Icy Sedgwick's Blog, page 101

Photo Prompt 68

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 68th prompt is Frost.





All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!

Friday Flash - The Bell

The road stretched away across the moor, disappearing and reappearing with every undulation of untamed land. Edward Fenwick peered into the distance in both directions. The view yielded only miles of lonely heather. He fished in his horse's saddlebag for the creased square of parchment.



"Well this is a fine business. Digby's map surely shows Cransland House, yet there is not even a cow shed to be seen!" Edward looked down at the horse. The mare whinnied, and bent her head to nibble at the grass verge.



Edward took his pocketwatch from his waistcoat. Only 3pm, and yet the shadowy fingers of dusk already felt their way across the moor. A cloud crossed the face of the low sun, and Edward shivered. The crammed dwellings and clamour of London could never prepare him for this.



"I am late! Thirty minutes, no less. I should have taken the cart that was offered," said Edward.



He gazed across the moor, as if expecting the dilapidated old hall to materialise before him. Nothing. Not even a sheep or cow to break the monotony of the view.



A gust of wind danced around Edward, carrying a faint ringing. The mare lifted her head and pricked up her ears; Edward leaned forward in the saddle, straining to make out the sound. Regular yet insistent, Edward recognised the call of a small bell. He flicked the mare's reins, but the horse refused the budge. Unable to urge her forward, but keen to discover the location of the bell, Edward clambered down out of the saddle and set off down the road.



Hidden by a swell of moorland, another road crossed the empty landscape. A wooden post gave directions where the two roads met, and a mound of earth lay heaped at the foot of the sign. Edward ignored the westward arm pointing toward Cransland House, focussed instead upon the mound. A narrow wooden contraption protruded from the ground, topped by a small copper bell. Sheltered from the sudden gusts of wind by the ground's swell, the bell continued to ring.



Edward snatched his hat from his head and turned it in his hands. He spun around, casting wild glances in all directions. As before, he was alone on the moor. He crossed to the loose mound, searching the ground for clues as to the grave's occupant. Stories tumbled through his mind unbidden, tales told by his old nanny about the witches and vampires buried at crossroads. Even at the age of 43, he found himself unable to pass through London's many crossroads without wondering about the ground beneath his feet.



Edward mopped his brow, his teeth chewing his lip in time to the bell's call. Leaping devils pranced before his mind's eye. His feet tried to direct him back to the mare. He shook his head, trying to dislodge his thoughts.



"Come along now, this will not do. You cannot believe in such superstitious nonsense," he chided himself. "You have heard the stories of premature burial - some fellow could be gasping his last down there while you dither up here."



The bell's ringing grew louder, as if in reply. Edward forced himself towards the mound. Nestling his gloves inside his hat, his fingers got to work on the soft earth. The soil broke apart and fell aside as he scooped handfuls to his left and right. His red face shone with a halo of sweat when his fingertips finally brushed the splinters of untreated wood.



"Hallo there, I am here! I shall have you free in a moment!" called Edward. He hauled the last of the clods behind him, laying bare a rough wooden box, some six feet tall and three feet wide. Edward worked his fingers into the crack between the lid and the box, pulling upwards with all the strength his accounts clerk arms possessed. His mare neighed somewhere in the deepening twilight behind him, a call filled with panic.



"I shall be back, dearest horse!" shouted Edward, looking back over his shoulder as his hands finally pulled the lid free.



Edward looked down into the coffin, expecting to see a grateful face gasping for air. The box was empty, lined with rough sackcloth. He looked up to see if the trapped victim had hauled themselves to freedom when he called to his mare. Nothing but shadows surrounded him. He turned back to the coffin.



Something hit Edward square between the shoulderblades and he tumbled forwards. The last thing he felt was sackcloth against his face.

Photo Prompt 67

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 67th prompt is Church.





All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!

Friday Flash - Spot the Mistake

The Duke of Finchall sat on the wide stone steps, his chin resting in his palm. A handbill advertising the Ninth Brazenaar Companion Competition dangled from his other hand. The Duke watched his faithful companion scamper around the courtyard, claws scraping against worn stone.



"My lord, may I offer you a drink?"



The Duke looked up. His squire, Rivar, stood behind him, caught in a low bow. A serving girl stood behind the squire, bearing a steaming flagon on a silver tray. The Duke looked at the flagon, and back at Spot. Visions of the trophy, once again out of the Duke's grasp, danced before his eyes.



"I'm not thirsty," he replied.



"Very well, my lord. Can I interest you in something else?"



