Shores of Night

I promised I'd blog about this, so here goes. As part of my Fiction module for my MA, I have to produce random words stories. The original exercise was to pluck three concrete nouns from the things I like and know a lot about to base fiction off. I chose Cats, Dice and Books. The second stage was to expand on the words to see how they could stretch (the cat that follows you home, the mystical connection to goddesses, the way dice can govern our lives, their connection to luck and so on and so forth). The third stage was to choose three abstract nouns (in my case, Curiousity, Wonder and Love) and to start meshing words together to make stories. So you end up with things like a group of men in a gambling den where a cat, who may or may not be an incarnation of Bast and things like that. This week I was meant to take fellow students' words and do the same thing. This is complicated by the fact I'm the only distance learning student on the module (essentially the timing o...

Following on from the Blog Roulette (it finished last week, if you blinked and missed it) and with many thanks to LM Cooke for her suggestions, I present 'My Favourite Smell'. If I were to think about my favourite smell, then I would have to pause. Smell is one of the strongest senses we have, and it's works on a primal, unthinking level. There's rarely a chance to reason why we like or dislike a scent, it works on instinct. There's no rhyme or reason for my dislike of the smell of fish for instance, it's just something that makes me want to gag and I avoid it where possible (much to the dismay of my pets, who think fish is one of the best things since sliced bread, figuratively speaking at least). There are actually a large number of smells I don't like, beer being one of them, though that could be extended to alcohol in general most of the time. In fairness my dislike of the smell stems from encountering drunk people, most of whom have composed large amo...

Many thanks to the people who suggested subjects for me to write about. I ended up with five topics and haven't managed to get Eve and Emma to roll dice for them yet. Tonight, tonight I swear it. There should be more poetry up today as well, both at the Transatlantic Project and at my Soundcloud account (which I feel I'm neglecting). I'm working out story skeletons for various bits and bobs, not sure if they'll go to anthologies or to short story magazines as yet.  I'm working on some non genre fiction for my MA, including a piece about a group of gamers that have to deal with the fallout of one of their number becoming extremely lucky all of a sudden. The other piece I'm going to write is still up in the air, I quite like the idea of doing a love story about two bibliophiles who's love falls apart. It'll be bittersweet but should be fun to write. Beyond that, well things are feeling a little daunting and I'm not sure where I'm going. All I...

There was the sound of heavy feet pacing on stone, back and forth. A muttering sounded across the water of the lake, words indistinct; probably meaning nothing. Silver moonlight ran down the tower's walls, making them shine dully. The electric lights the Council had set about the illuminate the building were dark, the absence of the artificial light made the tower more mysterious, more dangerous; as if dragons lurked there, not just the ghost of a knight. Aiden crouched at the water's edge. He ran his fingers through the water, wondering what had brought him here. Why had he decided to take a walk? Sleep had proved elusive but the sudden decision to go out into the dark had surprised even him, especially after the pigs had called round earlier in the day. He had paced about the house all day, unable to settle. How his path had led him to the tower and the lake he had no idea, but as soon as he had entered the park he had made his way to the water's edge. It was...

Stolen from LM Cooke in a fit of pure villainy! (Mwahahahahahahaha) You can find the original post here:  http://www.lmcooke.com/blog.html Power to the people as Wolfie Smith once said. He may have said it more than once. You may not know who he was or why he said it.*  Either way it serves as a pointless and random introduction to BLOG ROULETTE On what topic should I write my next blog? You decide! Send me some titles and I'll pick one at random. Depending on what the suggestions are the blog may be: A micro story (of variable theme, mood and possibly quality) A meandering discussion of something  Some poetry Or something else... The Rules Just send me a subject, as weird, woolly and wicked as you like (within reason, don't go overboard okay?). It can be one word or a more of an essay style thing (so 'jelly' is fine as is ' the state of the nation'). The challenge is to come up with something in response t...