Cheryl Burman's Blog: Blog posts for readers and writers, page 21

I could sense his excitement …

… and his impatience brewing in the air around us.

Writing prompt courtesy of William Boyd’s The Blue Afternoon, my current read.

The morning started slowly, brain sluggish. It was Sunday, the one day of the week when teenagers didn’t have to be forced out of bed, breakfasts gulped, lunches packed and sports gear picked out of the laundry basket (clean) to be scrunched into bags. He was home too, not already bumper to bumper on the M4 driving east into the rising sun. He was up though...

The Lightbody Legacy Carolyn Ruffles

In 1645, Martha’s days of being the respected healer in the tiny village of Wickthorpe are over, mostly for reasons that are nothing to do with healing or witchcraft. Now she is being dragged to Dark Water lake for trial by drowning. As she takes her last breath before being plunged into the water, tied to a chair, she sets a curse on the village and its inhabitants.

In the modern day, Deborah Ryecroft returns to Wickthorpe to live in the family farmhouse for one year. While her deeply unhappy ch...

Chocolate sour cream cake

I made this chocolate sour cream cake for a recent Dean Writers Circle meeting where we were fare-welling a much loved member (we’ll see her on Zoom we hope). It was met with more than the usual ‘Ah, chocolate cake!’ reaction, so I explained the recipe is from my 1970 Australian Women’s Weekly CookBook, which I was given as a young thing on my engagement. The book has lasted considerably longer than the engagement, although both of us are not quite so shiny as we once were!

To save strai...

Slowly I approached the table

Writing prompts this week courtesy of Kelley McNeil’s A Day Like This, my current read.

It was meant to be a fun night out, just me and him, a one course meal at a cheapish bistro, a glass of wine each. The most we could afford. There was a mortgage to pay and kids to clothe and feed, and money was tight in this ‘cost of living crisis’.

But we needed the time out, and with my sister on hand to babysit, we grabbed the opportunity with all four hands.

Rain fell as we approached the...

Rainbow’s Orange Poetry Book, Lily Lawson

Lily Lawson has recently been entertaining us with her brilliant kids’ poetry books but that doesn’t mean we’ve missed her poetry for grownups. So it’s a delight to see this latest release of a short but powerful collection in Rainbow’s Orange Poetry Book.

This collection is a lovely tribute to poetry in Lily’s life.

I especially very much enjoyed the way many poems can be construed as being about people/a person or about poetry, giving us insights into the poet’s soul. 

Even a poem such...

‘I’d imagined something very different for my life.’

Writing prompts this week courtesy of Kelley McNeil’s A Day Like This, my current read.

He looked at me across the table, a wobbly smile on his unshaven face. Bruised rings shadowed his intelligent brown eyes behind black-framed glasses. His grey-streaked dark hair was clean, but appeared not to have benefited from a comb any time recently.

‘I’d imagined something very different for my life,’ he said. He glanced around. ‘Not this.’

I nodded. ‘Makes sense. Most people don’t actuall...

The folders bulge with unanswered letters

Writing prompts this week courtesy of Katie Ward’s Girl Reading.

Nancy remembered crossing the road to the newsagent.

She was certain she remembered coming away with the local paper, and reading the ad, which was why she was here. Nancy was desperately in need of a job and the ad had brought her to this address in a wooden-framed building in the middle of the High St.

The ad hadn’t specified the nature of the business or details of the role, asking only for an intelligent, hard-working...

She listens. Blood thuds in her ears.

Writing prompts this week courtesy of Katie Ward’s Girl Reading.

The storm came quickly, wind battering rain against glass to seep into her sleep, waking her. She rolls over, feels the empty space beside her. Still warm. She reaches for the bedside lamp. Nothing. Damn.

Slipping from the bed she feels her way to the window, stumbling on discarded clothes, banging against the dresser. She pulls aside the curtain, to see only streaming water. Beyond is blackness. The whole street is out.

...

Angela takes a moment to weigh these words

Prompts this week from Girl Reading by Katie Ward, randomly picked from the bookcase. This story is vaguely a continuation from Saturday (with the protagonist’s name changed :D)

She’s been putting it off. Now, with only a day before she returns to the city and her job, Angela sets about the business of clearing her mother’s belongings from the master bedroom. She plans to put the house on the market, and while the loft accumulation, the garage, the kitchen cupboards and the dining room dresse...

Woman laughing: picture prompt

The last of the picture prompts this week. Enjoy playing with this one.

Bright colours, she’d said. Which had puzzled Annie because bright colours were not what she associated with her mother. Marjorie had been more of a sombre-hued person. The house, for example, old and dark, and full of old and dark furniture. The huge garden set to bushes, nary a flower in sight.

Annie lifted her glass of iced tea and surveyed the remains of the colourful wake – more instructions from her mother. Brin...