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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Plans... and a little piece of horror

Yesterday, the first day of 2012 I discovered I'd won a monthly writing challenge on Talkback, the online forum of the UK's Writing Magazine. Not only was that a great start to the year, but the piece I'd written was adapted from the novel I put to one side early last year. I'd been toying with picking it back up again, and winning the comp has given me the kick up the backside to finish it during 2012.

Wish me luck!

To celebrate this positive plan, I wrote the following horror drabble this morning. I hope you enjoy it...

Silence of a Bloody Drum

“Once you sign up you can’t back out.”

Boyd didn’t hesitate.

“Where’s the contract?”

“Nod three times and we have an agreement. Un, deux, trois...”

Pain seared through Boyd’s skull. Ear wax melted and dripped like water as the creature held him to its mouth and sucked the molten liquid onto its pointed tongue. It spat the clod onto a mound and immediately attacked the other side to repeat the process.

Boyd screamed.

As he left the room the demon added a further squat tentacle to its sculpture.

“Same time next week,” it whispered.

The words rang in Boyd’s ears.

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Lily's Friday Prediction

Now that the neighbours have stopped partying at 7am I'll attempt to get my brain in gear which, unlike theirs is stone-cold-sober but very, very tired. Thank you guys. 

However, not to be discombobulated I shall persevere, submit the Love story I've written (don't laugh - it's in a Lily Childs flavour) and write a synopsis on something else. Deadlines are tomorrow.

Winner of Last Week's Prediction Challenge

Firstly, I want to thank everyone that has taken part in the Challenge this year, and taken the time to comment and support each other in our little community of Predictioneers. The quality of writing is consistently outstanding and I just want to read more of your work! I can't count the number of times we've said of each others' entries "this needs expanding" or similar. 

I so wish I could afford to set up my own Small Press and publish you all - but that lottery win never happens. In the meantime, I wish you all a very successful 2012 for your writing - and when you're all best-selling superstar authors don't forget to pop in and give us a Prediction from time to time.

On to winners...

Hell. I wish I'd chosen one of you to guest judge - this is a killer.

As we had two weeks to write I'm being naughty and choosing two winners and two-runners up. I hope that doesn't dilute the wins.

Congratulations to my final winners of 2011 Anthony Cowin for the savage horror Apron Strings and John Xero for the epic and powerful Warsmith. Both absolutely stunning.

The runner-up shields go to Charlie Wade for the best twist I've read in ages in The Perils of Washing Up and Dion Winton-Polak for his extraordinarily beautiful and tragic poem Salvation. Very well done both.

Words for 30 December 2011

I swear this old book is getting heavier - oof. My fingers are ready:

• Knuckle
• Connection
• Dial

Right. A challenge indeed.

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 5th January 2012 to enter.

Winner will be announced on Friday 6th January. If you can, please tweet about your entry, using the #fridayflash hashtag, and blog if you feel like it.

A very Happy New Year to you all. Charge your pens - I await your creations...

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Preditors & Editors Readers' Poll - a surprise nomination

I was extremely surprised to find that I've been nominated in the Preditors & Editors annual 'Best of' Readers Poll in the Magazine/e-zine Editor category for Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers.

The awards are run by Critique.org - the well-respected Critters Workshop.

TKnC won the award for Best Fiction Magazine in 2009 and Crime Ed. Col Bury received the award for Best Magazine Editor in 2010.

I'm proud to be included this year alongside other editors I really respect - our own, wonderful DAVID BARBER - The Flash Fiction Offensive, Adam Bradley of Morpheus Tales, Chris Bartholomew of Static Movement, Lori Titus of Flashes in the Dark and more...

You can:

• vote HERE for your favourite and even add comments
• follow the status of the voting so far
• vote/comment in all the categories
• find out more about Critique.org's excellent workshops 

Voting closes on January 10 2012!

LICKING IT UP - a 'Yours Truly' Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers Editor's Christmas Special

Over at Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers we editors are having a moment of self-indulgence - each posting a Christmas special of our own.

Crime Ed. Col Bury's WITNESS 'A' is already up for review and comes with a twist.

