LJH

Hmmmm, objection! What a crud! I couldn't drag my eyes and senses away from this chapter. You lawyers need a damned good spanking for being so bombastic and better than thou. lol. Overall, an action packed trial, hopefully the ending will be a rollercoaster of brilliant penmanship. I have Grisham on my left, and you on my right. I'm comparing. So far so good. You're ahead but only by a page or two. LOL So get on with this now, i want drama drama drama...(tongue in cheek).

The trial begins. I am a sucker for Grisham, Michael Palmer and Richard North Patterson's courtroom dramas, I know I'm going to be hooked on yours. Hmmm, let me peek at the next chap... (pssst, just some typo's otherwise nothing out of kilter here as you well know lol).

The Funny Thing Is… Fine is always fine until it’s not quite fine anymore. There was once a time when Saturdays were about fun. This is the reason I love your work. You immediately set up the mood and tone of the chapter and the reader is suddenly catapulted into suspense. Why are Saturdays not fun anymore? because Coop has gotten himself into a rut, and altho things seem so right and perfect and even he agrees that everything is fine and pewrfect, well, there's this little question of... Chase...and so I'll get to the next chapter You're making music with your words again.

I love this because it is sooo close to home...so here goes. Casey buries Tom. After a few months the questions begin. Others may say, move on, get over it. Those who know understand that these questions are asked out of a deeper enquiring nature, throw a question out to the universe and it bounces back with an answer sooner or later. Also, very often, the healing process starts with questions. A powerful way to begin the story. Your use of the word robbery as a reason for his death and then your comparison to it stealing other things, is so real. Nothing can take away that pain. It lives with you forever. You begin again. You discover new energies that never existed. When the time is right, you move on. Sometimes you are distracted, sometimes you are courted, sometimes you are lost in a world where the sexiness is nailbiting stuff. I think I've just bit all my nails.

Ten Suns Nine Dragons The signs of the Western Zodiac in conflict with the Chinese Zodiac Giant Mantis's A pair of gay adventurers. A pair of straight adventurers. Fairies. Goblins. Things that go bump in the night. All seeking one thing. The Last Candle. For this candle, when lit, will reveal the secret to immortality. How? The lord only knows cos I have only thirty pages written. So please read, comment, drop in your ideas, show me the gremlins. I'd love to know what you think. Hugs and Warmth xxx

The hook and it must b in the first chapter or 1st page or 1st patagraph. No hook, no read.

errrr...it could have been. But I think It's time to meet one of the antagonists. I hope to make this an epic adventure. Lots of gremlins to iron out I know. Thanks for the read, D.

The Art Of Nose twitching and Ear twiddling. Date – 22 February 2013 Montgomery Jordan Smith collected candles created by the best names in the world. Candle crafters were in possession of his contact details so it didn’t come to him as much of a surprise when he received an email inviting him to make an offer on a recent acquisition made by none other than the famous candle maker Benjamin Willowson. He replied, saying he would be delighted to view the candle

Hi Cia. I am impressed by this tale of regaining belief in oneself, by the way you handle all the aspects of the narrator's fears. he is remorseful, scared, and lonely after a life changing experience and the emotion of it lingers well after the last word. You have written into this story, another character: loneliness and the narrator's fears are grasped in one sentence: "whatever...real. Talbot is also lonely. And, altho we know what happened with the narrator, I cannot help but think that Talbot's introversion has also been caused by some life changing event. The narrator's first glimpse of "softness" is when he says: But Talbot was different. This line tells me that Talbot has a chance no other person has. The last para sums up the entire feeling for the whole piece. And the tale runs full circle, back to where you started, with his feelings of loneliness. Cool effort.

