Flash Friday Week Five Entry

I posted a story to the Shenandoah Valley Writers' Weekly Flash Fiction Contest on week five.  The  story had to be around 150 words and end with "Quietly, she began to sing."


She had made it four weeks, hours shy of a month.  Like a skilled predator, the shadowy organization had swiped her from her life and locked her away.  That life had been rather mundane, office work mostly.  But, secrets did pass over her desk.  She hadn’t even realized that her desk, in her particular department had acted as a nexus point for so many sensitive transactions.  The group, known only as the 20/20, had bided their time and chosen her carefully.  She was the one who would know the most, yet would have the least resistance.  Even so, she had made it four weeks.  Now, she wished only to return to the superficially mundane world these people had stolen. Just shy of a month, the abuse reached a threshold.  Their patience paid off and she could not hold the secrets back any longer.  Quietly she began to sing.

Flash Friday Week One Entry

In December, I started participating in Shenandoah Valley Writers' Weekly Flash Fiction Contest.

The first round was a 100 word story that started with "On Friday, everything changed".

This was my entry:

On Friday, everything changed.  Its no exaggeration when you are referring to the emotions of an interplanetary civilization with 150 billion inhabitants.  On Thursday (Sol standard date), those 150 billion had unparallelled hope.  The Institute had given them a promise. They claimed all tests indicated it would work.  A new era, poised to begin. 

On Friday, the test vessel failed.  It wasn’t the first time a colony had undergone explosive decompression.  Previous orbital colony failures had resulted in more casualties.  It wasn’t the failure of the colony.  It was the vessel.  Humanity  now had to accept faster-than-light travel was impossible.

Here We Go: My Goals

Welcome to Future History, Fictional Reality.  With this new blog I hope to achieve the following:

-Combat my chronic procrastination.  While I love developing interesting characters, settings and plots, sitting down and putting them to paper (or word processor) has always been a struggle.  Still I've managed to write more in the last six months than in the last six years.  The main reason being- accountability.  I participated in NaNoWriMo this year and it galvanized my writing.  I had goals to reach and I had a community to share them with.  I’ve stayed in contact with members of that community and they’ve helped me keep up the stamina (somewhat).

-Shameless self promotion.  With this blog I hope to generate interest in my work and my writing.  I’ve been living in fantastic worlds, inside my own head for years.  Now that my writing is becoming for prolific, I’m ready for others to start exploring these worlds with me.

-Networking.  NaNoWriMo and the community I’ve since joined have been invaluable.  I hope to use this blog to connect further with that community.

-Archive my work.  I will post writing here that I have posted on other blogs.  These flash stories are often posted as replies or comments, so I will post them here so they can be found in one place.

I am passionate about science fiction and most of my work will be in that genre, as you might have guessed from the title.  However, I do try to branch out when the spirit moves me.

If you like what you read, please comment.  If you don’t like it, please comment.  I am very interested in getting feedback.

I would like to thank Rebekah Postupak and Susan Warren Utley, co-founders of Shenandoah Valley Writers, for their support and encouragement.