Week 12 Flash Fiction Contest: Nowhere

Photo by K.S. Brooks

The middle of nowhere. It’s 112° and your character has been on foot for hours already. Not one other vehicle has passed.

No food.

No water.

No shade.

What happened and what will happen?

In 250 words or less, tell me a story incorporating the elements in the picture. The 250 word limit will be strictly enforced. Continue reading “Week 12 Flash Fiction Contest: Nowhere”

A Reader’s POV – Chick Lit

This is probably one for the girls…I can’t imagine there are many male Chick Lit readers out there – it’s a genre written by women for women. So, do we love it, do we hate it, or do we love to hate it?

There is no doubt it is very popular. Why? Well, it’s an effortless read, and it’s easy to identify with the main female lead; she’s like a best friend. She’s got man problems, she’s probably on a diet, she probably hates her legs, her bum or her hair, she probably lives in a bedsit or small flat, anguishes over the zit that appears just before a hot date, she’s probably got an annoying cat whom she adores, and you like her because she’s not quite perfect.  She’s actually quite normal. Continue reading “A Reader’s POV – Chick Lit”

The Book Was Better

“I just saw the movie, wasn’t a patch on the book.”

If I’d stuffed my face with a deep-fried Mars bar every time I heard this sentiment, I’d probably lose a weigh-in with an elephant seal, have a mouthful of teeth with the average consistency of a sea sponge, and skin the overall texture of pepperoni by now. I’ll bet every last one of us has said something similar, though. Which makes every last one of us a bit weird, really. Not quite stupid, but getting there, you know?

Let me explain my thinking. (I find I have to do that a lot, which says nothing good about me whatsoever.)

It’s actually quite simple. A book is a book. A movie is a movie. And Popeye is what he is… an extremely odd-shaped sailor with a fetish for canned green vegetables.

Seriously, though, “the book was better” has become one of those irksome knee-jerk phrases that are stand-ins for something else entirely. See: “it’s political correctness gone mad!” which actually means “damn, the world doesn’t condone my bigotry any more, so I’ll just have this here tantrum instead”. Or: “I knew them before they were famous” which translates as “I am an unctuous hipster and will drip oily, corrosive scorn on, you know, like, everyone not in the inner circle of me, dude.” Continue reading “The Book Was Better”