stories

Twelve Short Stories of Christmas 4: Frozen Rose

To read day three click here.

The rose was kept in a perfect temperature controlled climate, watered on a schedule and kept safe from insects by a glass case that surrounded it. In this way the rose could never die and would stay in bloom forever.

Mandy went into work in the morning, taking off her gloves as she came from the cold winter air to what she hoped was the warm air of the laboratory, but inside she could still see her breath in the air. Puzzled, she switched on the laboratory light and gasped. All the plants were dead. The only plant that had survived what must have been a power outage overnight, was the rose. It was still encased in its glass case, but even so there were small droplets of water that had frozen into ice on the petals.

She carefully lifted the glass dome and picked up the frozen rose, carefully brushing the ice off the petals. One of the thorns pricked her finger, but as the blood welled up from the cut she could see that her blood was already starting to freeze in the cold.

 

 

 

 

stories

Twelve Short Stories of Christmas 3: Goblin King

Yesterday’s story can be read here.

Today’s story is inspired by Outside Over There by Maurice Sendak

Saida just wanted the baby to go to sleep. He had been crying all night and most of the day. She had tried walking him round the block and up and down the stairs. She had tried rocking him, telling him stories about goblin kings and fairy queens but he still kept crying. She was singing to him now. She decided she was going to let him try and calm himself down. She finished the lullaby she was making up as she went along as she backed slowly out through the nursery door, “I’ll be sure to serve you, when you’re goblin king, but for now I hope they hear what I sing,” and she clicked the door shut behind her.
The crying stopped instantly. She was so relieved she sat down in the hallway, but she wanted to check if he had gone to sleep or was just sitting calmly in his cot. She opened the door and went back over to the cot. The ice baby left by the goblins was already starting to melt.

 

stories

Twelve Short Stories of Christmas 2: Tree Fell

To read day one click here.

The woodcutter had finally managed to knock down the fir tree in the forest. The tree fell  and the sound caused all the birds in the trees to fly up and away. He started his long walk back to the village with the tree dragging it by the base through the snow. The tree left a trail that covered his footprints behind him. As he walked into the village, another tree in the forest fell down. It hit another one and the next and the next, but the birds had all flown away and the woodcutter couldn’t hear over the sound of the tree dragging through the snow. There would be no forest left by morning.

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NaNoWriMo Week 1

Week 0 here.

So as of today my word count is 15052 – which makes me exactly on track to finish NaNoWriMo – I am neither behind nor ahead of where my word count should be.

That being said, this is one of the first stories I have written where I am finding myself wanting to switch between narratives whenever I get stuck. This is fine and even encouraged during NaNo, but usually I prefer to finish the chapter I am on before starting another and that does not seem to be possible for me with this book. Does this mean that the book will still be unfinished at 50,000 words? Possibly but that’s why I spend December editing everything I’ve written in the previous month.

It may be that the best way for this book to be written is precisely like that, with the narrative switching back and forth between the past and the present as the mystery from the past will not be solved until almost 100 years later – the book involves a fire in 1911 the cause of which was never discovered – though I am also finding that the cause of the fire may not be the only mystery that needs solving in the book.

With NaNoWriMo I think it works best if you do not think of the book as your first draft but instead as your zero draft. That is the story is in there somewhere, now when you edit it you get to go in, find the story, fix the plot holes and make sure all your sentences are well written. This is a story that I am looking forward to editing in December and I don’t think the same way about all of the stories I have written for NaNo, but the editing process will be a lot easier if all of my chapters are completed first!