Tuesday 1 October 2024

#WEP October #Horrorfest - Life is a sunless garden. #IWSG October - let's talk about ghosts.

 Hello there!

I know I'm a week early for the IWSG, but what the heck. It fits in perfectly with the WEP special challenge, so I'm all over it.


October 2 question - Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What's your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

My favorite ghostly tale is Dracula, the old classic vampire tale, often credited with so much vampire lore. But ghosts come in various forms. The ghost I'm writing about today is all too common, but has a lot in common with vampires.

There remains a fascination with paranormal romance. Here's the latest:

"63% of Amazon's top 100 best-selling books in 2024 are Romance titles, and 30% of those feature paranormal or fantasy elements."  

Alex Newton (K-lytics


So here I go...

It feels so good to be writing again. So if you missed my last post, you'll know I'm back after a long hiatus. I'm the epitome of the #IWSG. I feel like I've forgotten everything about publishing etc, but am glad that the writing is still there. And I'm starting back with #flashfiction, my favorite. If you missed it, WEP is back for an October special challenge for all those who've been missing the motivation to write out of your comfort zone. 



The idea for my WEP entry hit me when I recollected Oscar Wilde’s quote – “A life without love is like a sunless garden.” I thought about the possibilities, and this is what I came up with.

 

A Sunless Garden


 


A Sunless Garden

The city of New Orleans moved to its chaotic rhythm, indifferent to the hollow ache nestled inside Clara's chest. How many people were like her, going through the motions but not really living? You’d never know with all the color, noise and mayhem surrounding her. She was an empty shell, nothing left inside but cold and desolation.

Completely out of sync with her city.

She sat at her favorite café window, mesmerized by rain streaking down the glass. Every drop felt like a tear she couldn’t cry, every shadow on the pavement outside a whisper of something lost.

"More coffee?" The waiter, his smile mechanical, held up the steaming pot of darkness. Clara liked his offish manner. No chatting. Just isolation.

She nodded, not caring that she hated the bitter taste. The warmth it gave was all she craved, a small comfort in a world grown cold.

As she sipped her third brew for the day, a glint caught her eye—outside, across the street, a man stood under the awning of her favorite bookstore, Dead End Books. His eyes locked on her, not with the casual gaze of a passer-by, but with a dark, knowing intensity. Clara’s breath hitched. There was something wrong about him, something familiar, yet utterly alien.

She looked away quickly, her heart pounded, the air in the café suffocated her. Her breath was choking gasps. The last time she had felt that sensation was with Thomas, her late husband. The same heart-racing fear masquerading as love. What torture had he planned for her when he returned from work and decided he hated the meal she’d prepared? But Thomas had died three years ago, and the pitiful trickling of love that had once warmed her world had died with him.

She’d always been lonely. Thomas was her antidote to loneliness, her lifeboat, until she came to prefer loneliness to her life with him.

Guilt tore at her. Why did she do what he asked right to the end? How could she administer that lethal dose that took him from the world? When she refused, he cursed and ranted, spittle flying in her face. Then he said his final words – “I’ve never loved you. Truth is, I’ve hated you for a long time.”

He was taunting her. He always taunted her to get what he wanted. She shouldn’t have done it. But she gave him what he wanted as she always did.

As the needle pricked his arm, his eyes glinted, triumphant. To the last you obey me, they said.

Now, her life was a sunless garden—dead flowers choked by weeds, nothing but shadows.

She scanned the street, but the man had disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared. Yet unease gnawed at her. She left notes on the table, rushed from the café, her heels clicking on the wet sidewalk in a hurried, hollow rhythm.

As she rounded the corner, she felt it again—that eerie presence.

Not someone.

Something.

She spun around, but the street was empty. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. As drops of rain fell on her head, the world seemed to warp, grow darker, the sky a bruised gray that smothered the last vestige of light.

She sped down the bright, graffitied alley close to her apartment, but the walls were black towers, pressing against her. Every footstep echoed twice. Someone was walking behind her.

She stopped.

Turned around.

The man. At the far end of the alley. Shrouded in shadow. He stood, legs planted apart, arms raised in the air like a boxer ready to administer the first blow. His eyes glowed faintly through the shadow, the way Thomas’s had the night he died—distant, lost to the sickness that had taken him, yet triumphant when she carried out his bidding.

"Who are you?" Clara demanded, her voice trembling.

The man stepped forward, walking slowly in her direction, and with every step, the world dimmed. The lights flickered, street traffic silenced, even the rain stopped mid-air, frozen in time.

"You … know … who … I … am."

Her heart raced, the truth clawed at her mind. This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be.

"Thomas? But you’re dead.”

The figure smiled, but there was no joy in it.

"Not exactly."

His voice was Thomas’s, but colder, laced with something darker, more threatening.

"You let me go, Clara. You killed me. Now you have no one. Instead, you’re living in this sunless garden of grief, and you’ll never escape."

