest is Eagle Poet for poem, The Page.  You can check out the writer’s profile/other writings here.

 

Click on the image to see the original poem.

 

The Page

by

Eagle Poet

My pencil, an arrow of expression.

It’s fine, gray, tip the connection 

between thought and paper.

A tool breathing life into 

immortalized ideas.

 

A sword slicing through

what can’t be seen, but 

felt. It’s eraser, a magic wand 

zapping away fragments 

which don’t mesh.

 

A lever releasing proclamations 

of misunderstood spirit and soul.

 

Misconceived lines a blueprint,

tape measure gauging the 

distance between conception 

and fulfillment. 

 

Mirrors, simultaneously clear 

and cluttered, the writer sees 

the best and the worst reflecting 

from a single lens,

panoramic. 

 

Page creases are miles 

of a struggle, telling a story,

each one a marking, of a 

composite. 

 

Stray marks indicate steps

walked, easily perceived 

as an unfriendly highway.

 

My pencil is the ticket, 

gets me from point A 

to point  Z. A pointer sets apart

the narrow pathway

and untraveled road.

 

A chisel that carves away

the past engraves a new 

future.

 

 

 

 

Two Writing Contests (Deadline is less than three days away!)

Why I Write  

Submit a 250-word essay or a poem on why do you write.

Top three finishers will have a choice of seeing their essay/poem featured on A Writer and Her Adolescent Muse blog , or be interviewed for the same blog (Purpose? More exposure!)

Interested?  Click here.

  Super Short Halloween  

In honor of the upcoming frightful holiday, write a super short horror story (100 words max).

Story should be no more than PG-13. Think like Hitchcock…be creative and don’t rely on gore to scare the pants off your readers.

Interested in this one?  Click here.

Enjoy!                                                                                                                                   w

Twilight

 

(*Note: This is a short story for the Pandora’s Box of Horrors Challenge)

 

 

Gray clouds hung low in the colorless sky as he watched a group of teenagers clamber down the street littered with rusted and mangled vehicular bodies.   Houses on both sides of the disintegrating asphalt stood in various wretched shapes.   Woods warped.  Windows smashed or missing. Vinyl sidings bent like painful hang-nails.

Like Rome, another giant had fallen.

The group turned down a graveled pathway which led to a large, crumbling brick-laid building that stood three-stories tall.  A sign stretched across the middle of the structure with words etched in the marble slab: Esmond High.

As soon as they crossed the threshold, he turned his eyes toward the heavens.

How much longer now before the imminent end?

He carefully hobbled inside, turned right and entered into a large room.  Inside, several long tables spread across the dusty tiled floor, each partnered with two deformed metallic chairs.   Large windows lined the far wall, and like the others, many were either missing or broken.  They also provided the only source of lighting.

The younger version of adults sat at the three front tables, their eyes rested solely on him.

He shuffled across the room.  Long, wispy white hair hung from his head.  White-black beard partially covered his face, its bottom touched the ragged red and black plaid shirt.

“Good morning, class.”  His voice crackled as he slowly limped to the front where a small wooden desk stood.

“Good morning, Mr. Pike.” The teens replied in unison.

He gingerly set down a plastic bag on the desk which wobbled with the weight being pressed on it.  Mr. Pike turned his cataract-riddled, hazel eyes to the classroom before him.

“It seems our number is ever growing smaller.” He sniffed.

“Marge’s parents have married her off to the Mableton clan so she won’t be coming back.” The lone female in the room spoke in a quiet voice.

“Ethan, Sam, and Levi have been recruited to the front line.” The dark-haired male at the center table said.

“Sal was killed with his parents  by  thieves last night.” The smallish boy next to the brunette female muttered.

“Madness.” The old man whispered as he rapped his arthritic knuckles on the wood.  “This is what we’ve been reduced to.  Constant warring with one another.  Servitude and slavery.  Mockery and misery all around us.  All due to stupidity.  Stupidity.”

“Mr. Pike?”  The girl’s voice drifted to his ears.  “Are you all right?”

