Short stories and one shots

“Brevity is the soul of wit,” said Shakespeare.

Or as Marcus T. Cicero (106-43 BC) put it - much requoted by other writers.  “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”

I like writing one shots and smaller fics. I often panic that my word count is too low. I know! *rolls eyes at self*. I will reread something and be astonished that it is less than two thousand words and yet, feels so intense. I will receive a chapter update from another writer and it will be 15k words long and nothing really happens. That’s a massive number of words for me. I have come to realise that my brevity might be a good thing. The problem is, of course, that there is a small market for short stories. Most of my current Smashwords e-books would be considered short stories.

But I do love writing them. And I especially love photo prompts. They get my muse going. So I was very excited by the truly anonymous twilight one shot contest. I also liked the anonymity of it. http://ficcontest.info/ They were very clear that all writers, reviewers and promotions had to be anonymous. I didn’t even tell anyone I had entered, just to be on the safe side.

I chatted with my beta ruadh sidhe about the prompts and when she saw the photo prompts she laughed that they had given me too much time to send in an entry. ‘You will write forty five stories for all the prompts’, she suggested. Yeah, right. I only wrote thirteen. What would she know…? lol. And oddly, they weren’t the sexier prompts that people might have expected me to use.

I loaded them all on JBNP and got accused of spamming the site by one friend, in jest. I have put them here with the caveat that the images belong to whoever they belong to; I am not claiming them as mine. But the stories? Those are mine.

The problem is, now everyone wants me to extend them all. Lmao

Reverence A grieving boy learns the truth of his mother’s death.

Wakeup and smell the coffee Paul Lahote wakes up after another bad night with the wrong woman in his bed.

Cleanse my Soul Sam Uley/Bella. They have circled each other for months, since he found her in the forest. Now something makes Sam go to her.

Wishful thinking  Kim/Jared. What did Kim think when Jared imprinted on her?

Bought andPaid for Leah/Alcide (from Sookie Stackhouse/true blood world) Leah takes a job as an escort. An out-of-towner books her for a wedding weekend.

Shattered Bella is transformed after the birth into a vampire; a real, feral newborn. Jake’s pov.

Hope springseternal Bella chooses herself and a new, human life after Edward leaves her in the forest.

Jake’sPiece  Bella Cullen on her way to her Sth American honeymoon, has a plane delay. She wonders what happens to the piece of her heart that she felt break off; Jake’s piece.

Fightingthe black dog  Bella/Jake. He says he can’t be her friend anymore. She fights her depression black dog; he fights with his own black dog, Sam.

The C word  Embry/Leah - married and happy.

Then have at thee, boy! Seth/Mike Newton. Seth drops in to visit Bella at work one night.

Guilty ascharged  Jake asks Bella to get a message to Paul in Forks Police station; he’s being held for murder.

Leaving ona jet plane. Jessica Simpson met Seth at Bella’s wedding. She has to leave to go to College. Her bags are packed.