Lily's Friday Prediction - and an Announcement

My dear Prediction friends, it is with regret that I must announce the imminent demise of Lily's Friday Prediction. It is only fair to give you some notice - the final challenge will be posted on Friday 11th May.

Since I started the Prediction Challenge back in May 2010, the Feardom's corridors have throbbed with horror, crime and beauty. An entire community has grown up around the weekly fiction and poetry fest, and I'm so proud that a regular dangle of three little words has been enough to prompt and inspire writers to develop their drabbles and poems into much longer, successful pieces.

My decision has been a long time coming, and my reasons are as follows:

• I love supporting writers here and on other platforms but I've barely written a word myself since early February. I need to write. I want to write. And I am serious in the desire to complete my first two novels as soon as possible.
• I am Horror Editor at Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers. I haven't been able to dedicate the time I need to do this to my own satisfaction.
• Ebook promotion is incredibly hard-work and time consuming. Although I intend seeking an agent in the hope of going down the traditional publishing route for my novels, I will still be releasing short story collections as ebooks and need to be able to do this properly.

I am sorry if anyone feels let down or disappointed by my decision, but I hope you respect my reasons.

If anyone would like to take the Prediction on as a project on their own blog or elsewhere, please email me or fill in my contact form.

It has always been my intention to collect Prediction entries and publish them in a series of ebooks, as long as the authors are willing. I'll be in touch as soon as this becomes a possibility.

Thank you, one and all for your incredible words over the last two years. It's been an honour.

Winner of Last Week's Prediction Challenge

The Easter fortnight has been busy for us all and the number of entries dropped accordingly - but the quality didn't.

My winner is Aidan Fritz AGAIN with the incredible flip from the domestic to the horrific in the botanical terror that is  Seeds. Congratulations Aidan, this blew my mind.

Runner-up is AJ Humpage with Last Hiding Place. A heart-breaking glimpse at Anne Franks' final hope that had me holding my breath. Well done Ally.

Words for FRIDAY 13TH, 2012

My old book is falling apart, with some pages stuck together but it still lets me perform a little bibliomancy. Let's see which words it will allow us to (ab)use:

• Commit
• Barrel
• Courage

Good luck with these three!

Rules

The rules are: 100 words max flash fiction or poetry using all of the words above. Please add your entries in the Comments box below. You have until 9pm UK time on Thursday 19th April 2012 to enter.

The winner will be announced on Friday 20th April. If you can, please tweet about your entry, using the #fridayflash hashtag, and blog if you feel like it. Do give feedback to your fellow Predictioneers - we all appreciate it.

If you are afraid of Friday 13th, twist that fear and put it into words. We want to read them...

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Lily's Friday Prediction

Apologies for the tardy posting. It's been a long day, lovely day, sad day, fun day... and a slightly poorly day (damn the common cold!) A friend and long-term colleague has retired to a life of scrabbling around graveyards - as is only right (for whatever reason). I'll miss her.

But back to unreality...

Winner of Last Week's Prediction Challenge

A challenge indeed. But you weren't stumped.

The winner of last week's Prediction Challenge is our wandering Aidan Fritz with Cupid's Arrow. I braved billowing clouds to trail this meandering myth, laughed and loved with its characters and fell hard with Monday's rebirth. Congratulations Aidan, you've left me wistful and yearning.

Runner-up, with a tale that evoked the same emotions as Aidan's but with an awe inspired by nature itself, is Pernicious Petals by Alfred Taitague. Well done Al! This beautifully-entitled/written piece puts me in mind of Crazy Town's exquisite Butterly video.

Words for 30 March 2012

Firstly - you have two weeks to enter this challenge so the pressure's off. Here's what you've got to play with:

• Amsterdam
• Hammer
• Personal

Rules

The rules are: 100 words max flash fiction or poetry using all of the words above. Please add your entries in the Comments box below. You have until 9pm UK time on Thursday 12th April 2012 to enter.

