Somebody Out There Likes Me

Dearest of readers, today the inimitable Rachael Harrie is interviewing me over on her truly awesome blog Rach Writes... and this is a huge honor (a phrase I've used approximately seventeen times already today in talking about this and expect to use MANY MORE TIMES, because it IS) because her blog is a truly fantastic resource for writers. From helping her followers find critique partners to her wonderful Writers Platform-Building Campaigns, Rach is all about getting working writers, aspiring authors like myself, the blogging community, and the publishing industry to sit down together for tea and biscuits. This is a TRULY NOBLE CALLING Y'ALL. As she says, "I write YA Horror, Dark Fantasy, and Psychological Thrillers, and spend my day imagining evil plot twists and psychotic characters. When I'm not thinking up ways to make you squirm, you'll find me blogging up a storm (with the occasional Twitter and Facebook foray as well), planning for my next Campaign, wondering whether to make Write Hope a permanent fundraiser for charity, counting down the days to the next WriteOnCon, and diving into another round of critiques with my CPs." I mean, what's not to like? You should totally follow her.

Comes from THE Soul..., apparently. I bet you can imagine
what most of the stories sounded like...

I am lucky enough to GET the interview because of her very clever take on the Blogging From A-Z Challenge, where she posted a picture and and asked us each to write a piece of flash fiction about it, either just one or one for every day of the challenge - the catch being that there were 26 different "rules" posted, one for each day of the challenge, to adhere to in our little microstory. To motivate us, she offered some swell bribes prizes, which is ALWAYS a good idea. She got nearly a hundred entries, which is kind of amazing, and mine won one of her prizes, which was an interview on her blog! I was SO HAPPY YOU GUYS. I only put in one entry  because I can only be funny in small doses and I really, really did not want to end up writing a serious take on this photo. The rule was "your entry should contain the words 'brackish' and 'bend'" and that was fine with me; those are pretty good words and anyway they were practically in the picture already. It wasn't like she's picked "neon" and "barbies" or something. There were some truly fascinating entries - including someone who did entirely alliterative posts, like multiple ones, which is really freaking impressive - but, you know, I want to say that most of them took the image pretty literally, so me? Well, here's what I did with it:

Yeah, dude. It’s all here. I set up this bend in the river real good. Pile of rocks, some nice brackish water, a swell mist, requisite tragic lady with hair spilling down. Okay, cue the monster. Three, two…

What, we’re not doing a monster? Whaddaya mean? Okay, how about a ship coming out of the fog? I got a real nice ship, plenty of masts, some good tattered sails….no? Maybe a flaming whatsitcalled, canoe thing, with a Viking? I got some great helmets –

Not that either? Uh, okay, what about a fin? I’ve got a real nice fin, stick it in the water behind her for good shock effect, bring up the Jaws theme tweaked a little bit…

Whaddaya mean, you want a sparkly vampire? Listen, dude, anyone could tell you, that’s just dopey. Trolls, maybe even a bear, okay, but nobody’s gonna buy something THAT dumb. Come on. 

Hooray for humor, apparently.