It was a picture to burn.
His arm was wrapped around her waist and they were cheek to cheek, grinning like fools at the blank eye of the camera. Her arms were flung around his neck, a laugh frozen on her lips as they stood, all dressed down for a summer evening together, in her driveway.
She carefully held it to the candle flame and watched the smooth paper blacken and burn. Watched the image slowly eaten away to ash that fell like dark snow over the candle.
The dusting of ash of what had been her life: lies, broken...
Well, I'll have a go. I said, That's fantastic, you wont regret it I promise, it really helped me. I thanked Chris, I felt a bit anxious about him being so enthusiastic. I hate letting people down, including myself but I wasn't bothered about that right this minute. I left Chris to his Hot Chocolate, which was probably Luke warm by now.
In a few minutes I was out on the street, a breezy day in June. I was looking for a quiet bench to sit down and write a few bits down in my notebook. I don't know if...
They weren't Norwegian, they were Swedish. We bombed all hell out of them anyway.
That was ash, not smoke. Ash moves slower than smoke. Ash langours. Yes, that might have been soot, but it could have been bone.
In the mess at breakfast, we could heard a chirping through the settling din.
That wasn't a bird.
Tom watched the sun set slowly over the skeletal remains of Brighton Pier. He had spent the day wandering through the narrow lanes of the town, stopping in the curio shops, selecting strange items from dusty shelves. A pocket watch, its mechanism rusted by age and inattention, was warm in his hand. Its smooth surface, touched by a hundred hands, was plain and unadorned. He wondered who had bought it, seen it in the window of a watchmakers, taken it home. Who had carried it in their pocket. Had they perhaps stood at this very spot, looking out to sea,...
everything flows
Time lay scattered everywhere. In the depths of the forest he could hear the 1700s exploring; somewhere to his left there were the ancient druids.
everything is meant to flow
The watches had stopped. All of them. Then again, everything was happening all at once, and there is only so much that clockwork can stand. Mechanisms are man-made and they can be broken, just as man can.
time is meant to flow
He was aware that this couldn't last - not that there was really a concept of lasting now (not a meaningful one, anyway). The universe would...
This is the draft of my next novel
This is the scene/event that my subconscious created for me that caught my imagination, and made me believe it could be spun out into a whole book, because it was so good. SO good!
This is the ending I thought my agent/publisher would probably want me to finish it with. I don't actually like it that much.
This is something that happened in my actual life that is funny/poignant/unbelievable but I think will add gravitas and depth to the book.
This is the point when i start grasping at formula to pad...
They were listening to Bach while they sculpted windmills out of Play-doh. The Play-doh was blue. Aunt Gertrude would only allow blue Play-doh in the chalet. It had been that way since the accident.
Aunt Gertrude was 78 years old and she had no arms or legs. She had cut them off in 1983 as a display of devotion to Reggie, her pet octopus. Reggie could have cared less. I remember my Aunt as she wielded the chainsaw, slicing off her limbs, bathing everything in warm red gore. Reggie could care less. He just emitted some ink. Even when Aunt...
She unwrapped her sandwich and fed it to the pigeons, just as she did every day. Sometimes she wondered why she bothered making them in the first place, when she knew that she wasn’t going to eat them. And then she remembered the birds. How they would come hopping towards her when she sat on the same old bench, the paint long gone and no one caring enough to give it a new coat, the splinters of greyed wood sticking to her clothes as they grabbed at any chance to be free of their prison.
She understood how they felt....
We were sitting in the basement, Danny and me. Tv's on. Hockey game. Upstairs ma and pa is fighting again. Bills. Or pa's philanderin'. Didn't know. Didn't care.
"Hey," Danny says. "Let's make a mix tape."
I roll my eyes a little but I don't say no. The two-deck tape player is in the basement as is my whole cassette collection. I know Danny doesn't like most of my music but he does like some songs (The Beatles' Birthday, The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, The Pointer Sisters' Neutron Dance.)
So we start making a mix tape. Danny, who is...
It was the last day.
General Richards was tired. Very tired. He had been walking for a long time, and there was still nothing in sight. No city of glass. Not even the path of golden bricks. They were nowhere to be seen.
He sat down in the dirt, even though none of the others were sitting, even though Eliza still had the energy to dance with her nurse. Of course she had the energy; she was the one they had all been giving all their food and water to. She was only a child. She held the future in...