The winner will be announced on Friday 13th April (Any Paraskevidekatriaphobics/Triskaidekaphobics out there?) If you can, please tweet about your entry, using the #fridayflash hashtag, and blog if you feel like it. Do give feedback to your fellow Predictioneers - we all appreciate it.

May Ostara's leaping hare bring you fertility where you need it this Easter. And if that means putting lead in your writing pencil, so be it...

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Lily's Friday Prediction

A record number of Prediction Challenge entries for the first week of 2012! Well done everyone.

I hope you all have a successful writing year and that it brings you good health and happiness. It's not just me - but there seems to be a shift this year, in attitudes and intentions. Not your usual New Year's resolutions but a general feeling of 'I'm not putting up with this anymore' and of taking more control of our own futures. Like Ttofee's victim in last week's challenge, a finger up to the world that tries to tell us what to do.

Winner of Last Week's Prediction Challenge

I feel as though you have all beaten me around the head with pens, pencils, quills and a multitude of digits. How will I ever choose a winning entry from this amazing, brilliantly-written lot...?

But I have.

My winner is Aidan Fritz with the chilling, post-virus tale Daredevil. It really got into my bones and I loved the delivery and language. Congratulations Aidan!

I have two runners-up because I truly could not choose between them. First runner-up is Nathaniel Tower with Late Nights and Bloody Knuckles - lots of gasp-making twists in this gruesome story. Joint runner-up is Mr Col Bury himself with AGAIN. I was blown away by the telling of this tale and reactions of the killer; horribly disturbing. Well done both!

Words for 06 January 2012

• London
• Sham
• Collect
  (Collection/Collector etc and all forms/tenses of the verb are acceptable)

Enjoy getting your synapses around those.

Rules

The rules are: 100 words max flash fiction or poetry using all of the words above. Please add your entries in the Comments box below. You have the whole week until 9pm UK time on Thursday 12th January 2012 to enter.

Winner will be announced on Friday 13th January (what a day!) If you can, please tweet about your entry, using the #fridayflash hashtag, and blog if you feel like it.

Let's start the year in the most wicked way you can think of... Fiction only - of course.

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Prediction Winner

A short, but extremely sweet number of entries this week.

• Aidan gives us a fascinating insight into the history of the Origins of the Wyrm Cult, with a gentle play on the name Salem (Samuel) Parris. Encyclopædia Universsica: On the Origins of the Wyrm Cult
• William delivers the finale of his compelling Plague series - on The Feardom at least, with a promise of more bones elsewhere in After the plague. Finale!
  With Rex-Erection William wipes away the glamour of rebirth. No pale and red-lipped gothic hunk here; more shrivelled, compound dust.
• Rebecca plays a morbid game with friends and a dead cat at the riverbank of childhood in Girls Club, before coming full circle to the tragic present day.
• Reba whips up a new world, a corrupt yet banal cult that people take for granted. Yet someone small awaits deliverance in Thursday.
• Chris makes human pancakes out of Zach, at the hands of Zach's wife Eileen. Eileen probably follows up with a few sugary, happy-clappy routines in The Butterworth Rites.
• John's Queen of the Hive has something more to hide than a dodgy obsession, and with a mouth oozing with furry creatures she is a force to be reckoned with.
• Antonia's Doorstep Salesman is a pain in the freakin' arse. First he turns up at the most inconvenient time, and then inducts and kills her without a 'by-your-leave'. Charming.
• My Miss Sickly Sweet 2011 takes an appalled and disgusted look at the farce of children's Beauty Contests. 
• AJ's runaway opens her veins for the cult, her lifeforce pooling across the cold floor in the atmospheric Bleed.
• David's Two Blokes are back with another in-depth and inspiring conversation, hanging out at the bar. That's 'Cult'. C - U - L - T.
• Phil (Greetings Phil!) serves up a glorious pagan platter of deity, misplaced by a latter incomer in his untitled piece.
• Susan returns with pretty words with a dark side; her poem confessing the truth behind the syrup.