Excercise 2 Why I write... Writing is my best friend. I can take from him and give to him. He can irritate and surprise me with rejections still, I continue. He never complains. I give my time, he gives his. I know him, but he battles to grasp me. I don't complain. I write. (49 words) Three Recent Ideas. (cancel the last reply lol) 1. A man tries to hide the fact that he is illiterate, and he struggles to find someone to love because of it. 2. A woman tending to her garden digs up a box filled with diamonds and how she deals with it. 3. A thoroughly handsome guy, who owns 25 cats, moves into the house next door, the two neighbours on either side of him conspire to take revenge for their sleepless nights. Take one of the three creative thoughts you wrote down in Exercise 2, then list 20 separate words that communicate or describe that thought. Do not, at this stage, link the words into sentences. Once you have your 20 words use them in a poem of 16 lines or less. Then, take the same 20 words and work them into a short story of fewer than 300 words. Which exercise came more easily? Which form has best communicated your creative thought? Twenty Words: Word /See /Hear /Smell /Taste/ Writing/ Pen/ X/ slow/ job /knowledge /wisdom /learning /read /ignorant /uncultured /unlettered/ unenlightened/ love/ man POEM BASED ON TWENTY WORDS I do not see, or hear history. I cannot taste or smell wine. Unlettered, an X is my constant writing companion. Ignorant people label me without learning that Through no fault of mine am I without wisdom. My pen is uncultured; It has no ink. My book has no pages for I am blind to the word, And there are few who take kindly to the unenlightened. Knowledge evades me but the slow dawning saddens me As once again I awake and I am without love. For how can I love a man when perfection is all around me? SHORT FICTION My "affliction" is my secret. You will never see me asking the manager of the supermarket to assist me with the names of a product. I can't have a cellphone. What would I do with it? Count yourself as one who knows that my signature is an X. I want to read and write. I want wisdom. I want to smell and taste the word perfume. I want to see and touch the texture of knowledge. I've tried, but lack of money prevents success. I have a pen, but it has no ink; I yearn to visualise a word through my eyes. My book collection has grown for the day I ‘m able to read. I speak the language of association. I’m learning like an infant. I hear the news of the day from people at bus shelters and in the parking areas of the airport where I look after cars. People tell me I have a good vocabulary and speak slow, but well. I never tell them my secret. But I’ll tell you. I copycat them. I concentrate on the sound of the words, the colour of each vocal inflection, the vibrations of their souls as they speak, the shape of each word as it leaves their mouths, the texture of each rolling syllable. I am not ignorant. I am the most intelligent of my unlettered family. My mother worked for a white woman in Sandton, and slept in a corrugated kaia* at night. I have a job as a gardener for a middle class suburbian family and I have money to spend. There is only one problem. I will not allow any literate man to love me. I fear the love of the enlightened. I fear it may hurt. I think it’s time to tell Jerry. 298 words I preferred writing the story for it embodies the entire pathos of the character and how lost and miserable he is in his own hellish world. I hope it worked.

Hmmm I never looked at it like that. LOL. Nice touch to it. We'll see, I might use your idea mahahaha. Thanks for the kind words

Exercise 2 I read a Wilbur Smith novel called When the Lion Feeds. It was banned in South Africa for many years but we could still find copies of it. It affected me. All i wanted was to be Wilbur Smith. Instead, in my writing, i became me. Three ideas: Continuing the gay detective novels, starting a new project about discovering immortality and lastly, a story of unreqitted love in a future where the world has one government and is led by one man who is gay. Oh my word.

Blue ball And that's when the sadness came Coffee BLUE BALL The closest thing to heaven is a blue ball called earth. Aliens bypass this planet. Black holes refuse to swallow it. Let's be serious here: This blue ball, from space, looks peaceful and devoid of interstellar interference like 6 mile wide asteroids and fly by comets. Come in closer. Tell us what you see. AND THATS WHEN THE SADNESS CAME The paramedic said her age was against her. He said patients with congenital heart failure and thin blood and water in their legs don't hold on for long. They told me to leave the bedroom and allow them to do their work. Outside, my husband and I paced the hallway, not saying anything to each other. He was on his cell, contacting the family, telling them that the paramedics will be taking her to Edenvale Public Hospital and just then the paramedic came out of the room and said that Union Hospital might be the better choice for they hve the best equipment for cardio arrest. He asked us to help him fetch the stretcher from the ambulance. They had attached her to all kinds of machines and i could hear her erratic heartbeat struggling, fighting to keep her alive. She had been a strong woman most of her life. She had given birth to 8 children. She had fed them, clothed them, taught them religion, and spanked them when they got out of line. We helped him retrieve the stretcher and on our return they had put her on the floor and were applying CPR. It was only then that i realized there was no sound coming from the machines and thats when the sadness came. It strangled me to watch her die. I love you mom. COFFEE Two weeks ago my doc spoke three words: NO MORE COFFEE. Not even a cup. Get over it, he said after I had protested, and move on. machines. I obliged over the sound of her erratic heartbeat. When we returned with the stretcher I knew something was amiss. They had placed mom on the floor beside the bed and were administering CPR

