It was not the first of its kind but it was the one which marked the moment past which things would not return. There were too many and they were too popular. And tomorrow was my day. Today was Alfie’s – my brother.

“We who hold our rockets,” said the priest, garbed in a sheet in the roofless shadow of the abbey, “sit together…[Read more]

Now I just hope I can find him something to do.

Bringing a gun into a house changes it
Sliding a small skirting board piece to one side
You couldn’t secrete barely a few shells between
A pipe and this weird angular thing that you recall
Has something to do with home repair
For the un-betooled.

Planking pulls up with relative ease. In they go
Force in a cloth, d…[Read more]

Ooh, and it pans musically too and isn’t too tongue twisty either. Is this a song you are planning to sing?

And do any of you find that sometimes, you change something, only to change it back again?

Bah! Editing? My text comes out publisher-ready, no rewrites.

OK, total-lying mode switched off now 🙂 Yes, I change it, change it back, forget why I wanted to change it in the first place, then forget entirely what the whole fracas was about or what I was…[Read more]

ENTRY

at the top if you are posting a story. Or comment as a reply to an entry, and let the forum software handle the nesting of replies (testing that here to see if it does indeed do that!). I like the idea of comments being right in alongside with the stories as it…[Read more]

this would seem to suggest that all the stuff he mentions in the first para, all the work we do to improve our writing, all the hanging out we do in places like the Den and, yes, Jericho Wtiters too, is a waste of time.

I’ve not seen the writeup so I don’t know if there’s any more? Is there a link to it or is it…[Read more]

The list is:

~~~

“If you’ll let me sleep”

“Fate has a horrible whisper”

“To all the people I’ve ghosted”

“Books resonate secrets”

“Kathm…[Read more]

We all write like Leo Tolstoy. Some of us even like to write like Leo Tolstoy; we tinsel trickling-brook sentences with the most fragile leaflike imagery, drape our select pink-petal verbs over everything – our verdigris mountains kneeling to our yellow-nugget suns – until soon, and before we…[Read more]

That twenty-first, that longest night, much darker than before
I dragged my sorry soul up from the bench and through the door
‘Cross the gutters I did step, my footing slick and icy.
When something tried to trip me up! I stared; what did my eyes see?

A cat! – the cat, the blackest cat, a rat-tail in its sna…[Read more]

Now if I can just keep on at it without all of these real-life distractions. Work, family,…[Read more]

Tony Lyttle
Untitled
A short, fractured little piece that I interpreted as being – somewhat…[Read more]

I’ll set another prompt shortly. Just … got to come up with something.

Edit: ah, never mind – you did say excluding weekends – I’m half-asleep today!

Next – titles. Hmm. I love SeaGreen’s “The Time-Snatcher’s Daughter” but that of course could be a bit of a spoiler and I’m sure there’s something like it already out there, but it covers the time angle and the feminine one. I’m getting Gaiman/Mieville vibes with a hint of…[Read more]

In his dreams the nylon twanged faster and faster, jumping like fleas, until –

Until he woke. The hipster fashion for tiny instruments had not run dry. Instead it had uncovered a sinister network of enthusiasts, meeting once a month in railway huts, disused kiosks. The world’s abandoned places. But why? That was his job, to fin…[Read more]