96 Critiques so Far

It's hard to comment/crit when you are working flat out producing but we approach our hundredth crit now

13 Signed, 37 Flashes, 3 Stories, 4 Poems

Going OK.

Here are some more prompts. I seem to have mislaid some!

Blind eyes like unshelled hard boiled eggs
There was a river
Parchment
An old man sits next to his beer
CHAIR
I have had lovers, all sub-prime
TABLE
Thinking of fish we have caught, almost caught
A Red Wheelbarrow
We took turns, and she said yes, then why did it feel wrong?
Pullman
Once, after a long day of unremitting rain, the sun
BECKS
What if the road you often took, was moved at night?
Scooping Cream
What if there was never surprise?
The nearest shop is miles away
The life of a leaf
Suddenly there are cattle, rumbling towards McDonalds
MicroLove
Shopping Carts and Rain, and amber light
Now something is in the air
I have heard, the children are returning
DIE, Bond!
If you could unwind history, where to stop…
CRANE
Of course the world is not enough
Late September
Once I asked my grocer for a perfect potato
Nobody there, just fruit on bramble
Stainless Steel
You said it wasn’t worth the trouble
Day Rises, and quiet
I caught a tremendous fish
I have loved three women, married others

12 Signed, 3 Stories, 33 Flashes, 3 Poems

The thing grows!


Here are some more prompts

Blind eyes like unshelled hard boiled eggs
There was a river
Parchment
An old man sits next to his beer
CHAIR
I have had lovers, all sub-prime
TABLE
Thinking of fish we have caught, almost caught
A Red Wheelbarrow
We took turns, and she said yes, then why did it feel wrong?
Pullman
Once, after a long day of unremitting rain, the sun
BECKS
What if the road you often took, was moved at night?
Scooping Cream
What if there was never surprise?
The nearest shop is miles away
The life of a leaf
Suddenly there are cattle, rumbling towards McDonalds
MicroLove
Shopping Carts and Rain, and amber light
Now something is in the air
I have heard, the children are returning
DIE, Bond!
If you could unwind history, where to stop…
CRANE
Of course the world is not enough
Late September
Once I asked my grocer for a perfect potato
Nobody there, just fruit on bramble
Stainless Steel
You said it wasn’t worth the trouble
Day Rises, and quiet
I caught a tremendous fish
I have loved three women, married others

Loads More Prompts

These are singled, the alpha-listed, then in reverse.
try reading it all, singing them, chanting

Wait for a voice to call you


PROMPTS

They have promised to send a train, and we will leave
Father Maloney’s stare
Imagine a tender gravity, falling
Decision
And if I am writing, I am not holding my wife
I would like to sit close to the doors
How Morning is, and quiet
Tock
I have told you all this to give you pain
Bamboo Squares
They bubble-wrap hearts now and sell them three for two
The cook’s boy, the cleaning girl
VENOM
Stone to stone, heart to stone
CHIME
The rustle of history
NAIL, Hammer
Time clears its throat
BALL
Days of great love; of destiny
Do mad people love? What are there letters like?
GRATE
Birds Eye Frozen False Tears are on Offer
Jack of Hearts
We will talk about great things, and football
TAXI
I am silly, filled up with sleep and want
One Potato, Two Potato
Hardly a Joker
Should you not have time to memorise these instructions
Flat-Pack Marriages
The Chemistry of Distaste
And then cracking twigs
And we all stared at the box, and it inside

And if I am writing, I am not holding my wife
And then cracking twigs
And we all stared at the box, and it inside
BALL
Bamboo Squares
Birds Eye Frozen False Tears are on Offer
CHIME
Days of great love; of destiny
Decision
Do mad people love? What are there letters like?
Father Maloney’s stare
Flat-Pack Marriages
GRATE
Hardly a Joker
How Morning is, and quiet
I am silly, filled up with sleep and want
I have told you all this to give you pain
I would like to sit close to the doors
Imagine a tender gravity, falling
Jack of Hearts
NAIL, Hammer
One Potato, Two Potato
Should you not have time to memorise these instructions
Stone to stone, heart to stone
TAXI
The Chemistry of Distaste
The cook’s boy, the cleaning girl
The rustle of history
They bubble-wrap hearts now and sell them three for two
They have promised to send a train, and we will leave
Time clears its throat
Tock
VENOM
We will talk about great things, and football