"Have you got the competition trophy lying around somewhere?" asked the Duke. He thought of his neighbour, Baron Darkrown. The Baron didn't need yet another piece of silverware to add to his impressive collection. I don't even have a collection, thought the Duke.



"Alas, I do not."



The Duke turned around in time to see the squire dismiss the serving girl.



"I thought we might win this year, Rivar," said the Duke when the girl was out of earshot.



"As did we all, my lord. But I am quite sure that Spot did not intend to urinate on the Chief Judge."



"No, I'm sure he didn't. But he did it all the same," replied the Duke.



"And I am sure he did not mean to start a fight with the other competitors. He was merely full of excitement at leaving the castle." The squire stole a glance at Spot, now pouncing at dancing shadows in the corner.



"You are probably correct, yet do it he did."



"And if I am honest, I would venture that Spot also did not mean to devour the Adjudicator."



The Duke shrugged in reply, and gazed across the courtyard. Spot snapped at a butterfly that veered too close to his head. A kitchen boy inched around the edge of the yard, eager to avoid Spot's lashing tail.



"Spot? Here, boy."



The Duke whistled and snapped his fingers. The rare Gudmundian Spotted Dragon whipped around and lumbered across the courtyard towards his master. Spot lowered his massive head and allowed the Duke to scratch behind his horns. The dragon thumped his hind leg in appreciation. The Duke sighed.



As much as he loved his companion, he couldn't help but wish his mother had given him a puppy.

[Book Review] The Little Stranger

I picked up The Little Stranger by chance, since it was only £2 in HMV. The fact it's a ghost story naturally caught my eye, and the fact it's set in a crumbling old house in the 1940s was a bonus. Written by Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger was published in 2009, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.



The story is narrated by Dr Faraday, a Warwickshire doctor called to attend a sick maid at Hundreds Hall, the dilapidated country seat of the Ayres family. The family are almost destitute, ruined by the social changes wrought by the Second World War, and Dr Faraday soon finds himself becoming a family friend. We're given an inkling that all is not well early on, when the sick maid complains of how creepy she finds the house.



Dr Faraday reminds me a lot of Stevens, the uptight butler narrator of The Remains of the Day. He's caught in his own internal class struggle, fighting against his working class upbringing as he seeks to ingratiate himself with the failing aristocratic Ayres family. He also reveals a lot about himself through his careless asides, and most of the time it becomes blatantly obvious what is going on, without Faraday being at all aware of it. I lost count of the number of times I cringed on his behalf.



It's a strange book in that things don't really get going until page 141 or so, and it was more a vague sense of interest in the mundane activities of the family that kept me reading. By page 141, the famous pacing finally kicked in and I found it truly gripping reading. I'd speed through whole chapters at a time, squeezing in reading time wherever I found five minutes. Waters builds up the tension surrounding the haunting, all the while keeping Faraday as the voice of reason, making the reader decide for themselves whether the house is haunted or not.



I wouldn't necessarily label The Little Stranger as a ghost story per se, but I would label it as a supernatural thriller, or perhaps a psychological chiller. Waters captures 1940s speech patterns, and while some of her descriptive passages border on unnecessary, when she really hits her stride, they paint the picture of an old house caught between its glory days and decay, inhabited by shades of their former selves. Perhaps the house is haunted after all - if only by its owners.



The opening section aside, it's well-written and a truly enjoyable read.



Four blunt pencils out of five!

Photo Prompt 66

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 66th prompt is Red Tunnel.





All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!

A New Year Dawns

It is now New Year's Day, the first day of yet another new year, albeit one with the added bonus of an extra day. Of course, if you believe the conspiracy theorists, one extra day won't make up for losing most of the year due to catastrophe, but I tend not to subscribe to the peculiar cultural phenomenon of conspiracy theories. Therefore, the obligatory 'New Year' post beckons. It's almost de rigeur if you have your own blog to witter on about the new year at some point, with some devoted to ill-thought out resolutions, others dedicated to where the word 'January' comes from, and yet more considering torn between a discussion of what went on in 2011, and what they hope will happen in 2012. With that in mind, I thought long and hard about the content of this post, and I didn't particularly want to roll out a list of "this is what I did in 2011". It would be fairly straightforward, and look something like this;

