Charli Mills, a rare gem herself in her unflagging support for other writers, has invited us to create a 99-word story about rare gems. While I love the song, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, I’m more partial to little-gem lettuce and gem squash myself than precious stones. | |
I want to give special mention to the brave bloggers who answered my ridiculous questions for the Liebster award, one of which was “If your blog were to come to life, what form would it take?” Here, in no particular order, is what they said:
Ava – your coolest teacher in secondary school
Nicola – I’m tempted to say ‘performance art’, but I think this is much more about a heated conversation between people who’ve had enough to drink to be frank with one another, but not so much as to become intransigent.
Lora – a garden with all the wonderful plants, trees, animals and insects that I love the most, plus a few that have never been seen outside the confines of my own skull
Susan – a very chatty bookseller with lots of time to talk to her customers
AnnMarie –I guess if my writing came to life, it would be a toddler. I still feel like I’m learning to write, taking shaky, wobbly steps and sometimes falling down. This blog represents my developing craft, which in my opinion is still in its infancy.
As usual, my flash has been partly influenced by my recent reading (this time, Shelley Harris’s Vigilante which I won’t be reviewing until publication day on January 8th, but you can sneak a preview here):
“Call this Christmas?”
After a tough year, I’d wanted to make it special. It wasn’t my fault our husky sled ride was cancelled and the aurora borealis refused to show. We had each other.
“I’m off to the bar.”
I woke with a start, Pete snoring beside me. Grabbing my gown against the chill, I peeked through a gap in the curtains. The sky was a ballet of green and purple suspended above a stage of snow.
Next morning, he had a headache. I had the memory of a gem of a performance, choreographed for an audience of one.
For more flashes of holiday dissonance, see Charli’s post Reindeer Games or my longer flash fiction The Wilsons Go Shopping.