Cia

The metal gears on the machine ground to a halt with a grating screech. The metal rods crashed down, clanging against the stone flagging. Sparks flew where they bounced and then rolled. I hoped Wildman was okay, but I couldn’t look away from Teddy. The steam flowed around us, strangely cold against my skin. It obscured his face for a moment, and I panicked. “Teddy!” I strained against the cage, and the flare cut through the steam, but it also sent another surge of power from me through Teddy,

The weather has turned, and it's rainy... which reminded me of a story from a past anthology I really enjoyed. Renee has announced a special anthology redo for 2016 allowing members to pick any--or all--past anthologies they didn't participate in to feature a new story. One of the older anthologies I really enjoyed was "Worth Fighting For" and my favorite story of that series was this one, so I hope you'll enjoy it too! The Rainy Day by Graeme Length: 7,598 A Reader Said: What I liked best about this story was the juxtaposition between Brat's behavior and attitude and his "doing the right thing". That's far from easy to do, and Graeme did it very well indeed. ~ C James The CSR Discussion Day will take place on Monday, September 28th!

His dissociative behavior definitely has cause. Don't worry, the cliffy will be answered next week!

Wildman darted between me and the guard. “Stop!” My yell was strangled. I had to lower the gun; I’d almost pulled the trigger when he moved. My heart raced and sweat dripped down my back. “Get me out of this thing,” Teddy said. He was straining at the bars of the cage. Wildman had the guard on the floor, savagely beating him. He wasn’t moving, except with the blows that rained down with a strength that seemed to defy Wildman’s size and had everything to do with his fury. “Just wait.” I holst

Happy Birthday, hun!!!

He does, doesn't he? But he's so hard to read, there's no telling what secrets he's hiding... or why he's so determined to stay away from everyone.

I hope you liked the next chapter to answer these questions! Wildman is my fav character in this story, I think.

“We shouldn’t split up,” Teddy said. “I agree, but which way do we go? We don’t have an unlimited amount of time. At least we won’t get lost.” Our footprints left a clear path behind us in the layer of dust. “This way.” Wildman didn’t even wait for us to discuss it, he just plunged ahead down the right corridor. “Does this seem like the right way?” I whispered to Teddy as we trailed him. “Right way,” Wildman said. Teddy shrugged. “I don’t know where we are under the palace, but we’re defini

Happy Birthday, JoAnn!!

I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed with Teddy, but that wasn’t going to happen. We dressed in dark clothing, saying nothing until I noticed Teddy left his sling off. “You need to wear that.” “Will, we’re sneaking into the palace to find Shvesla’s machine in order to destroy it. Who knows what will happen? I’ll be careful, but I may need to use both arms. We’re already stuck going in there alone; it’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Arguing with him would waste precious time, even if I did

Happy Birthday, Bill!

Thanks, guys! I did have a good day. Did some baking and went to a friend's place to see their 1/2 doberman and 1/2 black German Shepherd puppies my family is desperately trying to convince to get one. We ended up staying for dinner and bringing one of their kids home for a sleepover, lol. But I didn't have to cook!

I didn't realize I hadn't posted Wednesday's chapter til I saw the blog. Whoops! So yeah, this is just the one readers should've gotten on Wed. Sorry! Thanks so much for the reviews, Valkyrie. I am glad you like these guys. I admit, they've really grown on me, too.

Varket is creepy! LOL

They did... this time!! But they must keep going back and braving the lion's den.

Awww!!! ​ Thank you everyone!!

“We did it.” Teddy and I sat facing each other in the carriage on the way back to my parents’ house. I had my hands folded together, but Teddy was sitting on his to hide the trembling. We were both riding a natural high, but the prospect of what we were about to do loomed high. “You did it.” He’d led us through the dusty tunnels, eventually leading down to the cell. Better, we’d found keys just inside a heavy, wooden door that led to the cells. I’d snagged them and tried each key on the door un

Happy Birthday, Caz!!

Today we have a slightly new method to the madness, me! I'm a little bit later than Renee on posting these, but I hope you'll enjoy this week's prompts as well as the feature prompt selection. Sometimes an author hits a road block that they just can't seem to make their way through. The weekly prompts are a great starting point to jump start some new ideas. Whether you're looking to just do a quick flash piece or maybe you want to do a bit longer story, why not give them a try! A couple of things to remember: Prompt responses under 1,000 words must be posted as part of a collection. Do to the high number of collections containing only a few "chapters" we have set a limit of five collections per author, any more than this requires prior Admin approval. Prompt 438 – Creative Tag – Vampire You’ve had a friend who just keeps trying to set you up on a blind date. You hate blind dates with a passion and had successfully dodged all attempts to set you up. Unfortunately they finally caught you on a night when you didn’t think fast enough and here you are on a date with a dark mysterious stranger. You remember having a good time, but not much else. When you wake up the next morning you feel really tired and find marks on your neck and upper arm. At work you mention it to your friend, jokingly. Another coworker over hears and says it sounds like you are dating a vampire. Are you? Prompt 439 – Creative Tag – List of Words Use the following in a story – a clown, a motorcycle, vacation tickets, chocolate cake, and a ring. Today's prompt feature is from James Savik's response to prompt #437: Read the rest here.

You know how everyone wants a reading list on GA so they can keep track of the stories? Well, Edge has a 'Reading List' separate of the Favorites list that is really handy to keep track of those online reads you're enjoying. A lot of the other features, like Cortana's voice options and the face recognition software, I already had on my laptop with 8. Before I had it set up to be just like my Surface, they were even cloned to stay in sync, but now the laptop has more of a 'computer' interface than a tablet set up. I'm not sure if I like it, actually.

That's the difficulty in self-editing--when you don't know what you're doing wrong, you don't know how to fix it. There's a topic in the Writer's Corner pinned at the top that helped me finally learn dialogue punctuation, so you might check that out.

http://thewritelife.com/self-editing-tips/ This is a great post fo​r all authors! I'd also recommend poking about the rest of the site, especially if you have a goal of becoming published. ​

Thoughtful questions and great answers! As always, this is a great feature for the blog to share more about our authors with other members. Thanks to everyone who takes part, and Dark for organizing the posts time after time!

The page stopped dead in his track. He shook his head slowly, side to side, his eyes huge. “No.” I bent down to whisper in his ear. “We heard a story about a man who was a traitor to the king. He was locked up and died, but his spirit haunts the palace because his bones were never found.” Young Will shivered. “I think a friend of mine saw him once! He was so scared he had to sleep with a lamp on for a whole fortnight.” “What if you could find the bones? You could put the ghost to rest, provin

Happy Birthday!!