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Athelstone started the topic Monthly comp: December 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 5 years, 5 months ago
Advent is upon us. I always liked Advent Calenders when I was little, but I haven’t had one for years. So you can make one for me. The theme is “opening a door or window and finding something”. It doesn’t have to involve calendars! Anywhere between 25 and 500 words.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthly competition November 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 5 years, 5 months ago
Smashing comp, Sandra and a similarly smashing selection of entries. So I’m really pleased to be picked!
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthly competition November 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 5 years, 5 months ago
I dreamt about you last night.
Really? I haven’t thought about you for ages.
Ooh! Harsh.
Aha – Sorry, Jack. That sounded terrible. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just, well, you know – the kids and all that. I don’t have much time for myself.
How old are they now?
Callum’s ten and Orla will be seven on Saturday. Most of this shopping is…[Read more]
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Athelstone posted an update 5 years, 6 months ago
OK all. Did you miss out on your chance to join the “Things that go bump” writing challenge? Well, just like Brigadoon, we have appeared again – just briefly – to give you one last, brief, opportunity to join your fellow Denizens. To grab the opportunity send me a Direct Message and I’ll tell you what to do. ACT FAST! This offer expires on 1…[Read more]
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthy Comp – September 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 5 years, 7 months ago
Great stuff @seagreen. Super story.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthy Comp – September 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 5 years, 7 months ago
Red Sun
Sunsets are very different here. Everything is different, but it was the sunset that I was staring at last night. Or rather, the absence of a sunset.
OK. No sunset. Tell you what, there aren’t any asthmatics here on Grissom’s planet either. I’m not blaming anybody; when a 300-mile-wide asteroid drew a bead on Earth at twenty-five miles…[Read more]
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Athelstone posted an update 5 years, 8 months ago
OK – at the risk of badgering people, three and a bit days left to enter “Things that go bump”. Also – 18 members at present, but only 16 sets of choices. If you’re intending to take part, don’t forget!
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Athelstone posted an update 5 years, 8 months ago
“I don’t care where you’ve been, You ain’t been nowhere till you’ve been in – the Things that go Bump writing challenge.”
Find the group. Join. Enjoy.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthly comp: July 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 5 years, 8 months ago
Congratulations to all (of us), especially @Janette 🙂
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Athelstone posted an update 5 years, 8 months ago
A bump never hurt anyone – well, unless it did. Anyway, BUMP. Don’t forget the short story writing challenge! If that means little, hurry over to the group “Things that go bump!” and be enlightened (You’ll have to join to read the forum). Preferably make a choice and take part.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Chit Chat in the forum
Things that go bump 5 years, 8 months agoIt certainly was memorable. A superb short story with two perfectly-flawed protagonists. The first challenge on the new site – started on the Cloud and rebooted here.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Chit Chat in the forum
Things that go bump 5 years, 8 months agoHah! Completely unintentional but the choices are taking on something of the evangelical hymn titles I remember from my Methodist upbringing.
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“Onward Denion soldiers” you mean?
Yeah, and for the first time in these challenges, my mind keeps trying to force a story in advance of the theme.
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Away, unbeliever. Watch!
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Lol
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Athelstone replied to the topic Choices in the forum
Things that go bump 5 years, 8 months agoMy selections, chosen for me by our wonderful administrator, Jules, are:
Away, Believer, Watch
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Athelstone started the topic Things that go bump in the forum Blogs 5 years, 8 months ago
Well, I’ve gone and done it again. Time for a short story challenge I believe. This one has a ghostly and supernatural theme. If you’d like to find out more then hurry over to the group Things that go bump. Once you have joined, you can read all about it in the forum.
You know you want to.
You’ll be sorry if you don’t.
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Phew – it’s been on mind for the past week or two … on my way.
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That time of year already. Hooray.
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Athelstone replied to the topic A Want of Discipline: Abergele, 1868 in the forum Blogs 5 years, 8 months ago
Fascinating, Richard. Rich’s words may have been ahead of their time, but that serves to emphasise how persistent the root causes of these disasters are. We still do it, even with our modern safety culture. Sadly, there are forces working to erode what gains have been made. The “Health & Safety Gone Mad” slogan may not belong to a formal campaign;…[Read more]
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Athelstone replied to the topic A gasp escaped me! in the forum Blogs 5 years, 9 months ago
There are degrees to this and a dependency on the type of book being written. I am not searching for an artificial precision in moral culpability. I am not saying that there are some absolute rules at play. I am saying that if you bend the truth to suit your story, while at the same time maintaining that what you write is authentic, then there are…[Read more]
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Athelstone started the topic A gasp escaped me! in the forum Blogs 5 years, 9 months ago
This is a lightweight blog.
I was just settling down after reading about the astonishing performance by George R R Martin at the Hugo awards, when my son approached brandishing his phone.
‘Look at that,’ he said.
I looked. My son has been a fan of the Zelda video games since he was little. I played a few along with him in the last few years,…[Read more]
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I didn’t gasp – too world weary – but I can see why you’re annoyed, Ath. On a lighter note I was disappointed, having hoped to learn something more about nightshade! Woody nightshade grows in our garden, is pretty and you could imagine the berries being used for dye. It’s also poisonous. But when I got a bit further I’d have switched off if you h…[Read more]
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Here’s a review of the book https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/06/a-traveller-at-the-gates-of-wisdom-by-john-boyne-review-an-ambitious-era-hopping-epic
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Thanks, Libby. A really interesting review. I hadn’t realised that the Zelda mistake was one amongst many. Aside from characters deep in history musing about their peers in the language of C20th psychology, we have ‘…kimonos and obis to the Chinese, igloos to the Norse Icelanders, and steel and horses to pre-Columbian South Americans. Potatoes…[Read more]
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That makes me flippin mad! All the hard work we put into our MSs, and he just… 😫
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Absolutely agree. I accept that the ‘worlds’ we base our stories in have a lot of the unlikely and improbable in them but there is a big difference between that and not bothering to do proper research.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Planning vs Winging it. in the forum
A place for Stupid Questoins 5 years, 10 months agoThis is about as not stupid a question as I can think of. In essence it’s ‘how do you write’. The supposed divide (classically) is between pantsers and plotters. Plotters, apparently, plan every detail, before they begin. Every chapter and plot point is set out. if a chapter should end with a challenging hook, then it’s there in the plan. Once the…[Read more]
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I think most of us are probably ‘Plantsers’ in reality. And yeah, it means you do end up on the wrong path sometimes. Lots of times, actually… I’m trying to sort one out at the mo in Tilda #3, and it’s hard to back-track and find the point where you actually first stepped off the path.
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I’m convinced that you need to be both a planner and a pantser – yes, a planster. The planning and pantsing parts of your brain need to find a way not to just to give each other space but to support each other.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Richard's Literary Byways: The Beginning Place, by Ursula K Le Guin in the forum Blogs 5 years, 10 months ago
Aha, this was the first Ursula K Le Guin book that I read and it made quite an impression on me.
I think you’ve put your finger on why a mixture of normality and fantasy is so effective. The magic becomes a metaphor for the way that changes happen in our lives. As well as providing entertainment for those of us who like a bit of magic in our…[Read more]
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Athelstone replied to the topic Monthly comp: July 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 5 years, 10 months ago
Month of the Cat
To be clear, although Gus didn’t get on with the cat, he was never cruel to it. When his wife, Mildred, died he didn’t want to go on taking care of it.
‘It’s vindictive,’ he said, ‘it kills half a dozen birds every day. It craps on the decking, wrecks my flower borders, and last week it scratched up the wallpaper.’…[Read more]
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