Cold Stare

I wake up completely blind. Dumb. Paralysed. Yet my ears rage and my skin burns with the heat of you beside me; your rancid breath, a sickening stink.

Why do my senses ebb and flow? What makes them fluctuate so?

I plummet without warning to the ground. Prickles at my fingertips surprise me and I come back to giddy life. Inwardly I sigh, recalling where I am. My mind floods with memories, of days of wretched grief.

My vision clears and I seem to see you through curtains of mist. They swirl, revealing glimpses of the crypt, of you bent over my tumbled corpse, sobbing helplessly.

You take no last look upon my face as you lift and place me back onto the cold marble. You don’t see my eyes screaming as you wrap me once more in the linen shroud. You kiss my unbound lips goodbye. They twitch with words. You walk away.

I whisper in the dark. You turn your head, then back again. The iron gates groan, drowning out my breath as you pass through; unwashed, emaciated.

I find my voice. ‘Don’t go!’

Too late. The lock is turned.

Too late.

I die once more.
_______________________________________________

(c) Lily Childs May 2010

Lily's Friday Prediction

I'm obviously not as good an oracle as I might have hoped as none of the Friday predictions have come true yet - but considering the excellent 100-word flash fiction entries you've been sending in, that may just be a good thing.

I really like this week's words. Let's see what you can do with them:

• Spore
• Fenian
• Metamorphosis

I'm waiting...

Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen

A quick personal Happy Birthday to talented Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers regular, Pixie J. King.

Pixie recently agreed to be interviewed for the Feardom, so look out for that very soon.

In the meantime, Pixie - have a great 16th birthday.

For more on Pixie and her writing, see her blog at http://theworksofpixiejking.blogspot.com/

In a word...

What type of words do you enjoy using when you write? I just love a 'fleshy' word:

• Bulbous
• Wobbling
• Pink
• Skin
• Pores
• Ripe
• Pale
• Pulpous

Flesh itself is just... oooh.

And fat - used out of the context of body flesh:

• Fat mascara
• Fat teardops

Don't get me started on 'wet' words:

• moist
• juicy
• salivate... No, don't get me started.

So which words make you tingle as you write them?

Web and Blog Publishing Tips

I'm often astounded that Writers' Circles and even some publishers and e-zines often have pretty awful websites and blogs. So do some authors.

I'll be writing some guidelines soon (it's the day job, I'm not a know-all) but key pointers are:

Fonts and Text

• Use a web friendly font, such as Verdana, Arial or Trebuchet.
• Times New Roman looks old-fashioned and unprofessional.
• 'Fancy' fonts may not be recognised if visitors don't have that font installed on their PCs/laptops
• Fancy fonts, particularly italicised or handwriting styles are hard to read. People won't bother.
• Grey text is OK - if you're a designer - but it's hard to read. Surely you want your content to be accessible to everyone? Then keep it clean - black on a white or pale background is best; dark colours on a white or pale background is OK. Coloured text on a coloured background hurts, though white on black is favoured by some dyslexics.

Content

• Reading web content is very different to reading printed material. People scan web pages, seeking out headings, sub-headings, bulleted lists and keywords. If your page or blog is one long block of text, your visitors' eyes and concentration will tire quickly, so break it up.
• A joy of the web is that it is, or should be accessible to people with blindness and visual impairments (as well as other disabilities). Think about the font size you use. Think about the colours (see above) and colour-contrast.
• As writers, you are likely to attract visually impaired people who may be using screen-reading software such as JAWS or Browsealoud. So make sure your text is readable; avoid writing in italics, don't use ampersands and use plenty of subheaders on web pages - the software will read these out first before reading your text.
• Keep web pages short. Use short, punchy sentences. (I'm not talking about when you post your writing or poetry, but about information pages concerning you or your writing group, and maybe the services and benefits offered by your group).
• Use plain English

I'll be back with more soon...

Lily's Friday Prediction - on a Sunday

OK, so it's late. Bite me. I confess that last Friday I was too busy on hols in France where the WiFi was poor and the wine was cheap (actually, it was bloody expensive) to run the Friday prediction. Plus the fact that the great tome that has become my method of bibliomancy was at home by my bed - and I didn't feel another book would do. See - I'm already superstitious and precious about it.

So this latest prediction is on a Sunday - June 6th. Three great pieces of flash appeared for the last one, so it would be excellent to see more this time (or even the recounting of some spooky coincidence related to the words - it's not happened yet).

The three words, and unusually they include two doubles are:

• Barn Owl
• Ohio
• Single Malt

Get your noir, horrid and thrilling gnashers round that one. Over to you...

Lily's Friday Prediction - 28 May 2010

This week's words are rather boring I'm afraid, so perhaps a bigger challenge. Will the three words mean something to you? Let me know by commenting below or adding some flash fiction - 100 words max - using all three words.

If you can make something chilling and gruesome out of these, then all the better!

• Gated
• Commercial
• Presentation

For info on how the Friday prediction came about read this.