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Denise Covey and Francine Howarth
have given us the challenge to write a flash fiction based on I LOVE YOU BECAUSE ...
http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/The post must be under 400 words and contain the title within the post.
{My entry is 390 words and comes from THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH,
detailing Victor's first meeting with the ghoul, Alice Wentworth, by the crypt of Marie Laveau at midnight.)
Alice murmured, “How did you read my thoughts, meal-about-to-be.”
“It must be some voodoo magic still clinging to Marie Laveau’s crypt.”
She took a step back. “How is that possible?”
I hitched myself up on a marble slab. “Pull up a seat. Maybe I can have you hear my thoughts.”
She sat beside me. I reached out and gently took her left hand and concentrated.
I stiffened as the swirling sea of her loneliness, her joy at being in touch with another hurt spirit swept me up.
I drew her into me, into my memories of burnt out ends of smoky days laced with violence, with the withered leaves of a thousand misunderstandings, and with the gropings of my heart to the uncaring hearts of others.
The autumn world of my days on the streets came rising up over the dark horizon of my loneliness. Lost friends, mocking enemies, the haunted eyes of Mother.
The yellowed papers of recollection curled up around us from Detroit, to Cleveland, to that strange bus ride to New Orleans.
The light of hope shot through the shutters of fear as images of me wandering lost through the madness that was Meilori’s. My losing everything as I decided that for Captain Sam to live I had to die.
The cry of Alice’s heart calling out to me as she struggled to escape her own private hell. Her spooky entrance into my life. My own loneliness reaching out to hers.
The circle completing its circuit. Resurfacing from the waters of our shared spirits. Our fingers parting. Her pale face looking at me haunted.
Alice was shivering. My head was spinning. Something was wrong with my heart.
It wasn’t empty anymore.
What had I done to me?
Maybe you couldn’t see, really see, into someone without it changing you. And you couldn’t show them the you that you really were without the two of you never being the same anymore.
I looked into her strange eyes. My heart skipped a beat. Her eyelids lowered. Her hand softened around mine.
A wild thought came to me.
I brought her cold hand up to my lips and kissed it.
Alice’s lower lip trembled. “How could you?”
“C-Could I what?”
“Turn out so special?”
Black tears welled in her eyes. “Love is not blind, Victor, rather it sees what others cannot.”
***
http://tgunwriter.blogspot.com/
Francine Howarth has a great idea :
This blogfest is just a simple fun game of playing tag on Amazon to up your profile and that of your book's.
For me : THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH :
http://www.amazon.com/LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-ebook/dp/B005NCUTAG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328245906&sr=1-1
{100% of this book's royalties go to The Salvation Army.}
You'll not only meet other Indie authors along the way, ones you've probably never met before, you can guarantee readers and writers who are on the cusp of going Indie will all be watching from the sidelines and taking note of books that catch their eye and its link!
So what do you have to do?
The Rules!? I hate that word and prefer "Criteria required" for entry to the tag-party:
My own idea : hit the LIKE button on the book page of all the Indie authors involved in the tag blogfest -- sort of like patting their back!
First off: how tagging works
a) be prepared to tag all those who join the tag-party = fair play
b) basically follow tag-players’ links to Amazon
c) scroll to tag and add appropriate tags
Secondly what to do on your own blog:
d) post details of your Amazon link to your blog on 4-5th Feb.
e) copy-paste the banner (from her sidebar) to your blog's sidebar
In New Orleans, we have what is called LAGNIAPPE :
a small gift given with a purchase to a customer, by way of compliment or for good measure; a bonus.
You need read no further. But here is my Lagniappe, courtesty of the Victorian ghoul, Alice Wentworth, who would like to speak to you :
WHAT IS DEAD?
Am I dead?
Many of you have asked that about me of Roland. Am I?
Ghoul they call me. Am I?
I eat the living. But then so do many of you ...
and for far less pressing reasons :
for spite, for envy, for the sheer pleasure of it.
I was born after Princess Victoria and before grown men started wearing ear-rings.
In New Orleans, I was betrayed into a living death by Mother, jealous of my step-father's attention.
I had the cold comfort of watching her beauty wither, her loves leave her,
starting with my step-father ... who had only pretended affection for the two of us.
I gave her revenge,
and the only price was her sanity.
Watching the monster you made of your own daughter eat your beloved right in front of you
will tend to make your mind become just like your heart ... empty.
So what am I to do with Victor Standish?
I am an old woman in a girl's body. He is an old soul in a boy's frame. Hemingway once told me that it can never end well when two love one another.
And I find myself falling in love with Victor. Is what I see growing in his eyes love for me? I will destroy him I know. I feel it deep in my dry bones.
I even forced myself to tell him so. And do you know what he did?
He laughed that gypsy laugh of his, kissing me on the cheek.
"Oh, silly rabbit," he said. "Captain Sam's enemies are gonna kill me long before that! Let's just enjoy it while we've got it."
"It what?," I whispered.
"Us," he whispered back, and this time he kissed me full on my cold, cold lips.
And he didn't flinch. Not even a little.
***
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