We will talk about great things, and football, VENOM, Tick-Tock, Time clears its throat, They have promised to send a train, and we will leave, They bubble-wrap hearts now and sell them three for two, The rustle of history, The cook’s boy, the cleaning girl, The Chemistry of Distaste, TAXI, Stone to stone, heart to stone, Should you not have time to memorise these instructions, One Potato, Two Potato, NAIL, Hammer, Jack of Hearts, Imagine a tender gravity, falling, I would like to sit close to the doors, I have told you all this to give you pain, I am silly, filled up with sleep and want, How Morning is, and quiet, Hardly a Joker, GRATE, Flat-Pack Marriages, Father Maloney’s stare, Do mad people love? What are there letters like? Decision, Days of great love; of destiny, CHIME, Birds Eye Frozen False Tears are on Offer, Bamboo Squares, BALL, And we all stared at the box, and it inside, And then cracking twigs, And if I am writing, I am not holding my wife

27 Flashes, Two Stories, More prompts

The tree-stump, devoured
OATMEAL
Sometimes everything I write seems a snapshot, with a thumb over the lens
Tomorrowness
Consider the grass growing
ECHO
Being a man and not a god, he leaves
Squawk
Once upon a time, there wasn’t
Much of my thinking is about loss
Postcards from Fiji
Blackberry, blackberry, blackberry
BASRA
Shut up. Shut up. There’s nobody here.
Shampoo
Running from Spiders
CHISEL
Peach or Mango
Two white, ripe girls on the tube
Last Supper II
Two a.m. bright moonlight, a train in moonlight, hissing
CARS
He sits with his absent wife
The sky ripped open
I stretch my arms
Fish know where to move and when
Furniture
One minute and forty-two seconds
Only the virus
Goodnight, and goodnight

More Members, More Prompts

We now have eleven signed up, twenty flashes and one story posted and approaching 100 crits.

Here are some prompts to cover the week. Loads more at BC.

Monday Prompts

The Gods That Failed
Seagulls
Goldilocks is Asleep
When lovely woman stoops to folly
Man-bag
She turns and looks a moment in the glass
On the cheap
And children suffocate
Pictures
No one scrambles over the sliding chalk
Bacon, bacon
On the divan piled, stocking, camisoles, stays
Unreal Cities
Hardly aware of her departed lover
A Silen Fan
A sea-fog like gunsmoke
DAMP
So now the Victorians are all in Hell
BREAD
Your favourite word is wee, and you eat Eccles Cakes

TUESDAY

An so de rain a-fall and a-fall
Black Ball
There I places I will never go
Married and not pregnant: there’s posh for you
MARZIPAN
Where can I go then, from the smell
STALYBRIDGE
Bless you Alpha-Doggie
Good Boys
Into the grave that we have dug
Dai K lives at the end of the valley
Sin-Cake, Sin-Eater
Books, books, books
Of the forests and smashed faces
A crowd flowing over a bridge
COLD
A drowning child
Blodwen is leaving
He ravishes the fiddle, screams when drunk

WEDNESDAY

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
GOOGLE as a number
The night we were struck, the night
Icing, meteors
Trains will run later, and fuck it
Cheesy Bond
September was when it began
Magic ingredient
A swarm of frogs, swollen, hideous
BERET
I can remember, see, my father walking home. I was never there
JUICE
Miss Marples, were they ever young and fucked?

THURSDAY

Blessing
You could try cheese
Mirror, mirror, on the fucking wall
The eighth dwarf
Crowds round the ticket barrier, a white face waiting
Death by Meteor
It has been said, that sometimes I lie, or bend the truth
Blind Faith
The very young T.E.
Was there a poster of me, with a moustache?
Blowing up the train
Poets only play with words, they always lie
We fight for something
There was an airfield here, the grass grows and leaves a pattern
Poppies
What is the opposite of E’s?
My father ran round the garden in the dark

FRIDAY

At least it’s something
September 1, 1939
There is no greater crime than leaving, except to stay
UNDESIRE
I may have been a Zulu, or wore petticoats
Mis-spelling, Miss Spelling
You can count on friends, but only to twenty or so
All I have is a voice
Aberyswyth
Accurate Scholarship is not of the soul
TS
But the corpse, alas, goes on dying
You do not love the dead, the word is LOVED
RAIN
After all you lasted longer
Practice hate, hate the village

SATURDAY

I sit in a dive on fifty-second street
CLINK
Truth-loving Persians
And where, exactly did the peach come from?
Why declare war?
TOM
Listen, there is a hum, and ticking
Through half-deserted streets
Tennis for the dead
Dogs skittering on polished floors
Snap!
And I have known the eyes already
Pop!
How the door clicks open
Crackle
Let us go and make our visit
Do I dare?
The soot that falls back down the chimney

EIGHT NOW SIGNED, Prompts

Eight now on board after 24 Hours.

