Every Wednesday I take a sentence or paragraph from something that I've written in the last week and post it entirely without context. This week: I recognise that what is recounted in these pages might draw claims of “fake!” and “charlatan!”, and even among those who would not venture so far I have no doubt… Continue reading Out Of Context Wednesday: Fake and Charlatan
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100WC – The Crystal
It would be many years before Dr Fong would develop a treatment, but by then it would be too late. The sea would be black, the sky would be bruised, and all the oil would be rotten.The folks at Exxon would be as hungry as the rest, and they’d look back on the day that… Continue reading 100WC – The Crystal
Out Of Context Wednesday: Further Ado
Every Wednesday I take a sentence or paragraph from something that I've written in the last week and post it entirely without context. This week: So, without further ado, or rather with only a relatively small amount of further ado – honestly, so little further ado as to make no difference – in fact so little… Continue reading Out Of Context Wednesday: Further Ado
100WC #168 – The Man Who Was A Dream
Prompt: "…the blue was sapphire…"The man who was a dream stepped in from the cold, and his coat of colours flashed in the candle's dying light. Every panel and thread glittered and gleamed, and each one was a story, each told its own tale: the blue was a sapphire, the pink was a gown, the… Continue reading 100WC #168 – The Man Who Was A Dream
100WC – On The Porch
Across the lawn from us the Radcliffes sat draped on their chairs and loungers, wilting like neglected flowers in the heat.Now and then I'd look up and catch Emily watching me, her white dress gleaming, her skin the colour of toffee, and sometimes I would wave to her. Sometimes, if her father wasn't looking, she… Continue reading 100WC – On The Porch
Out Of Context Wednesday: Idle What-Ifs
Every Wednesday I take a sentence or paragraph from something that I've written in the last week and post it entirely without context. This week: When they’d spoken about this kind of thing, playing idle what-ifs after hearing about the indiscretions of their more turbulent friends, she’d always said that if she loved someone she could… Continue reading Out Of Context Wednesday: Idle What-Ifs
How to write a great character name
Often what stays with me from a novel is less the plot and more the characters who move within it. I find that I remember who they are and how they act long after the major plot points have faded from my sieve-like memory, and that I think of them almost in the same way… Continue reading How to write a great character name
100WC #166 – Salvation
Prompt: "…checking in proved to be…"A dried-out hotel lobby. Wooden fan blades stirring burnt air, grey photographs from a lost and glorious past. Noises on the wind outside, distant alien sounds: a thump, a crackle of munitions. The world ending. A boy with bone-white eyes on a cracked plastic chair. Green shorts, white vest, skin… Continue reading 100WC #166 – Salvation
Out Of Context Wednesday: Elevator Women
I've decided on a whim that every Wednesday I will take a sentence or paragraph from something that I've written in the last week and post it entirely without context. This week:Women of all races smiled silently down at them from screens set into the white walls of the elevator, arranged artfully on loungers beside swimming… Continue reading Out Of Context Wednesday: Elevator Women
One of the things that I enjoy most about writing fiction is the opportunity that it provides, when doing research to add depth and colour to characters and places, to learn a little (or a lot) about a wide range of subjects that I otherwise wouldn't come across.The first section of my first novel, for… Continue reading
Simon John Cox 