Saturday 29 December 2012

Seasonal Drabbles

For the last few months I've been writing drabbles in my spare time. A drabble is a story which is exactly 100 words long, excluding the title. The stories have been posted on the kindleusersforum and subsequently used on the Indie Book Bargains site.

I thought I'd share a couple of my seasonal efforts.


Peace on Earth, good will to all trees

The big fir stood tall, watching over his siblings; mere saplings really. Heaven.

Then the men with chainsaws arrived; cutting a swathe though the forest. Soon it was his turn. The harsh metal teeth ripped into his bark. They tore through his trunk. He fell; felled. He screamed silently for his mother; Mother Nature.

He was tossed unceremoniously onto a truck with other fallen comrades.

***

Then he was standing again, but the sky was gone. No wind. No friends. His roots amputated. Glittery foreign objects weighed heavy on his branches. This was hell on earth.

“Please let me die.”


Not just for Christmas

He dropped the puppy and a big stone into the sack.

“You said you’d look after him. I’m off to the canal.”

Sarah wailed and pleaded, but he was gone.

He parked just around the corner and opened the bag.

“Sorry pup, but she has to learn.”

The puppy bit him and escaped.

No-one believed his story. He was jailed for animal cruelty once the Tetanus had healed. Sarah never forgave him. At fifteen she left home, got herself pregnant and developed a chronic alcohol problem.

And the puppy? He bought some boots, ran off to London and became mayor.


And I got a badge for my efforts!

Indie Book Bargains Drabblist

Wednesday 19 December 2012

nobooko - a new place to hang out

I still think that the Kindle is the eReader of choice for an awful lot of people, particularly here in the UK. That's why my favourite forum at the moment is the KindleUsersForum (KUF). It is one of the friendliest places on the net for authors and readers alike. The only problem is that you can spend all day there if you're not careful.

And things might be about to get a whole lot worse! With the popularity of the Nook and Kobo rising, a sister forum of KUF is emerging.



The nobooko forum is new and it looks great. It does, however give me a couple of new problems... I need to buy some more technology and I need to get by books onto these exciting new platforms.

Maybe I'll stop going to bed, who needs sleep anyway?