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#Flash4Storms - More Flash Fics II

Following on from my last few posts, I'm extremely chuffed to be able to post some more spirit-speaking flash fics by fabulous writers - all in aid of Sarah Brentyn 's #Flash4Storms for hurricane relief. ---------- Georgia Bell ( @gabellbooks ) The days blurred. Blended. Bent out of shape. She held still, bleeding hope, waiting for the help she had begged for.  Until in the silence, bold and bankrupt, she found benevolence in her own battered soul. ---------- Sarah Mitchell-Jackson ( @SMitchJack ) They needed her. Their small hands, although precise, were minute against the depth of the world. Month by month they grew; their worlds grew. They stretched further away from her, until they did not need her. Year by year, she narrowed, just as her world narrowed, until she needed them. ---------- Maria Carvalho ( @ImMCarvalho ) Even as the invading river relished its unchecked freedom And the regal cypress bowed down under commanding winds The storm wiel

#Flash4Storms - More Flash Fics I

As you may have seen from my recent posts , Sarah Brentyn is doing a #Flash4Storms initiative for hurricane relief. Many people have already shared their words, and to ensure those wonderful wordsmithers without blogs are also able to contribute their words for a great cause, I'm honoured to be able to post some more fantastic flash fics here. ---------- Bobbi Bowman ( @BobbiBowwoman ) What if you don't have bootstraps? ---------- Michael Fehr ( @FehrMichael1 ) The sun was setting. Maria didn't know if she had the strength to hold on until morning. She clung desperately to the highest branch she could reach above the swirling floodwaters. In the pitch dark, it was the nose of the rescue dog that guided the boat to her perch. ---------- Stephen ( @GallifreyGamgee ) Lora looked lovingly at her ghostly boyfriend, the only one in the Ethereal Planes who could help break the curse by sacrificing himself. ---------- Kevin Odinsknot ( @Odinsknot

#Flash4Storms - A Flash Fic by Hope Denney

In my last post , I took part in a flash fic challenge for hurricane relief , organised by the fabulous Sarah Brentyn . It is a blog-based challenge, and as not everyone maintains a blog, Sarah has confirmed that flash fics posted on host blogs will also count towards hurricane relief. I'm very honoured to be posting some other #Flash4Storms flash fic submissions here, and I hope you enjoy them. This submission is by the brilliant Hope Denney : Once upon a time (like right now), there were two women (none of you know them) who lived several seas apart. They battled all the monsters of yore (spiders, snakes, and improperly fitting undergarments) along with the monsters of now (workplace drama, too many dreams but not enough time, and improperly behaved selves). They didn’t always succeed with a lot of panache. In fact, there was often clumsiness, tears, and lots of swearing along the way. With each other’s support, dragons looked more like lizards and each believed a fairy tal

#Flash4Storms Flash Fic Challenge

As I've mentioned several times now, I grew up on the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is one of many islands in the Indian Ocean, which are mere dots on a world map. If you didn't know to look for them, you'd be forgiven for thinking that part of the world is all water. One of the recurring weather conditions Mauritius (and all the surrounding islands) are always on the alert for in the summer, is cyclones. There have been savage ones in the past, whose names still retain their notoriety. When I was growing up there in the early 1980s, I was lucky to not experience a really bad one. Back then, "Cyclone Carol" from the 1970s was our byword and benchmark for fury and ferocious destruction. All us kids knew the name, and with every cyclone which formed throughout the summers, we would ask the grown-ups if this was the one that would be as bad as Cyclone Carol. It was the one which loomed long and scary and dark in the island's collective memory. Much like th

Indi's Little Adventure (and ReeBee's too)

In the late afternoon of our first truly warm Saturday of spring (27 degrees - woohoo!), my stumpy-tailed cattle dog woofer, Indi-Girl, and I went for a little stroll at Hassan's Wall. Hassan's Wall is a lookout with magnificent views of the Hartley Vale area which undulates gently between the Blue Mountains and the country town of Lithgow, in New South Wales. Indi hadn't been there before, and she was absolutely bursting to smell ALL the new smells AT THE SAME TIME. So to calm her down a bit, we walked a couple of hundred metres down the driving track, away from all the lookout points, just to get the scented lay of the land for a bit. For good measure, we wandered down an overgrown side track that didn't go anywhere. I'm guessing it's an off-the-main-track parking spot for the likes of the NSW Parks and Wildlife, or the NSW Rural Fire Service folk. Anyway, the little saunter worked, and Indi settled into a more relaxed mode of grooving around. So we bac

Tropical Flower Power Trip

I recently sent my folks in Mauritius a picture of an early cherry-blossom-type flower - a sign that spring is on its way here in Australia. They reciprocated with one of the most madly tropical of tropical-looking flowers I've ever seen, and, for good measure, they sent through a further collection of flowers, bright colours and tropical beauty. They're so lovely, I want to share them here (with all permission, of course) for a virtual tropical flower power trip.

Tracking the Sounds of my Youth

We had a surprisingly warm Saturday back in May. It was very unusual for my late-autumn part of Oz, where winter always shows up too early. People and their lives spilled outside all over the neighbourhood, just like they do in summer. Somewhere down the street, I could hear teenage girls giggling loudly in that carefree and self-conscious way only teenage girls can.

A Twitter Tale about Two Moose

Every so often, I enjoy using Twitter's short, 140-character platform to write up very short stories which stretch across 4-6 tweets. The stories are whimsical, whacky, off-beat and sometimes, just frankly silly. Sometimes a fellow tweep (twitter user) or two will join in and we organically tag-team the stories, lurching them in manically, magically improbable directions. Sometimes, they degenerate into pun wars peppered with wordy brilliance. Either way, they're all in the name of creativity, word play, and bouncing off the inspiration of other people's wordy brilliances. This is one of my solo efforts and one of my silly ones.

Making Mauritius-Style Banana Cakes (Gateaux Bananes)

I mis-managed my bananas. I got my timing all wrong and they were suddenly too ripe and too spotted and dotted to eat, and were sitting there looking at me with accusatory and reproachful looks. Banana cake was the obvious solution. But why go the way of regular banana cake, when there's the distant call of Mauritius-style gateaux bananes (you guessed it: banana cakes). 

Book Review: Dog on it (A Chet and Bernie mystery) by Spencer Quinn

Review: Dog on it (A Chet and Bernie mystery) by Spencer Quinn Published in Australia by Arena Books, imprint of Allen & Unwin, 2009 Spencer Quinn online and on Amazon This book caught my eye purely because of the cover. I loved the illustration style and the look on the dog’s face. When I read on the back blurb that the story is narrated by the dog, I was sold. Stephen King’s recommendation didn’t hurt either.