Barny

Really well deserved. I love the fact that you carried the two MCs along for ages and are reaping the rewards!

Thanks, Libby!

Book 1 in the series was a bronze winner in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards last week too. So I’ve had lots to celebrate on the writing front. A very nice feeling after the years of drought when I was chasing agents!

Thank you, Knicks! @knickylaurelle

Thanks for the kind words, @sandradavies! I appreciate it. And congratulations to you, Libby! I enjoyed yours and every other entry coming out of this prompt. It was a good one 🙂

Thanks, Sandra, for the prompt, which I did find somewhat challenging (not a bad thing).

Fantastic entries from everyone else! You motivated me to (try to!) do better.

Thank you, Ath!

You may not have expected it, but you should believe it, Libby. really sharp story there.

Thanks, Sandra. I enjoyed that prompt. And thanks to all the other entrants; I really enjoyed reading through them this month.

Thank you, @sandradavies I really didn’t expect that. The other entries were so good.

I’ll be back later with a comp for April.

“you will mistake the gulls

for the screaming of a girl

and run out of your flat

to an empty landing”

you will turn your head this way and that and peer over the railing to the stairwell below,

seeing no-one, hearing nothing, not even an echo of the sound you followed in the first place. You will grasp the red-painted railing with both…[Read more]

Of course, I felt stupid when I realised. There I was standing on the landing in shorts and tee-shirt with my apron on. “World’s Best Chef” it said on the font. Katya bought it for me for Christmas—oh—must be ten years ago. Mrs. Hardcastle from number seventy was out there as well. I wonder if she thought…

‘Morning Mrs. Hardcastle. It was the gu…[Read more]

Promise Landing

(410 words*)

The screams tear Seth like cheap paper from shallow, disturbing dreams, and he gasps awake, eyes on the living darkness that writhes, malevolent with secrets, in the corners of the room. His gut can tell it’s way beyond midmorning, though the blackout curtain over the single window could convince him it’s the wit…[Read more]

No, there’s little or nothing to tell you a railway had ever been there. A short stretch at the Tralee end re-opened in the nineties with one of the original locomotives, but it only seems to have lasted less than twenty years. There’s still a Tralee and Dingle Railway Preservation Society page on Facebook, though.

Glorious. I’ve been to that part of the world and had no idea there had been a railway there, let alone one with such a remarkable history. It’s a shame it didn’t survive long enough that the preservation movement had got going, though by the sound of things it was probably lucky that they quit while they were ahead.

It must have been well over thirty years ago, on holiday in North Wales, when, after visiting Beddgelert, we went for a riverside walk along what must have been the Aberglaslyn Pass. Noting the width and smoothness of the footpath and how it bored its way straght through some rocky outcrops, I remarked wistfully that we must be on the trackbed of…[Read more]

Fabulous blog again, Richard. I’ve always been fascinated by narrow-gauge railways. I’m not quite sure what it is, but maybe it’s the feeling of being able to step into (or onto) something that doesn’t look feasible. I remember my excitement as a child on holiday visiting the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway in Devon.

Mind you, you wouldn’t get me…[Read more]

The Prophecy

You will mistake the gulls
for the screaming of a girl
and run out of your flat
to an empty landing

This dark prophecy will forever haunt me.
An old neighbour uttered it; a self-proclaimed psychic, who called by to pass on the warning. Such a pathetic attempt, I thought, to scare me from moving to the new flats offered to tempt…[Read more]

They’d Chosen Me for Being Good at Isolation

Those harbour houses had slope-ceilinged attics with dormer windows. I’d been instructed to stay in one garret, squint out between curtains, send situation reports every two hours. A reconnaissance man, a civilian thought to be steady, I watched the quay below, admired the yachts and motorboats moo…[Read more]