Madi Merek's Blog, page 7

How About Meeting Some Amazing Authors?

I think so!

 

Coming soon: blog posts featuring great authors and their books!

Flash Results (week 4)

This was an amazing flash contest this week. The turnout was spectacular and I’ve been searching high and low for another prompt that can follow this one up.

There were so many great flashes to choose from, and everyone kicked ass.

Here are my notes for all the wonderful flashes.

Wolfy: The imagery of her prissiness is beautiful: “…plastic oval-framed glasses…milk-and-honey skin…” I’d love to see this expanded. I want to know why she’s so prissy for the world and a tiger for him.

Megs: I can hear her heels in the parking lot – awesome start. You had me going for a minute, wondering if he was a stalker, and then the end is so perfectly sweet and romantically sexy. Great job!

Mel: So sexy! He’s in control and so damn hot with this cinnamon gum, and I can smell his spicy breath, but she’s in control at the end. Girl power. Maybe he can eat his next stick of gum from the palm of her hand.

Baiyo: They seem to have a real heavy history between them…and I’d love to read more about it. Is it a relationship from the past that pops up? Give me more……..!

Anna: Rocking the 100 words like no other. It’s perfect as always, and then there’s this: “Then, a lifetime to make it up to her, to bow his neck, and obey…” and I shiver. He’s stuck, and he loves it, even if he’s a fool.

Lakermom: I think this is every man’s dream woman – a good girl, “prim and proper to the outside world…” and completely hot and undone for him. Awesome flash.

Deebelle1: “She was silk and I was cotton…” – I adore this line; I feel the difference in the textures between their worlds and personalities. And their fire is flaming hot. I want to call it a Romeo and Juliet idea (but we all know that was all kinds of messed up ), but this could be the perfect way to make that kind of story and not get six people killed in three days of a story. Ha! Wonderful! I want more!

Sandi: I may be predisposed to love this flash because of the “Tennessee Waltz.” My dad used to have me stand on his feet and sing that to us. **reminiscing**  I love the desperation in this character’s  act of needing *it* and needing it right away. Everything was beautifully disturbed about this flash, from the menthol cigarette to the rubber at the top of her stocking, and finally his realization that he was just as unsatisfied as before he began.

Tgbmccray: Your opening line is spectacular; it flows like the typist she is. I can’t help but see a Mad Men episode as I read this, and I’m totally hot and bothered by the imagery you’ve created with his jeans. Soooooo hot. Fabulous.

Jdifrans: I want to see more of this! This would make a fantastic period fic. It’s totally Grease worthy. I hope Mike notices her, because she’s obviously more than willing.

Congratulations to all of you on rocking the hell out of this sexy prompt, but special congratulations to our winner, Sandi!

“I was dancing, with my darling…”

I’m looking for a guest judge for next week. Any takers? Sandi? Maybe we can start having the winner be the next judge?

Messages Series

A taste of Message to New York.

I want to share a taste of Message to New York with my readers. This is something very close to my heart, and it means the world to me. Please enjoy this unedited prologue.

Prologue

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

Elie Wiesel

1943

London, England

She spent her nights concealed under cotton quilts, hiding from the devils in the corners of the room and begging the sun to rise and vanquish the evil from her memories. But it never left her thoughts; when the daylight was at its brightest, beaming through her windows, the panes of her soul were dark as night.

The silence was as bad as the dark, where every shifting shadow was a Gestapo officer ready to rip him from her dreams, the only place he stayed safe and warm and fed. They’d already stolen him from her once; why did they insist on returning night after night to do it all over again? She hadn’t been able to save him; no matter how much they fought fate, taking up arms against the gods of providence, it had taken him.

With the dawn, she’d awaken from restless sleep to an empty, cool pillow beside her, a reminder of both love and failure, and fall into the routine she knew. Dress, eat, work, eat, home, eat. The romance of life dashed away with the laborious tasks of typing and filing and filling coffee cups.

On and on, her days went as such, the habitual life of a heartsick woman. Until the day she found the thing she’d been seeking the past four years. Her eyes found his name, drawn to it like a compass needle is drawn north. She wasn’t meant to see it, wasn’t meant to find out.

She’d seen Dachau, witnessed the stench and the eery quiet of death and hopelessness. But he was alive. Alive! She pushed back from the desk, and the papers scattered in a tornado flurry of white and ivory as she rushed to the relay operator.

“I must get this message to New York right away.” Her voice shook with trepidation, and the typist watched with suspicious eyes, but did as requested. There was no time to spare. She’d received word that he was alive and being held in the camp, but each passing moment was another in which he could be destroyed.

-This work is owned by Madi Merek and will be published.

When Your Heroes are Proven Fallibly Human.

It wasn’t as if I was trying to find something to devastate my day and send me to my vanity to collect all things Chanel (believe me, there were a lot) and fill the garbage bin.

It wasn’t like I wanted to stumble upon this little bit of traumatizing information while doing simple research for Message to New York.

But, I did.

And now I guess I’ll need to find a new perfume, a new purse, a new pair of peep-toe booties, and put off getting that black and white dress I’ve been dreaming of. Nordstrom’s Chanel sanctum will no longer see me perusing the racks.

Maybe it’s an overreaction to something that happened 70 years ago? Perhaps.

But then I look at my husband—my dark-haired, olive-skinned, Semitic lover—and my little curly-haired, Jewess Princess, and I am reminded that my love of Haute Couture would never equate of the perfection they bring to this world.

Farewell, Chanel. You were on the losing side of history; no, not in success and prestige, but in what truly matters. You have a tarnished legacy.

What a disappointment.