My Baffling Brain

It's time for the 5th annual Spooktoberfest, hosted once again by Dani and Jax from Cover Girls.  There's still time to enter - the bloghop is open until Friday. Here's my submission, coming in at 336 words.  Arise The moonlight shone on the smooth black of the coffin, laid open by the side of the grave. The body, a mere skeleton now, lay on the long grass next to the weathered stump of a tombstone , the skull grinning up at the cluster of men gathered around it. A broken machete lay next to the bones, dusty and worn from it’s long incarceration under the ground. The only sounds were the whispering of cloaks as they slithered along the forest floor, as the men encircled the lone grave. They began to chant in a language long forgotten, known only to those who passed it down, generation to generation, waiting for this day to come. For the rise of their god. A wind blew through the clearing, tearing through the grass, blowing down the hoods of the chanting men, but...

I've got L. G. Keltner on my blog today, as a part of the blog tour for her most recent release, the third book in her 'Self-help 101' series. Reasons Why I, As a Writer, Love Halloween Writers are an odd bunch.  There’s no denying it.  We throw ourselves whole-heartedly into new worlds and new lives when we set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).  We spend vast chunks of time coming up with combinations of words that we hope will enthrall readers by pulling them into these worlds we struggled so hard to create. Halloween is an odd holiday.  It’s filled with costumes and spooky tales and infinite possibilities.  This is a time when we have the excuse to let our inner child out to play.  There are no creative limits.   It only makes sense that odd people and odd occasions go together beautifully.  As a writer, I revel in Halloween and all it has to offer.  Here are only a few reasons why I, like many writers, love Halloween. ...

Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly bloghop now hosted by Lexa Cain . The idea is to post anything you want to celebrate from the last week, no matter how small. This week I'm celebrating: - I finished my entry for the WEP Blog-hop and put it up on my blog yesterday. I didn't get to spend a lot of time working on it, certainly not as much as I would have liked, but I think it turned out OK. Click here to take a look! - Porridge with nutella stirred into it - divine! Perfect for cold autumn mornings.  - Hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows - another thing that's perfect for colder weather.  - I dug out all of my Halloween decorations on Sunday - they're mostly candle holders and things, but they look great and they've helped get me into the Halloween spirit! 

I haven't taken part in WEP for ages, but I just had to take part this month; I love writing scary stories for Halloween! I haven't had as much time to work on this story as I would have liked, but it's turned out OK, I think. Unrest in Peace I wake to a loud bang above my head. I open my eyes to darkness; squinting, my eyes adjust, and I see thin slivers of light shining through small gaps in the surface directly above me. It’s so close I can touch it. I reach up with my arms, and press my palms against the rough surface; wood. My heart begins to pound; where am I? I lean up on my elbows and press my eye to one of the gaps in the wood, but all I see is light. I lie back down and feel around me; I’m in a wooden box, not much larger than my body. I press my palms against the lid and push; it doesn’t budge. My breath comes in short bursts as I scratch at the lid, ignoring the stabs of pain from splinters burrowing under my fingernails. I start banging on the wood, ...

Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly bloghop now hosted by Lexa Cain . The idea is to post anything you want to celebrate from the last week, no matter how small. This week I'm celebrating: - I had a great weekend off, I spent the Saturday just chilling out with my mum, then on Sunday we went to spend the day with my sister.  - I had a lot of family time this week; my dad came over on Wednesday and we went out for lunch to a Caribbean restaurant, and it was lovely. I don't get to see my dad very often, so it was nice.  - I've done a lot of planning this week for my Halloween stories, and I can't wait to write them! It's been great actually planning new stories again.  

I wanted to post this up last week, but work was crazy so I decided on this week instead. Here's how I did on my September goals: - Spend half an hour a day blogging - Nope, definitely not. I'm working on cutting down my hours at work, but until that happens this goal will be impossible to achieve! - Finish my outline - Another definite nope - I doubt very much that I'll be taking part in NaNoWriMo this year, which is disappointing! Hopefully I'll be able to take part next year. - Read 4 books - The easiest goal to achieve, and I still didn't manage it. Work has been super crazy the last few weeks, and I'm happily anticipating the day that my hours get cut down. I'm not sure when this is going to be, but it should be soon.  Here's hoping I do better on my goals for October! Here they are: - Write stories for WEP, Spooktoberfest and the IWSG anthology contest!  That's it for this month, since it'll be a major achievement to...

Celebrate the Small Things is a weekly bloghop now hosted by Lexa Cain . The idea is to post anything you want to celebrate from the last week, no matter how small. This week I'm celebrating: - It was Jamie's birthday on Monday, so we celebrated by having a takeaway and watching the latest Captain America movie. I made him a red velvet cake, too, which was lovely.  - Yesterday I handed my notice in at work to step down from the role I'm currently in. The 50-60 hour weeks are just getting too much for me to handle, so it looks like I'll be going back down to being contracted just 25 hours a week. It'll be a struggle financially, and I'll have to pick up overtime to combat that, but it'll give me more time to do the things I love, like blogging and writing, that I just don't get time for at the moment. It'll also be better for my health and well-being; doing that amount of hours for so long has left me so exhausted. 

So this month's question is: When do you know your story is ready? This isn't a brilliant question for me, because I've never finished a novel. I've been working on one for a good couple of years now, but because of my hectic work schedule it's still in the early stages. Still, I've written plenty of short stories and pieces of flash fiction, and I suppose I know when one of my stories are ready when I can't do anything else to it to make it better. It's hard to explain; I just kind of know, and that's when it's done. However, there are plenty of pieces that I've thought were finished, then gone back to months later and done more work on. It's a difficult question! So this month I'm quite insecure because I want to take part in three separate things ( WEP's Halloween blog hop , Spooktoberfest and the IWSG anthology contest ) and so far I haven't done much work on the stories I want to write. I've done a lot of p...