Sadie Hanson

  • Our summer weather so far has been an ever-changing experience, almost one extreme to another. For the August comp please write a story about changeability titled ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ Thee can refer to a person, animal or something inanimate. Max 500 words, deadline midnight on 31<sup>st</sup> August.

  • Thank you, Terrie! This is lovely surprise, and I’m pleased you liked my story.

    I really enjoyed Sandra’s and Ath’s stories too. So lifelike. Thank you both of you for being such excellent competitors.

  • Congratulations Libby – what an interesting exercise, one I’d like to attempt sometime and which you managed so smoothly. Thanks to Ath for another entertaining  Teabreak episode. And to Terrie for both the challenge and the summing up. The being stretched into a maybe new direction is so good for my writing, shame more Denizens can’t find time to enter.

  • Only three entries but what a selection!

    All expertly written and cleverly presented is evidence that Den of Writers contains a wealth of experienced and skilled writers.

     

    1. Wow Libby what a wonderfully executed piece of verb-less writing; plus a well-crafted opening sentence as well.

    Richly descriptive but without verbs, the shorter…[Read more]

  • Don’t ever cross a crocodile.

     

    Back when Chubby was chubby and not six inches taller than me and good looking, his nan died, and he went to the funeral. Afterwards, we met up near his gaff and he was in a bit of a moody with me.

    ‘All your fault, Teabreak, you twat!’ he goes.

    ‘Woss that then,’ I say, and I offer him a Number 6 to make up f…[Read more]

  • “Season to taste”

    I could say it started as a joke, except I knew, at that age, Suze and I were, a bit self-consciously, aiming to bridge the gap between our schoolgirl selves and the mysterious, scary-but-enticing grown-up world we were bracing ourselves to enter.

    Both of us were in top English. Read our homework to each other, critiqued (a mor…[Read more]

  • An explanatory note: I saw an exercise which asked for story without verbs and wanted to give it a go, so that’s what I’ve attempted here.

     

     

    A Delivery

     

    Inside the shadowed arch of a canal bridge: a half circle of water-drips and their echoes, drops and plops, plips, a full saucepan of water on the towpath, someone’s rubbish, new drink…[Read more]

  • I thought July’s challenge could be a free choice of subject matter and genre, but to add a little twist to the  task your entry must contain a reference to a cooking pot of your choice (saucepan, frying pan etc.) and the words,

    Shadow

    Bridge

    Trinket

    Word variants of the above are also ok.

    Be funny, be scary, be mysterious, be whatever takes…[Read more]

  • This was such a good challenge producing three different  perspectives .

    I agree with Sandra picking a winner is  always difficult  at the best of times and I think we all did brilliantly. So well done Ath and  Sandra and thanks for passing the baton over to me, Libby.

    I will be posting  next months challenge shortly .

  • Thank you for the challenge, Libby. And very well done to Terrie for another powerful piece of story telling.

  • Wow. Thank you Libby for this at-first-sight innocuous challenge. (I tried to resist the autobiographical, but in the end it was the only way for me to go) so thank you Terrie and Ath for such impactful alternatives; I’m glad I didn’t have the task of choosing between them.

  • <p style=”background: white; margin: 0cm 0cm 21.0pt 0cm;”>These three pieces are all so interesting and satisfying, and such good uses of ‘electricity’ that, as usual, I’ve struggled to decide on a winner because the standard is so high. I’m intrigued by how something as impersonal and powerful as electricity has resulted in intimate pieces,…[Read more]

  • Energy and shame

    Understanding is a difficult word sometimes. We say, ‘I understand her,’ meaning that we know her reasons for doing something or other. It was as expected. Electricity feels rather different. Do I understand it? I mean, what is it? I was taught a load of rubbish at school about the movement of charged electrons. That isn’t elect…[Read more]

  • Electricity and us

    Electricity has played a considerable part in directing  the path our lives have travelled, from the instant (if only sensory) flash of knowledge, at the end of our first date, that “This man is who I can safely be ME with!” to our fifty years of living in the North East.

    At that time (5th April 1963) he worked for a comp…[Read more]

  • Six days to go before the monthly competition deadlines on 30th June!

  • Kate posted an update 1 year, 11 months ago

    I wanted to let you know that I’ve finally gone ahead and published my humorous middle grade book. I’m very excited!
    Some of you may remember the characters Pix and Gabe from one of Athelstone’s short story contests. Well, the pair have now gone large.

    It’s launching on 12 July. If anyone is interested, you can pre-order an e-copy now, or get a…[Read more]

  • Hunting The Children of Electric

    You may think we’ve harnessed electricity but don’t be fooled by its compliance, it’s merely an angry beast straining at its leash, longing to be free.

    If you’ve stood watching for the crackle-flash of its untamed brother, then counted and listened for the rumble, you’ll know what I mean when I say, the effec…[Read more]

  • Thanks for the comp, Ath! Another opportunity to stretch myself ☺️

    And congratulations to Libby for winning, and the rest of us for giving it a go ????

  • Athelstone posted an update 2 years ago

    Sorry for any oddities and issues with the site. I had a bumper crop of major updates to install and although I did my best to slip these in seemlessly, there are one or two niggles. In particular, Buddypress, which gives the site many of its social networking features had a complete rewrite. I did check all the prerequisites and tried it out on…[Read more]

  • Kate posted an update 2 years ago

    Is anybody else have trouble with group posts? It’s impossible to get to recent posts.

    • Hi Kate, sorry , I’ve not been online much today. Can you give me some more detail on the issue you’ve got? What forum? What posts? Anything else you think might be helpful.

      • Kate replied 2 years ago

        Thanks, Ath. It’s in our SE course group. A forum has multiple pages but we can’t move beyond the first page to look at later posts.

        • Hmm. OK, no idea at the moment.

          • admin replied 2 years ago

            So, when you go to the forum, you’re presented with an original post (topic) plus any replies on that page, but you can’t proceed, i.e. if you pick page 2 or the arrow, nothing happens apart from the screen refreshing. I think it may be a problem with other forums as well.

    • That’s me borrowing Admin’s hat by the way.

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