The claw foot tub was smeared with blood. It pooled on the floor. The sides were streaked crimson, running pale where rivulets of water diluted it.
For this week’s Red Writing Hood prompt, we’re inviting you to truly scare us. Here’s what you’ll need to do: Compose a post in the form of a text–160 characters. Your text must elicit or express fear.
This is excerpted from my latest short story. Click the Requiring of Care button on the right sidebar for details.
That would be me.
Read here to see why.
I dropped a broad hint about a new story about 10 days ago. I even teased with a faux tweet back in August. I’m done hinting and teasing. Today you get the real thing!
Requiring of Care | Smashwords.com
I’m pleased to announce that–just in time for Halloween!–my second short story, Requiring of Care, is now available via Smashwords and Amazon.com for $0.99!
Here’s the teaser from the Requiring of Care page on Smashwords.
Lucy Montgomery answers an unusual Help Wanted ad: Twelve-forty-two High Street. One girl, aged eight years, requiring of care. Between pressed flowers, blood on the wall, and dark closets, Lucy is pulled into the world of Violet, a little girl who holds fragments of a haunting story.
Smashwords offers downloads in every digital format you might need: Kindle, Nook, Sony, Kobo, PDF and online reading, and of course the iPod/Phone/Pad. Smashwords will also be distributing the story to the major e-retailers in a few weeks, if you prefer to download direct.
For my Kindle user friends, just click here to download Requiring of Care directly!
Thank you all for your continuing support and feedback. My wonderful friends and readers are a blessing.
And if, while you’re visiting the story on either of the pages linked above, you find it in your heart to Stumble, Pin, Like, or Tweet it? Well, to say I’d be grateful would be an understatement.
Thanks again, and happy reading!
Image Courtesy of Pinterest. Click Image for source info.
England is fading away into the dawn as the Physician and the Captain flee England. For more of this story, read here.
Isaac stands at the stern, hands braced on the rail against the pitch and roll of the Channel’s current; England fades to a rolling line, then slips away under the gray sea like Atlantis. He wonders if it is lost to him now, and his daughter with it. The crew is watchful, but not active, as dawn breaks. He and his Captain are the only passengers on this ship.
“Dr. Lowe? Isaac?” her low voice and her touch on his arm are simultaneous.
He answers without turning.
“I didn’t know you knew my name. We never discussed it… before.”
“I saw it sewn into your satchel when you were brought aboard the Siren,” she explains, joining him. “I thought it best we maintained some distance at the time.”
Her careworn hands alongside his on the rail kindle a fire under his skin that the sea air does nothing to cool.
“If I am to be Isaac,” he asks, “who are you to be?”
Motion in the lines and rigging tugs at the ship. The crew calls. Isaac watches her body shift with the vessel’s heaving even as his overcompensates.
“Rose O’Leary Marquez de Navarra.” Her eyes meet his, gray and steady. “You may call me Rose.”
“Rose, then.” He falls silent, watching her watch the water. Across the back of her neck a cluster of small stars are tattooed onto her skin just below her now close-cropped hair.
“It’s true, then,” he muses, “all pirates are tattooed like the Painted Prince.”
Her hand flies up to cover the constellation.
“It is the Pleiades. The—“
“The Seven Sisters,” he finishes. “I know the story.”
“One for each of us, and I the only one not gone to Heaven, nor likely to go. And our brother now years gone, as well.”
This week, we’d like you to write a piece in which a tattoo figures prominently. Fiction or creative non-fiction. There is a lot to think about: why someone would get one, what they chose, when they got it, what message does the tattoo(s) send? You will have 300 words with which to play.
This is from the opening paragraphs of a new story, coming to your e-reader later this month!
I clutched the newspaper listing against the steering wheel as I drove.
Crisp air and cicada song drifted in through the windows of my Honda. The Victorian residences of High Street gave way to larger estates, secluded from view by hedgerows and crumbling walls. The occasional turret or whimsical cupola was visible between the trees.
A placard announced the correct number. The patinated bronze numbers glinted dully in the sun.
The stone and iron gateway marking the entry wore its lichen with a sort of bitter dignity. Thick stands of pine and bony birches flanked the stone and dust driveway–flying buttresses of greenery.
When the house came into view, I brought the car to a crawl. A vine-choked gothic revival mansion rose up out of a rocky outcropping in the landscape, deeply shadowed by ancient oak and ash trees. Sunlight dappled the lawn and gilded the statuary in the formal gardens. I could just see the shining tips of marble wings off to my right.
