Welcome to Surprise. This is a writing opportunity with a challenge and just the merest hint of competition. At the end there will be winning entries, chosen by all of you who take part. Most of all, everybody who takes part will have worked to produce a short story and hopefully risen to the challenge. If you stick…[Read more]

And please don’t take these…[Read more]

When the writing stage of the challenge closes on 28 February 2027 at 22:00 UK time, the voting stage begins. No doubt most of you will have read many of the entries…[Read more]

I can see the initial appeal of the H16. The V8 was a darn good engine,…[Read more]

FREEDOM JONES; AN INTRODUCTION

He remembered a time when he had been ordinary; when he had played with the other boys. A time when he ran, fought, laughed, and scraped knees with the other boys. When they had climbed trees and stolen fruit and snatched apple scones from the kitchen…[Read more]

Yesterday evening, me  in mindless  mood, scrolling between television programmes, and phone an Instagram a reel came up, featuring the ever- crumpled face of Mick Jagger. He answering some question about song writing, where he got his inspiration from.

His ‘Everywhere! -Sometimes I only have to look out the window –‘  spanne…[Read more]

Thanks for the theme, @Seagreen. It certainly made me think hard!

@Jill: you gave me exactly what I asked for – an insight into the mind of a killer – in this case, a victim of domestic abuse who was finally pushed too far. Your words paint a quiet picture of an unseen tempest.

@Sandra: Your words pai…[Read more]

It’s not as though this is the first body I’ve seen, and it’s not as though this is the first person I’ve killed. As a death it was unremarkable: quick, expected, and I imagine she knew nothing about it. A clean shot through the back of the head in mid-conversation. Only a few of my targets have been so lucky, but my intenti…[Read more]

Kick a corpse to life and you’ll inevitably disturb carrion.

Tao knew this but only recalled it on attempting to leave his inn-room. The body that had earlier impeded his exit messenger for the man whose name Tao had evoked in hope of boosting his financial standing, believing those who…[Read more]

It was adopted by the Den when the Cloud finally closed

https://australis.eocampaign1.com/web-version?ep=2&lc=f8781b16-01c8-11f1-82c9-6dbe39b3a791&p=73063d3a-a20b-11f1-8471-0d8778dd4b7d&pt=campaign&t=1788260504&s=2e7939182f1b0d843e4b788f91b732e3d93a4739fffcb3526c7f265bf8507035

I hope to stretch you now…

There’s a body.

Whether…[Read more]

And I second Jill’s call for virtual medals all round! 🙂

John.

This is the strangest holiday ever. Chris should have been here. She even did all the bookings for us, and now I have to explain to everybody why it’s only me. The weather is perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. She’d have loved it—walking along the coast, looking down on the seabird colonies. Salt, warm seaweed on the narro…[Read more]

It was more than a holiday; it was a ritual, starting with the drive north. The choice of music; what the kids called my soppy stuff – Savage Garden, Beautiful South and sshhh, don’t say it out loud, Barry Manilow – and the way I always packed the car with a hundred and one things I wou…[Read more]

‘Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself…’
Shakespeare, Macbeth

British technology has been so dominant in motor sport for so long now that it is hard for many to imagine the time before World War II when British motor racing was an insular, gentlemanly affair (‘The right crowd and no crowding’ was the slogan…[Read more]

In July 1953 we  – Dad, mum. brother and me, left  our  now-echoing  and curtainless home on the edge of Dovercourt Bay – an Essex seaside town dominated by a pair of cast iron  lighthouses whose clean, and well-protected sands were sectioned by sea-slimy black wooden groynes within which squatted large black crabs. There was  also a…[Read more]