• Read Witness 'A'
• Read a hell of a lot more of Col's fiction, thoughts and reviews at Col Bury's New Crime Fiction.

As TKnC Horror Ed. my new tale LICKING IT UP might fool you into thinking it's a piece of gastro chick-lit. Give it a chance - it's far tastier than that.

• Read Licking It Up

We await best-selling author and TKnC Thriller Ed. Matt Hilton's special with trepidation!


TKnC SUBMISSIONS

TKnC is open for submissions once again. I would love to receive stories from The Feardom Predictioneers and February Femmes Fatales. Our Submission Guidelines are here but I'd like to add that I'm looking for dark and dangerous; I want to be scared witless or chilled right down to my brittle bones. This is the kind of thing the Friday Prediction is regularly packed full of - and it deserves expansion.

What I don't like is gore without a story. Porn bores me - base and erotic suggestion is far more powerful and very definitely has a place.  Oh, and whilst I like a bit of effin' and blinding - only when called for please. Overt use puts me off. I like the beauty of language - the darker the better - feed me.

I look forward to reading you...

Lily's Friday Prediction

Love it or loathe it, Predictioneers are about to get a Christmas gift - that of TIME itself!

It's a double-edged sword, this time thing - I'm figuring that most of us will be in a semi-frantic state in the lead-up to Yule and beyond - so writing will take a back seat. But then afterwards - we'll have relaxing, extra time when writing will be tickling and teasing us, desperate to pour out. So... I'm giving you TWO WEEKS to enter the penultimate Friday Prediction Challenge of 2011.

Winner of Last Week's Prediction Challenge

The Institution overwhelmed us this week, I feel. And so it should - it provoked some incredible visions and brilliantly-crafted entries.

My winner, with that dangerous sicko Harker is AJ Humpage's cold and terrifying Viewing Room. The cruelty this creature is capable of absolutely petrifies me - but I can't leave it alone. Congratulations AJ!

Two runners-up; aesthetic and twisted, Stu Ayris's untitled entry is a vicious and clever attack on our conscience whilst David Barber's The Game is terrifying in the murderer's normalcy. Well done both!

Words for 16 December 2011

Here you go then - two weeks to write whatever you want (though please - have some respect - keep it dark and disturbing):

• Apron
• Lash
• Grail

Little but pokey!

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 two whole weeks until 9pm UK time on Thursday 29th December to enter.

Winner will be announced on Friday 30th December. If you can, please tweet about your entry, using the #fridayflash hashtag, and blog if you feel like it.

Release the Christmas spirit - mine's a Vodka and Russchian please - and imbibe on inspiration...

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Book Review: ALONE by Marissa Farrar

Serenity Hathaway has no reason to celebrate life, coasting between cruel indifference at the office and violence at home. The opening pages of Alone plunge us straight into the hell of this young woman's existence, revealing her self-doubt and plummeting despair.

Despite the very real personal demons that have brought her to this lonely time and place Serenity still controls her own will. And when Sebastian Bandores happens upon the young woman on her knees in a dark alleyway, the encounter leaves her with an inner strength she never thought possible.

Serenity can't stop thinking about the beautiful stranger that pulled her out of an emotional gutter, rescuing her from her lowest ebb. Life suddenly has promise; but life can get worse - far worse - and so can death.

Marissa Farrar carries us through this haunting vampire tale as a feather on the wind, dipping and fluctuating between passion and horror. She masters Serenity's strengths and weaknesses, her resilience and distrust as the reluctant heroine struggles to comprehend the otherworldly extremes of vampiric hunger.

The author's principal characters are passionate, loyal and loving - perfect bait for the vicious antagonists of this chilling horror novel where no-one and nowhere is safe.

Well-written with an addictive pace, I loved this book. I can't wait to read the follow-up Buried (Alone). The author has cleverly gifted us with the prologue of the second book as a wicked tease at the end of book one - and it promises darkness. A generous bonus.

4* out of 5, and highly recommended.

Download Alone from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Read more of Marissa Farrar's fiction at:
http://marissa-farrar.blogspot.com/