One of my 50-word stories, "Bitter," is live on @tinyfrights podcast!!! You can listen here:

https://caracabecreations.bandcamp.com/track/tiny-frights-episode-8-bitter-by-francesco-levato

#WritingCommunity #50WordFiction #50WordFriday #horror

If you are interested in writing dark fiction/horror this fall for #Storytober, I will be posting links to videos, articles, and example stories to help generate thoughts and ideas. Those who have written to prompts for #50WordFriday may be interested. I would like to expand beyond the 50-word challenge into longer lengths---ie, 175, 250, 500. Here is a video I like that is very simple and straightforward regarding generating ideas and making a start. Begin at 34 seconds.
https://youtu.be/rjjqLTsfYjw?si=JN-fYDZacV47uwx4

With my attention focused on some more immediate family and climate concerns in Florida, I'm considering taking a late summer break from prompt-based 50-word-writing and likely resuming come closer to a celebration of Inktober/Storytober in late September/early October so please check in with the #50WordFriday hashtag if interested. Also, if you are interested in a slightly longer micro length, I'll be considering that too so let me know. 🖤 💀 Be safe, friends. Stay well.

Tomorrow I will post about the next #50WordFriday prompt. I am 2 White Russians in. 😂 It has been a stressful week. 🖤 Have a good night, everyone.

Numb

On the restaurant patio, string lights glowed under the purpling sky. It was cold for Florida, and I was numb and well into my second margarita, the street’s dirt and exhaust a stark contrast to the lush greenness of my first Orlando visit on a girlhood train trip from Arkansas.

Photo: Unsplash by Filip Mroz

#50WordFriday #microfiction #50WordFiction

Numb

Drinking beer al fresco at the Lazy Gator bar within view of gator-infested waters, she feels her head, bald from chemo, sweating beneath her wig. She doesn’t feel her feet numb with neuropathy. She realizes dating in this condition she is essentially a piece of meat. Dan leans in, hungry.

photo by Jessica Griffith, public domain, flickr

#50WordFriday #microfiction #50WordFiction

Numb

She was numb until Boris marched into the restaurant, a huge patch on his black leather jacket---“God’s Prospect”--- and a silver ring on every finger.
“You’re in quite the motorcycle club,” she said.
“Let me show you,” he said, and took her away, a dark angel in the night.

Unsplash photo by Denis Shlenduhhov

#50WordFriday #microfiction #50WordFriday

#50WordFriday 's next sensory word summer prompt is a great suggestion from @levato ----"numb." As an adjective, it is used to depict a lack of physical sensation or emotional responsiveness. As a verb, it can mean "to deaden" or cause to "feel less intensely." Google "numb" to find synonyms and example sentences in Oxford Languages. This word has creepy potential for a #50WordFiction so thank you so much, Francesco! That being said, all genres welcome. Please use # above. 🖤 💀

A 50-word I wrote for Halloween a couple of years ago and published in the wonderful zine @tinyfrights. If you like to write the dark-bite-size fiction, up to 250 words, consider submitting. I am considering the sensory prompt for this week's #50WordFriday and am running late. In the meantime----"Leonard." #microfiction #50WordFiction

https://wordpress.com/post/brokenwriterblog.wordpress.com/5835

Acrid

In my dream is a dark wood, the acrid smell of smoke drifting through the trees, and a choir singing notes purple and green, heavy and round and droll, singing hymns I know from childhood, singing hymns before congregants dressed in white their clean smell dry as a communion wafer.

#50WordFriday #microfiction

Also, see comment below.

photo: public domain, Intermountain Forest Service, flickr

The next #50WordFriday prompt is "acrid," meaning a smell or taste that is strong and bitter and causes a burning sensation in the throat. "Acrid exactly fits the smoke from a fire...Dense smog may cast an acrid pall over a city, making throats burn and eyes sting" (see link). It is also used in a nonphysical sense to signify violent bitterness, acrimony, malevolence---ie, an acrid divorce, an acrid denunciation, etc. Please use the # above. All genres. Enjoy! 🖤 💀 👹 🔥
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acrid

Here is a blogpost link to a #50WordFiction for #50WordFriday, prompt word gossamer. I felt the picture would need a content warning and I'm feeling lazy. It's not obscene, just a little out of the box so know that if you follow it. It describes the way I felt once upon a time in a certain academic context. Peeps who want to participate in #50WordFriday don't have to share their piece in a post, but can use a link to a blogpost or piece published in a journal, etc. 💜 https://brokenwriterblog.wordpress.com/2023/08/09/interloper/

Gossamer

Lanie felt drifty, like a gossamer web blowing with every breeze until one day she detached and flew free, floating over the highway, over the city, over her childhood home, out to the sea at sunset. She would stay here a while, she thought. There was a lot of sea.

unsplash photo by Pawel Nolbert

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #microfiction

Fine threads of friendship keep us together.
Our youthful adventures, our passion and fire forge strong bonds.
Drifting apart in adulthood makes gossamer threads out of ropes.
They'll snap at the slightest tug.
Or so I thought.
Yet our reunion many years later proves the strength of friendship and love.
#50WordFriday #Writing #WritingCommunity

The next #50WordFriday prompt for sensory summer is "gossamer." The term "gossomer" was used in Middle English for a late season warm spell in autumn when goose was considered at its best for eating. It also was used to describe cobwebs floating in the air which looked like the down of a goose and became our term "gossamer" meaning "light, delicate, tenuous," in both a literal and metaphoric sense. Also "insubstantial."
All genres welcome. Please use # above. Enjoy! 🖤 🕸️
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gossamer

Prompt: Hush

There was this stillness, when the temperature turned breath to crystal and snow kept our footsteps from unsettling the dead.

We buried them, what body parts remained after losing ourselves to the impossible geometry of the ruins we discovered, to the blasphemous thing we had awakened there—and in ourselves.

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #MicroFiction #SFF #Horror #SciFi #Fantasy #WritingCommunity

Hush

At sunset, she walks the beach hushing a nonexistent infant in her arms. But no one else has seen her, only me. They say I imagine her, dead and barren in my longing.

#50WordFriday #Microfiction #50WordFiction

photo: "Florida" by Mickey Luigi Logitmark, public domain, flickr

Hush

There was a hush after the pied piper of souls disappeared from conscious awareness. Ideas, knowledge, thoughts, creative inspiration had been harvested and kept elsewhere to the benefit of the rich who hired the clever men to press buttons and pull levers so the rest of us did their bidding.

(photo: Adam Levine, public domain, flickr)

#50WordFriday #50WordFiction #microfiction

"Hush!" I say to my dog that barks and yaps and won't be silenced.
"Hush!" I roar. The pup looks startled and shuts up.
Then I hear it. Whomp-tick-whomp-tick... it's coming from the basement.
That sound alone wouldn't scare me all that much if it wasn't for the quiet cackling...
#50WordFriday #WritingCommunity #MicroFiction
The prompt for this week was "Hush"

@MargaretSefton @tinyfrights Just got some awesome news, Tiny Frights accepted 2 of my #50wordfriday stories for their Halloween issue & podcast (my favorite holiday!).