All very different.

I have joint winners. The first is Aidan with his fascinating faux facts in the Encyclopædia Universsica: On the Origins of the Wyrm Cult, and for teaching me the word ochlocracy. My joint winner is Rebecca Bohn with the tomboy vs. grown-up woman's Girls Club. Congratulations both.

I loved everyone's entries though for a whole load of reasons from the dark and dangerous to the crude and base. Naughty.

I am encumbered by slumber so will be back in the morning with a new temptation, I mean - Challenge.

Sleep well...

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Prediction Winner

Ooh la la. How on earth am I going to select a winner from last week? Or have I already chosen? Hmmnn - will you ever know?

My summaries are quick this night, for midnight beckons - and a rare day off to boot. So much to write, so much to read. Oh get on with it, you rambling haridan..

Who's first?

• Jenny's modern magic, perfect murder immediately throws us through her extraordinary sad doorway where the soul of the house is older than the story itself.
• Mimi takes us into the horrors of war with a satisfactory twist in The Other Option.
• Ellie returned to knock us out with her sci-fi killer Gravity (Pt II). Helward is king.
• Little, little words and tiny verses; Susan's poetry ties up Fox, Middle and Surrender in the tightest Tanka.
• I gave the beautiful fox back her grace against the wicked hunt in Her Grace, then Lure left a lover in a spectral no-man's land.
• Sandra despairs of the norm, transfixed - if momentarily by the sheer beauty of Mr Fox in Traditional for May 1st.
• Nightmares - over and over -  with Aidan's Clown Hearse. Intensity and bigotted undercurrent fuel this well-observed piece.
• Rebecca (rightly) exposes the tragic experimentation on one species of a race in Tamability, or: The Wild Dreams of Itself, then Mona Lisa - from the same pen - sucks the soul from this cold fox before she flies away.
• Melenka reveals a cautious yet tender love affair twixt animal and humankind (only just) in Transition. Twist and twist again - Crashing the Party dances out desire, in whatever guise is required.
• Tribal assault overwhelms Ragemore's hero/heroine who shares a unique sense of apartness with wise fox in Cast Out.
• The mythical Atlas is brought down to a salacious earth where he sits, lost, bewildered in Chris Allinotte's One more time, Gentlemen. Then we have the cheeky and acerbic observation of a life baited by technology in the hellish poem Tech Support.
• A rage of emotions, bewildered by fear and toppled by abject horror slips down AJ's foxhole in the intense Sacrifice.
• William Davoll has revenge on his mind, and Darla's out to steal if for him without a care in Darla's Wicked Game.
• Such tragedy of a life self-taken, Antonia's Suicide sees a desperate outlook overwhelmed, cold... sad...gone...
• Asuqi shares death with a harbinger through the birchwood in Winter Hunt followed by a complete contrast - a woman who loves from afar yet give herself without care (or self-respect) in Obtainable.
• Anthony turns our heads with his poetic twists and fleshy colours in the strange and haunting My Wet Infection.
• John tears our souls apart, plunging our sinuous spirits into a well of emotion before splitting them away as disparate twins in Madame Fox.
• Steve's Crossing fights with our childhood dreams; makes us question intent in this dancing prose piece.

I am struck by the reverance everyone has for the beautiful fox. Don't think me pretentious but I can't help the shaman in me - we and fox have always shared an affinity. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Straight to it. My winner this week is Aidan Fritz with the terrifying Clown Hearse. As if it wasn't even brilliantly written in the first place I urge you to google 'Westboro(ugh) Church' and then decide whether fact is not more horrific than fiction. Brilliant Aidan, congratulations.

My runner-up is Chris Allinotte with his first piece, One More Time Gentlemen because I loved the concept of a mythical hero lost in a world of urban debauchery. Well done Chris.

I must slumber, lest the morning brings light - and only the darkness will do. Sweet dreams - a demain mes amis.

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