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  • Aditus

    No more Secrets, right?

    By Aditus

    We know who wrote which story and won this year’s contest. Congratulations Gary L. And now? Watching the horizon thoughtfully and waiting for inspiration to strike? Or you could write a prompt story and maybe expand it…. PT Prompt #354 What if you could make objects talk? Heinrich Heine’s quill, for example. (I just saw it at a museum.) Which object would you choose, and what does it tell you?  PT Prompt #355 Five friends are playing a board game. After a while, they roll num
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Book Review: The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

A Catholic priest is murdered on his way home, after hearing the confession of a dying woman. Mark Easterbrook witnesses a cat-fight between two young women in a Chelsea coffee bar, one woman pulling the other woman’s hair out by the roots. Later, he finds out that woman has died. Later still, he learns that his godmother’s name is on a list of dead people found on the murdered priest’s body, but she died from natural causes. Mark Easterbrook gets drawn into a world of spells, curses and murder

Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

Character Empathy

Character Empathy As a 'self proclaimed' writer...I've found that there is no stronger, no more engaging, tool in your arsenal than character empathy when it comes to truly crafting an immersive experience when it comes to your readers' involvement in your story. This is something that a lot of writer's believe they can 'tell' their audience, and they'll obviously fall in line and agree with the author, because how you can not feel bad for people (fictional as they may be) going through such

Comicality

Comicality in Writing Tips

Happiness - whatever that is.

Someone said, "I just want you to be happy, tim." He's a sweet man. A friend. i thought about what he said. Happy.        What is that?  I'm not unhappy all of the time. Sometimes i am. Suppose everyone is. Most of the time i am aware of the hollowness in my chest. It sits next to my heart and i wonder about the ache and emptiness there. It feels like a hole or entrance to the past. i fight to find and to shut that door, but it never truly closes. I don't believe in happ

Pride Flowers

June is halfway over and summer is just around the corner, although with the high temperatures lately it feels like summer is in full swing!  Pride month celebrations are still going strong.  I've been seeing lots of pictures in my FB feed of friends celebrating Pride all over the country.  For my birthday this year, I decided I wanted to get some flowers, something I don't tend to keep in the house since I am death to plants  The grocery store I shop at had a display of Pride-themed bouquets, s

Valkyrie

Valkyrie in Prompts

Featured Story: CDMX by Carlos Hazday

Hey all!  Our Review Team put their heads together and came up with a great review of an author who is also our CSR author for the month as well  Make sure to enjoy both and let us know what you thought.     CDMX by Carlos Hazday Reviewer: chris191070 Status: Complete Word Count: 139,904 Three years after Carlos concluded the CJ story, he returns with this new story which starts to fill in the gaps. We follow CJ, Ozzie and Liebe as CJ takes a job at the US Embas

wildone

wildone in Reviews

Represation, queerbating and pinkwashing

When you get what you want but not what you need Who doesn’t like a happy ending? So good representation is when everyone reacts positively to the characters' coming-outs, they don’t have to look for love for long and live happily ever after, right? Right? That might represent your dreams, but that doesn’t represent reality. What representation means is: Can I identify with it? Have I been there? In return, does that mean, we can’t have a happy ending? Sure, we can. But it has to

Zuri

Zuri in My two cents

Weekly Wrap Up (Jun. 5 - Jun. 11)

I'm glancing out my window and in my neck of the woods the saying it correct: June showers bring July flowers  Seriously, we are out of the periodic snow now and after a dry first bit of the month, we are getting some rain.   Can you believe we are nearly at the summer solstice in North America? Tonight, dusk was around 10:15. I always like to be camping at this time of year, so you can have a fire going late into the night after a long day of fun! Not sure how many of our members fall in t

wildone

wildone in Weekly Wrap Up

Review: Openly straight

Always being in the spotlight, filmed by his father with his cell phone camera at every turn like a celebrity, and everybody takes him for “the gay”, but nobody just for the person he is. Taking a shower after gym class is odd, all the people are considerate of him, when they say something that could be considered offensive, and expect Rafe to borrow the cliché. To be just like the others, is, despite the openness and acceptance in Rafe’s hometown Boulder, impossible for him on these grounds.

Zuri

Zuri in reviews

Book Review: The Shielding of Mrs Forbes by Alan Bennett

Betty Forbes has a handsome and well-dressed new husband, Graham. The problem is that Graham would rather watch Footballers with Their Shirts Off, on late-night television, than go to bed with his new wife. Graham does not want anyone finding out that he “isn’t the marrying kind,” especially his wife or his mother. This all generates a plot of sex, lies and blackmail in West Yorkshire. This short story is Alan Bennett’s take on a sex comedy; unfortunately, it is low on sex and the comedy of

Drew Payne

Drew Payne in Book review

The Hero Protagonist

The Hero Protagonist When writing a story...there needs to be a main focus. Naturally, there can be many characters and many different events and situations surrounding that character, but I truly believe that it's important to keep things primarily concentrated on the thoughts and actions of a single protagonist in your narrative, in order to keep things tight and interesting without wandering off into La La Land. Your protagonist should be the first thing that you think about when you

Comicality

Comicality in Writing Tips

June and the Advent of Summer

The warm, long days of summer are just beginning.  In fact, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere occurs in just two weeks.  We celebrate Father's Day, Flag Day, and the beginning of the summer break for students.  And, it's Gay Pride Month!!  There is so much to write about. First, let's do a random word one. Prompt #55 - Use all the following words in a story.  It can be about anything, of any length, but it must include these words:  Bug, frigid, oozes, sidecar, ban

Cole Matthews

Cole Matthews in Prompts

Reading Through The Archives

I mentioned in a previous blog entry that I was reading my way through the archives and enjoying some of the previously written stories. I was going from present day backwards but decided to change tack and went back to day one, I'm now reading from the earliest entries working my way forward. This is turning out to be a great experience which I am really enjoying. We all know that there are a lot of really good stories currently being written, for example CDMX by @Carlos Hazday is a great

Mancunian

Mancunian in archives


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