Clara took a step back, her pulse a wild drumbeat in her ears. "This can’t be. You’re not him."

The figure stopped before her, so close she could smell his stench. Tilting his head, he growled like an attack dog.

"No. I am what’s left. The emptiness. The darkness you invited in when you let love go."

“What we had wasn’t love. You hated me. You taunted me. You beat me.”

Her back hit the alley wall. She was trapped by shadows.

"What … what do you want?"

His eyes glowed brighter, the alley swallowed the last fragment of light. "I want what you took from me. What you buried with your cold heart."

“My heart was never cold. That was all you. Despite how you treated me, I loved you.”

His teeth grimaced, rotten and yellow. His face in hers, his spiney hands encircled her neck.

“But I never loved you, Clara. I pitied you. Your life has always been a sunless garden.”

He squeezed, harder, harder.

Her eyes bulged, opened long enough to see the triumph in his.

And then the world went black.

In the silence, broken only by the inhuman sounds emanating from her throat, she realized the truth. Love was not the sun. It was the garden. Without it, the shadows had come for her.


TAGLINE:

The scourge of Domestic Violence reaches beyond the grave.

 

WORDS: 1000

FCA 


Aren't you sickened by those horrific stories of domestic violence and despite the money thrown at the scourge by the government, the violence gets worse. And I don't believe in judging women for staying in a toxic marriage - not everyone has an 'out' and some are kept in this situation by crippling emotional needs.

I wanted to show how far reaching domestic violence is - it reaches beyond the grave.


Thanks for visiting and reading. It's good to be back to blogging!


The awesome co-hosts for the October 2 posting of the IWSG are Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre!

To read more Horrorfest stories, click on a name below



Monday 9 September 2024

HELLO THERE! I'M BACK!

 Hello blogging friends (if I have any left!) Out of sight, out of mind? Hope I can claw my way back to this much-loved community. As said in my last post before disaster struck, I prefer blogging over all other social media. And I will come by to say hi!

I'm too late for the IWSG this month. I told Alex of my situation, but I've been away too long and no longer have my exalted position near the top of the list. 💔

So...where have I been?

On April 4, my son was taken gravely ill with respiratory failure and has just been released from hospital after 4 months! So from that you will deduce he is still not out of the woods, so my husband Geo and I are helping take care of him at his home in Brisbane. We used to live here in the city and love it, so it's not such an impost although we miss the beach like crazy. 


Now we don't have to bus it to the hospital every day, I've taken some time for myself and here I am at the gorgeous Brisbane Square Library in a nice little possee with a view over the Brisbane River and the new bridge connecting the South Bank with the new casino complex and reconnecting with the writerly world. 

So, hello again, fellow writers! I'm so glad to be back!

Anyway, anyone who knows me knows of WEP (Write...Edit...Publish) and how we had to close down, some insisted temporarily due to overwhelming life challenges, and turns out they were right. Many said they needed WEP to write to a challenge every two months and some said they'd not written anything since we stopped with the challenges so Yolanda, Nilanjana, Olga, Jemi and Sonia all agreed to reopen for a challenge in October, our funnest month, with a Thrillfest. 

So, thanks to some clever artwork from Olga Godim, our badge guru, we have prepared a challenge for all those who like to have a crack at flash fiction of the scary kind, or non-scary if you can't bring yourself to horrify readers.

This is going to be my first foray into writing for four months! I have two completed novels which I will be rereading and sending to editors, but I fear I've forgotten more than I ever knew about publishing. Hmm. Going to be a tough road home. Found anything that works for you? Do share!

Here I present WEP's October Horrorfest!



Are you ready?

Thought we were caput didn't you?!!

Nope, just dealing with life's issues,

but we're ready once more.


For a NEW CHALLENGE!



It's coming up in October

Just in time for Halloween!

Write about what scares you.

Whether it ghosts, or goblins, or ghouls...

Or it's relationships, spiders, or snakes...

Maybe you fear tomorrow, or yesterday,

the past, or the future.

With so many fears, there's no reason

not to participate.

So we'll see you there!!!!


Post your masterpiece

    OCTOBER 1st through the 16th

Just affix your link and get ready for

some amazing writing!!!!!

Don't forget, comments count!

See you then with a link!


Thanks Yolanda Renee for letting me steal the promo which is found at the WEP website.

Sadly, two of our original members have passed - Sally Stackhouse and Nancy Williams. They are sadly missed by us all.

Hopefully we will see some of you posting your stories with us in a celebration of the gift of life!




Wednesday 3 April 2024

#IWSG April 2024 - Blogging, social media ...

 Here we are, another month done and dusted. Hope your month was rewarding in every way.

April 3 question - How long have you been blogging? (Or on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram?) What do you like about it and how has it changed?

Hmm. The question this month makes me think. I've been blogging for a gazillion years it feels, but I think I began in 2007. 