The Honda’s tires crunched over fallen catalpa pods as I came to a slow stop under the porte-cochere. Their funk mingled with the scent of rotting oak leaves and wet fir needles on the air.
Good writing plants the reader’s feet into your story.
Good writing is also concise.
So when you’re trying to decide where to spend your words – where to use the most imagery and details and senses – I say setting is where it’s at.
What do you see? What does the air feel like? Smell like? What are you stepping on? Who else is there with your character or you? Time? Weather?
In 200 words.
The earthy funk of a toddler fresh from sleep. Sweet childhood sweat, waft of wet diaper, stale breath, the last whiff of baby hairline.
Chipotle hot sauce, garlic, onions, chicken, oil, hot cast iron.
Rain and early falling leaves, thrumming on glass. The fading sky: autumnal, drab.
The rhythmic whine of the dishwasher: swom… swom… swom… swom…
Fingers flutter, hovering over the keyboard. My too long hair, falling into my field of vision.
The dog’s too long nails, milling underfoot: clackclackclack
Moist heat from the stove, sheen of sweat above my lip.
Small, grimy, perfect hands around my waist.
Writing short posts is an excellent way to flex your word choice muscles. Which word is the most clear? Poignant? Direct?
This week I want you to conjure something. An object, a person, a feeling, a color, a season- whatever you like.
This is an edit of a post from the end of last summer.
Val caught her heel between the flagstones in the empty plaza. Her ankle twisted. When her knee struck the ground, her leather folio tumbled, the artist renderings and spec sheets fluttering out as it opened—she was helpless to stop it. The pain was stunning. Her hip struck the stone; her nerves sang in agony.
Running steps behind her forced her to push herself up, to look behind her.
The man who dropped to his knees next to her spoke quietly with a touch of an accent.
“Are you alright?”
Val blinked and shook her head. To speak would have been to unleash the tears balancing on her lashes.
He took her hands, pulling her up to sitting. She winced, breath hissing between her lips. He turned her palms up, running his thumbs over the heels of her hands, dusting the debris from her skin. His eyes were amber, his lashes impossibly long, his features severe.
Setting her hands down again, he stood. He bent to retrieve her things, gathering them with a practiced shuffle-tap and placing them inside the leather folio before offering to help her up.
Val took the offered arm and stood, smoothing her skirt as she did. She wobbled slightly and swore roundly. Her now broken Fendi pump had cost her as much as a full month’s split of the rent. She’d been enchanted by the impossible stiletto heel and the bow, not to mention that they were named for her—d’Orsay. A good luck charm for this, the meeting that would decide her future with the firm.
Some luck, she thought darkly. Her skirt was damp from the stones, her hair loosened from its pins by the fall and the misty air.
“This is remarkable,” the man said, touching his fingertip to the asymmetrical curves on the rendering. “Almost as if the artist was inside my imagination.”
“It’s… for a client,” Val stammered. She stuck out a hand. “Valentine Dorsay, Foxe and Dean Associates.”
“Valentine,” he repeated, taking her hand and squeezing gently. “Aubrey Finch.”
Val swallowed.
“Aubrey Finch?” she asked.
“We can’t have met. I’d remember.”
Val held back the urge to smooth the slight crease between his eyes as he struggled to place her. “This,” she said, picking up the rendering of the staircase, spiraling whimsically through fourteen feet of space, “is for your house.”
“For my—“ Realization dawned; his smile was radiant. “Foxe and Dean. Of course.”
“We’re both going to be late,” he said, checking his watch. “Shall we?”
He offered her his arm; the gesture should have seemed old-fashioned. Val put her hand on his arm and promptly stumbled on her broken heel.
Aubrey held her steady, but his gaze traveled down her leg, past her skinned knee to the offending shoe. He gestured towards the nearby row of wrought iron benches. Val hobbled with him, sitting gingerly.
Aubrey leaned down and began untying his shoes. Val watched him untie them both, then remove the left one, along with his sock. He tucked the sock inside the toe of the shoe before moving on the right one.
“What are you doing?” Val asked.
He smiled up at her. His warm, luxurious eyes, compelling in such an austere face, sparkled merrily.
“You can’t walk in those shoes, so we’ll both go in to this meeting barefoot and let them think what they will.”
Images courtesy of Pinterest. Click either image for source info.
This week, we want you to be inspired by pictures. Write a piece – fiction or creative non-fiction – based on your reaction to either of these photos. Or both.