Got accepted onto a PhD programme, and began work on said PhD.
Quit my job as an office manager in London and moved back home to the North East.
Got another job teaching graphic design software on a part time basis.
Had a book published, and had stories appear elsewhere.
Took up ghost hunting.
Started up my own email newsletter (subscribe here, if you want)
Dull, huh? Instead of doing that, but on a grander scale,  I decided to have a look at what I wrote at the start of 2011. It turns out that in my New Year post, I chose three words that I wanted to use to 'signify' the coming year. I chose Acceptance, Create, and Silence. Now, considering I had several stories published (both online and in print) and my pulp Western novella, The Guns of Retribution , was picked up and published by Pulp Press, then I guess you could say that superficially, I did quite well with Acceptance. However, I'm still utterly incapable of accepting certain things, both about myself and the human race, so I think that my mark for Acceptance should probably be "Good effort, could try harder." As for Create...well, that one is a no-brainer - I created stuff all year long, be it stories, knitting projects, digital artwork, etc. So that's a big green tick in that box. As for Silence, I didn't spend much time doing nothing, and I spent the latter part of the year running too close to burn out for my liking, so again, big 'Fail' for me on that front.



But I think I'd like to do the same again for 2012. I'll no doubt forget all about the endeavour by the end of the week, but at least I've made the effort, yes? So what three words will I choose that I hope will sum up my coming year?



Perseverance

I think anyone who's followed me on Twitter knows I have my 'off' days, and yes, I do have days when I consider throwing in the towel. But that runs so far counter to my stubborn streak that it borders on uncharacteristic, so I'm choosing Perseverance. No matter how many bad reviews I get, no matter how many times a story just won't come together, I'll keep going, even if it means putting a work to one side for a while and coming back to it later. I will just keep going.



Commitment

For someone so grounded in practicality, I can be terribly flighty, skipping from one project to another. I think it's the illusion that the more things I have on the go, the more I'm getting done, but all I'm really doing is using one thing to procrastinate so I don't have to do another. I need to start committing to what I'm doing, so if I decide to spend an hour reading a text for my PhD, then that's what I'll do - I can check Twitter or play Warcraft when that hour is up. Likewise I need to stop starting a project, only to start world building for the next one before I'm even halfway through. One at a time, please.



Calm

Silence didn't work for me last year, but I'm taking a different tack this year. I tend to overreact to things I think are going to be more problematic than they turn out to be, and I find it difficult to sit and relax. Naturally that makes it difficult to get anything done if I'm constantly wound up, so I intend to build a short portion of relaxation time into my life. Whether that's playing video games, listening to Mozart, or simply reading a good book, it's a time to let my brain unwind and my batteries recharge.



Anyone else got any words they want to use for 2012?

Friday Flash - A Different New Year's Eve

My New Year themed Friday Flash can be found over at my Fowlis Westerby blog - simply click here to read A Different New Year's Eve!



In the event you'd like to read a more vintage Icy New Year flash, then New Year's Dance, my story from last year, starring Captain Scarlight and Methuselah, can be found here.



Happy reading, and Happy New Year!

National Novel Reading Month

John Wiswell has been discussing National Novel Reading Month over on his blog. January is the designated month, with the intention being that participants will finally dust over one of those classic novels they've had lurking on their shelves, and delve into literature the way it used to be. I suppose the definition of 'classic' is possibly somewhat flexible, but no, I don't think Bridget Jones' Diary or The Da Vinci Code count. I have to confess a particular fondness for Wilkie Collins having read The Moonstone a couple of years ago, and having just finished Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, I began his short story collection, The Haunted Hotel & Other Stories, just before Christmas. I'm probably two thirds of the way through the eponymous story, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Sadly, it doesn't count as a classic novel, so I'll just have to hope that I get it finished before long, so I can break open the 'proper' classic I shall be reading in January.



So what will that be? Well, I've had the intention to read it for some time, but providing I've finished reading the Collins collection, then I'm going to give The Time Machine a whirl. I've read War of the Worlds (naturally also by HG Wells - give yourself a slap if you didn't know that) and I enjoyed it, and I felt like it's about time I read some of his other work. After all, it's a science fiction classic, and I've seen various film adaptations, but I've never read the source work. I might not write sci fi but I certainly enjoy reading it, and I find it somewhat remiss of me not to have read it! If I finish it in time, then I'll finally get around to Jane Eyre. I've meant to read it for some time but I've always found something else I'd rather read, but after the many glowing reviews given it by my mother, I feel I should probably read it sooner rather than later.



What about you? Will you be joining in?

Photo Prompt 65

New prompt available!



If you want to use the prompt, all I ask is that you include a link to this entry and a credit to me for the photograph, and that you post a link to your story in the comments box below so I can see what you've come up with! If you don't comment on this entry, then I can't comment on your story.



The 65th prompt is Tunnel of Light.





All photo prompts are my own photography - you can find more of it on Flickr. You can also buy my prints from Deviantart. 20% of all proceeds go to charity - the other 80% go towards my PhD fees!