He shook his head hard and blinked several times as he struggled to regain his focus on the remaining kids.

“Yes, yes of course I’m alright!” He snapped as his hands gripped the plastic bag.  “It’s a bit disconcerting when I see our future being ripped from us, that’s all.”

“What’s in the bag, Mr. Pike?” A petite oriental boy from the table directly in front of him asked.

The elder released his grip on the bag and began to pat it. “Ah, yes.  The bag.  I discovered the content last evening when I was rummaging through a building that was once a library.”

“What’s a library?” The girl asked.

“My dear Oona,” he said, “a library was used to house what we called books.  Books were once the foundation of which we built a great civilization. Books were what brought us out of the last Dark Ages.  They enabled us to become highly advanced and educated and enlightened.   They were the glue that held us together.”

“What happened?” The small boy next to Oona asked.

“Man grew stupid, Darrin, “he answered. “We grew so enamored with technology and all our wonderful advances, and decided to get rid of books, which contained everything, our souls, to rely completely on digital machines.”

He glanced across the room and saw that all eyes and ears were attuned to him, and continued. “Then the storm happened and wiped out all the technology, and with it our heart and soul as a specie.” He raised a hand into the air. “Hence, you see the result all around us.”

“So…” Mr. Pike reached a hand inside the bag. “For the next few weeks, or for as long as we are able, we’ll be reading two of the greatest books ever written, in my humble opinion, by man.”  And pulled out two heavily worn, hard-covered books. “Moby Dick and War and Peace.”

“Could we take turns reading them?” Oona breathlessly asked.

“I don’t read too well,”  the oriental boy said.

“Don’t worry, Mai, I’ll help you,” she replied.

For the first time, Mr. Pike smiled.

 

An Opportunity To Be Published

 

 

Some of you may know that I’ve been writing a serial fiction over at Juke Pop Serials called Tomorrow Falls.  I entered TF in to the SWP16 (Summer Writing Project) contest sponsored by both Juke Pop Serials and 1888 Center, and on July 1st, TF was among the top 25 selected as finalists for the next round!

What does this mean?

Throughout the month of July, the top 25 writers selected will be participating in a series of events, essays, and podcast episodes as well as workshopping and promoting our stories.  On August 1st, the story with the highest participation by its readers (how many hits the story generates, the time spent reading each chapter, etc.) will be selected to be published.

Exciting, huh?

Throughout this month, please share this link with your readers to help me promote Tomorrow Falls.  I will be posting some of the items I’m participating in throughout the month as well (interview, essays, etc.).

 

(*Note: For all 25 of us, our stories are WIP meaning we will also be tasked with editing/revising over the course of the month as well.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow Falls

In the END there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love. 

In a matter of days, Tess’ world became nightmarish.  Something was unleashed that turned people into hideous, blood-thirsty creatures. She soon became the hunted as she fled the only home she ever knew in search of a safe haven.

Beck has always been running from something.  Until he met Tess.  He knew if she ever found out about some of his past sins, he feared she would never forgive him.  

Can they survive what’s to come, together?  Or, will they be ripped apart by past secrets that could ultimately doomed mankind?

 

 

Not This Year…

Well, I won’t “win” NaNoWriMo this year since I’m still sitting at 10,013 words.  That’s fine.  I have a good start on a story that I hope to finish (at least the first draft anyway) in the next few months.

In the meantime, I just finished writing a first draft of a short story that I intend to submit to a contest (deadline is December 21st).  This should give me enough time to do the needed revision/editing.

I have so many writing projects that I’ve started (as well as hope to start), but I feel I don’t have enough time or space to work on them.  I wonder if I could plan a few writing retreats to take in 2015 to help, hmm…

Anyway, time for that third cup of coffee 🙂

The Contest Result

I didn’t win the You Are a Writer contest, but I enjoyed participating.  Here is the link to the winner’s announcement plus the video that won it.   What do you think of it?

Announcing the You Are a Writer Contest Winner!