Nip & Tuck – Friday Fictioneers

February 28, 2014freyathewriter 28 Comments

Here is this week’s entry into the weekly challenge brought to us by the lovely Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

Here are the rules: Use the photo as inspiration, write a hundred(ish) words – and share! Here goes my offering for this week – and I welcome your comments again!

Copyright – Sandra Crook

– Nip & Tuck –

“I’ll give her bloomin’ comfortable, stuck up little -“

“Now then, Silas, give ‘Er Ladyship a fair chance… she’s not used to the countryside, brought up in a town she was, and well you know it!”

“Alright, Lizzy m’love, stop yer grumblin’. She’ll need to knock those airs on the ‘ead though. ‘Is Lordship won’t have it.”

Silas watched as his broad-beamed wife trundled off to feed the hens, bless her heart. The new lady of the manor wasn’t a patch on her.

Urging his mares to walk on, he delivered yet another load of straw for Lady Rainsford’s mattresses. She’d learn the ways of the countryside alright, once the red ants started biting…

—-

Click on the blue froggy below to read others’ offerings!

MEMOIRS OF A DILETTANTE VOLUME ONE – COVER REVEAL!

February 3, 2014freyathewriter 3 Comments

Dear Lovely Readers – I am delighted to be able to share with you an unashamed promotion for Helena Hann-Basquiat’s soon to be released Memoirs of a Dilettante Volume One – coming to an ethereal and three dimensional location near you! Spring 2014 is the season of launch – specific date to be announced as soon as everyone has recovered from their excitement!

Memoirs of a Dilettante is a collection of reminiscences, following Helena Hann-Basquiat, a self-proclaimed dilettante who will try anything just to say that she has, and her twenty-something niece, who she has dubbed the Countess Penelope of Arcadia, in their off-beat antics in such places as common as the local McDonald’s or the comic book store, to their travels to Miami for the search for the perfect Cuban sandwich. Interspersed between wacky one-off adventures, Helena tells personal, sometimes painful stories from her past in order to try and make sense of her life as it has played out, tempering everything with an indomitable sense of humour.

Cummerbund Bandersnatch, the Accidental Plagiarist, strippers, rock stars, geeks, freaks, and the Barista With No Name — these are just a few of the characters you’ll meet inside.

Discover Helena’s tales for the first time or all over again, with new notes and annotations for the culturally impaired — or for those who just need to know what the hell was going through her mind at the time!

If you just can’t wait and you want a taste of Helena’s writing, follow her blog: http://helenahannbasquiat.wordpress.com/

If you just can’t get enough Helena, or you want updates on further goings on, release dates and miscellaneous mayhem, follow Helena on Twitter @hhbasquiat

The covers are stunning – in true dilettante style, we get to see almost but not quite enough of the lady herself and if you are anything like me, you really, really want to know what she actually looks like! Perhaps, perhaps, we will never know. Maybe we will need to resort to our imagination as we rifle through the pages of her adventures. Already, I am determined that she has hazel eyes, but perhaps that is because I was blessed with this colour myself and fancy that I am indeed, a dilettante in my spare time…

Enjoy, one and all!

The Rush

January 28, 2014January 28, 2014freyathewriter 29 Comments

If wishes were horses the devil would ride

He’d flay them with cruel whips and cut at their hides

Their strides he would lengthen with means all most foul

And scare their souls witless with a blood-freezing howl.

Those wishes are craven, all carved from regret

They weigh down our spirits, we cannot forget

all those lives we would live if times they had changed

and granted desires, hopes and dreams we’d arranged.

Like soldiers in battle ordered and neat

We planned our bright futures, could not wait to meet

the glorious high-life brilliantly displayed

Now disappointed we curse at the path, disarrayed.

Life is not like a spreadsheet, it’s wrinkled and rough

The devilish detail is knotted and tough

It will consume us in moments, time will speed past

Until we’re sighing our last breath, dismayed and aghast

at the time we have wasted on the roll of the dice

For at the end of the last day, no-one lives twice.

******

This poem came to me (yet again) on my travels on the London Underground last week. We were all herded out of the station as a man had suffered a heart attack and died on one of the platforms. It got me thinking about how there are no second chances, that we, a bunch of commuting strangers probably knew of his death before his own family – I found that fact on its own to be desperately sad. I wouldn’t choose to die in a London Underground station, in public – but that’s the point, we don’t often get to select the when, where and how of our death. So this, this is about making the most of every part of your life, because you really don’t know what’s lying in wait for you. Just don’t waste it, whatever you do…

Please do visit the dVerse Open Link Night for examples of some very fine poetry indeed – and be inspired… Join us! You can link up later at 3pm EST – or whatever that works out to, wherever in the world you may be…