The Tail and the Sting…1939 Candles. Wall to wall; floor to ceiling. Large, medium and small, all arranged in perfect order by height, perfume, and colour. Every one of them, a masterpiece of skill and passion. Each one of them represented a history. Professor James Fellow stood in awe of the craftsmanship. He edged forward a little, holding the torchlight high above his head. They had broken into the last chamber of the maze of caverns beneath the palace of Qin Shi Huang

Okay, now that I know that it continues, I'll reserve all my energy for the reviews

Go for the jugular, girl. This is brilliant. I love the way you infuse and resolve all the micro subplots and weave the story thru to the twist. It's like looking at a Hopper painting and finding the stories he paints. All good short fiction must embrace the same rules as applied to writing shorter stories or even novels. It seems logical, only at the end of all the suspense, that Ty will walk away, but why? And when the twist came, it blew me away...well done ma'am.

oh my gosh has it been so long?

Shot. The hook, characters, beginning and mid story were suspensefully deliteful to read. The aim of any storyteller is not to simply tell a story, but to make sure the reader lives that story. In other words, the journey is nb and i am looking forward to the next destination.

I was hooked from the first word. More when I've read it through a second time.

The secret recipe for immortality; twelve candles each representing a sign of the zodiac, all contain a clue to the location of the next one. In here you will find dragons and unicorns, rams, bulls and archers, scorpions and fish in space, you'll meet some antagonistic characters, but they all have one thing in common, to find that last candle, for once the cycle has begun, it cannot be undone.

QUIN DYNASTY September 9th210[i] A cloud descended over the hills and valleys east of Xi’an[ii], choking it in a sheet of fine rain. The mist hung low and manifested like dew on the twisted bark of the Chinese Jupiter[iii]and the red leaves of the wild Nandina, pregnant with red berries. Inextricably, the sun’s rays filtered through the thick canopy and settled on spider webs in the bark and between the leaves of the trees. But the ecstasy was over in a few moments, only a

...and use a dictionary...I do, all the time, not just these online dictionaries but a real solid book...hehehe. Grammar...well, see, it's like this, grammar aids the construction of an exciting sentence and words create emotions. Check for silly mistakes like: She thought to herself. I mean who else is she going to think to? Or, He shrugged his shoulders. Gee, what else he going to shrug. Also, I've learned not to describe the obvious, only describe the everyday if it differs from what we normally expect.

Epilogue On the 14th February 1887, President Paul Kruger visited Johannesburg as part of his annual countrywide tour to hear the grievances of the people who had voted for him. He arrived in the village to a promising roar of cheers from hundreds of men in a town that had gone out of its way to welcome him. He noticed the town had a large number of streets and corners. The bars, taverns, and saloons on these street corners made more money than any other industry in the small republic. B

They found his body in the veld. Decomposed beyond recognition save for the ring he wore. He must have been there a couple of days. Grubs, worms and flies had taken their toll and the sun had dried the leftover meat sticking to his bones. In a game of chess the objective of the game is to capture the king and take control of the game. Masters of deployment use the skills involved. So do military organisations and ordinary human beings in their daily lives. Michael's opponent in this game w

Lord Granville lit a cigar without asking her permission, the first sign that he did not respect her. He looked at her with a squint of pity. She once smelled like a rose, now it was more like the stench of bad cauliflower. "Comfortable?" He asked, waving the lit cigar in her direction. She did not say anything. Her eyes were void of emotion and he knew she would do one of two things, deny the charges, or blame it upon someone else, or both. He began with a harsh tone, accented by a d