Someone said today that blogging hasn't really changed over the years, but I disagree. Or, rather, it's we who have changed over time. 

I started with a travel blog to enter a competition, L'Aussie Travel, then created a Paris blog as a place to talk about my favorite city, then Flashquake blog where I posted my stories to the #Fridayfiction prompts, then began Romantic Friday Writers, which became  WEP, a trusted place to write flash fiction to prompts, and toyed with the idea of a separate blog for my paranormal pen name, Silver Tree. Way too much work. So now I'm going to make a major change to this, my author blog, and put all my eggs in one basket (couldn't resist the pun).

When social media became a thing - yes it wasn't always a thing - many of my blogger friends left for Facebook especially, which is a lot less work than blogging. 

Even though I'm a lot less enthusiastic about blogging than I used to be, I still prefer it to FB/X/Insta etc. even though I force myself to 'do' these when the spirit moves me. Blogging is much more personal and I do still have a few blogging friends left, not too many, unfortunately. 

Writing can be an isolating experience, so it helps to touch base with fellow writers once a month for the IWSG, and latterly, I catch up with my WEP friends each month or two on the WEP site. All good.

The awesome co-hosts for the April 3 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn, T. Powell Coltrin, Natalie Aguirre, and Pat Garcia!


See you in May!


Denise

Wednesday 6 March 2024

#IWSG March 2024 - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - DO YOU USE IT TO WRITE SYNOPSES?

Hi all!




Lovely to meet again so soon for the IWSG! March already!

I love the optional question this month -

Have you "played" with AI to write those nasty synopses, or do you refuse to go that route? How do you feel about AI's impact on creative writing?


 I'm not one to put my head in the sand when something new arrives on the scene. It seems AI has well and truly arrived and is here to stay. We've heard the stories of them plagiarising authors and so on, and that needs to be sorted. But there are helpful things about AI and I wrote a whole post HERE.

AI is still imperfect. I ask it to write a synopsis and it gives me a blurb. That's okay. So I ask it 'how do I write a synopsis' and it gives me all the correct points. So I haven't taken it a step further yet and given them the synopsis points they gave me then tell them to write a synopsis for this story...ha ha. 

I've had some great blurbs written by AI but they needed a lot of editing and I mean A LOT! They like to write in quaint old-fashioned language.

So I always like to see examples. Here is ONE of the opening paras of a blurb AI wrote for my current WIP. What do you think of the language?

In the enchanting city of Paris, where the aroma of freshly baked croissants fills the air, Angelique Ravello has decided to revive her beloved cookery school after a devastating loss. Determined to start anew and heal her wounded heart, Angelique has sworn off men, focusing solely on her culinary passion.



The awesome co-hosts for the March 6 posting of the IWSG are Kristina Kelly, Miffie Seideman, Jean Davis, and Liza @ Middle Passages!


Thanks for coming by!

Denise

 

Thursday 1 February 2024

#WEP Get Together and #IWSG February 2024 - What turns you off on writers' blogs?

 Hi friends!

I am using this post for the monthly WEP Get Together and the IWSG. Although WEP is no longer operational, the team is tight and we're still having a meet and greet on the first of the month to share our news. Anyone is welcome to join us.


CLICK on the WEP site to read some inspiring posts!




How's the new year treating you? Any great successes? 

So far my year has made a slow start - I watch the New York news so I know the US has been battered by snow etc. Down here, Australia is battered by floods, cyclones (I got caught in one) and a long-lasting heatwave. Not an auspicious beginning to the year.

I have struggled to write amidst the mayhem. Hot, draining weather is not conducive to writing, which is why NaNoWriMo is in the Northern Hemisphere's winter. 

So my January plans of publishing two more novels has come to naught. One is ready, one is undergoing final tweaking by moi, then I'll be sending it out to betas and then an editor. Going to try a great development editor, Yolanda Renee. We've helped each other over the years. A great friendship which will continue even though we don't have WEP to hold us together. I'm playing back her kindness by showing her shingle.


See link above.


So, brings me to the IWSG question of the month:

February 7 question: What turns you off when visiting an author's website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author's books? Constant mention of books?

I think the question underlines what we mostly know - authors are doomed if they do, doomed if they don't. We get turned off if an author tries to sell us a book, or talks about it constantly, and if they don't, we think their marketing plan is skewiff. Hmm. Can't win. 

I think my website is unassuming. I have a Page for MY BOOKS which I'm pretty sure no one has ever clicked on. Correct me if I'm wrong. But blogging makes friends, not sales. Which, along with the constant dabbling by google and co which results in people not being able to comment etc, is why some bloggers leave for Facebook and Instagram or other socials. A lot less trouble. Do you agree?


The awesome co-hosts for the February 7 posting of the IWSG are Janet Alcorn, SE White, Victoria Marie Lees, and Cathrina Constantine!

Visit if you can!

See you in March!

Denise