Insecure Writers, Flash Fiction for Özlem Yikici's Continuing Story and Books from Kait Nolan (it's ROW80 Check In Day!)

ou'll have to forgive me. I'm feeling a bit insecure at the moment. I've hit a good stride in my edits for Rome, Rhymes and Risk but, you know, it's easy to hit a stride when you keep leaving blank spots in your wake. [insert scene] and [add more emotion to this] and so on; easy to discard so-called edited pages when you've still got square brackets littering the prose.

On top of that, the blasted alarm clock went off in the middle of such an exciting film/story of a dream this morning. I've been scribbling like mad, trying to get all the pieces down, but I missed the ending, and didn't even get to find out the hero's name - the heroine was just about to call out to him, as a wave took him under, when the furshlugginer alarm jangled me awake.

Even trying to relive the dream in the shower didn't help. What do you mean, I'll have to imagine and write the ending? Oh, right. I'm a writer.

An insecure writer. Thank you, Alex, for the support group!

And if you'd like, you can read my story for Rach's second challenge, vote (she's got Like buttons!), and offer critiques. I need to be more insecure before I can be confident, right?

At the same time, I've got a bit of flash fiction to share with you all!

Özlem Yikici has come up with a wonderful idea: "I want us to write a story together. How? Just like any other Flash Fiction Challenge; but with a slight twist (I can't help myself); we will each write a paragraph (no more than 250 words per entry) to the on-going story (which will start below and continue in the comment section/linky list, I will create a page to collate all the entries). Once we finish this rather exciting online project, I hope to publish our collected works in an eBook - either market it for free or put it on sale for a worthy cause." Another added twist is that Özlem has put up four images for us to draw inspiration from, including the two that I used:

The Lady of Shalott, John William Waterhouse

Nightfall Down the Thames, John Atkinsonn Grimshaw

So here're part one, at C. M. Brown's and part two, at Lara Schiffbauer's, of Paper Canvas Tapestries Collaborations, in which our two heroines find themselves in a frightening hallway in the middle of a windstorm, and one has just been attacked by a sunflower. Or so it seems...

Delphina cried out, but the wind snatched her words away. I leapt forward and snatched the petal off her cheek.

"Jasmine, help me," she managed to whisper, and then she began to cough. Another petal fell out into her hand.

"Let's get out of here." I grabbed her hand and pushed forward, into the wind, down the red-carpeted corridor.

The first door to the left had a rose engraved on its handle, which seemed like a good omen. The wind pushed us harder than ever, but I set my shoulder to the door and shoved.

The door opened and we fell through --

--onto a ship.

No one had seen us. We clutched the rail and looked around at the tall masts, the caravels, the fishermen's rickety rowboats that cluttered up the docks. In the distance, I could see the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

We were still in London, then. Yet the cityscape didn't look anything like the London I knew.

"Jasmine? What's happened?" Delphina gaped up at me, expecting me to have all the answers, as she always did. There was a vivid red line on her cheek where the petal had sliced her skin.

"We're in London. But as to when..."

That's when I saw her: in a boat with a dragon-head prow, floating towards us on the current, long-haired and pale, the Lady of Shalott.

"Help me," the lady called. She raised her arm, shielded her eyes, and her gaze met mine. "Is this Camelot?"

If you'd like to play, please write to Özlem!

And Kait's books? They're all 50% off at Smashwords, in honour of Read an Ebook Week. Happy reading!