Join Us.

Post at BC or email AK

Email to Snowball136 (at sign) googlemail.com

Here are tonight's prompts

Ten songs, one solid block of agony



Tourists, not Terrorists



Your father, in his terrible pose



Jill Dando



and inside the house, the bewildered child



Certainty



It began to snow at midnight



BOUNCE!



Where and when, exactly, did we first have sex?



BACK



Whose woods these are, I think I know



TAIL



the ragged road, the wood, the yearning



Kids on Stage



Breathing at my side, that heavy animal



Extensions



Back out slowly, step off your life



Samson



It's only a week, but you're slipping



Lighthouse



They have captured the moon, it's in a box



Getting There!



I will go back to that silent evening



BALL



When you have a plan, your life



You've been knocking a door, but it is just a door, nothing else is there



Acker Bilk, or the Other one



You could have just been another maggot



Rock's the cradle



ARIA



Finney, I will never forget

SIX SIGNED UP ALREADY

Various Boot Campers have still to respond, but already we have four guests signed up for the month, a total of six writers.

Flashes posted to date (well it IS early!) SIX

JOIN US! Here are prompts and some advice

Please note that there is no "rule" which says you must read "this" set of prompts "NOW" and immediately write a flash.



The purpose of flashing is to UNLEASH, to break your own pre-set rules

but all we want is for you to write fast, unthinking, instinctively, with the gut.



If that means reading lines of poetry or looking at pictures, or listening to music on repeat, that's fine.



If it means reading 1-2-3-4-5 sets of flash prompts, that's fine, too.



What is important is letting rip, writing free of constraints and without planning.



PROMPTS




Burning burning burning burning


Armadillo


Children's voices in the orchard


The Pub Quiz


Where the grey light meets the green air


Lost Voices


I have been here before


SAND


I remember now. I did not know if it was grief or love


Restless nights


It was now a soft October


BLOSSOM


I have gone at dusk through narrow streets


A wallet filled with fat


CHERRY


I will always miss her, miss her


Bike!


The winter evening settles down


Gently, gently


I will row into the current, towards the falls


Tomorrow, then


A South Wales Argus came swirling about my feet


The boys in new kit


Wipe your hand across your mouth, laugh


This hour or so, drinking


Among the Dead Cities


I remember the nights, and the sound of nights


I would like to gently

Your Chance to Blast!

Boot Camp is running an August Blast. (FREE)

This involves "EXTREME" activity to get us through the hardest month for writers.

It involves members (and guests) committing/attempting to write EVERY day (at least SOMETHING)
and attempting to complete a flash or story or poem EVERY day for the whole of August.

A set of prompts will be posted every morning and twice every evening (see explanations elsewhere)
and Members/Guests should try and produce a flash or story a MINIMUM of once a day.<

The trick is to try to write THREE!

For the five Sundays there is also a STORY deadline 8PM Sunday.

The ideal participant would write a flash every day, some days more than one, AND manage a story each week

PLEASE don't bleat and say it cannot be done. We KNOW it can be done. We know that the quality of work
IMPROVES due to the pressure, the hectic nature, the "buzz".

Boot Campers and guests (Children in Need, Previous Blasts, East of the Web) have been responsible for hundreds
of publications and more than twenty first prizes in competitions, all from "impossible" blasts.

There is something in the very nature of suspending all and crashing forward, a sense of fear moves to one of liberation

ALL WE CAN SAY IS TRY IT.

CURRENT BOOT CAMPERS, FORMER BOOT CAMPERS AND STRANGERS/GUESTS ARE ALL WELCOME. There are a number of "AUGUST BLAST" forums. Apply here (no charge) and Alex will arrange access to the other forums.

We ask a few things

1. Commitment. If you aren't prepared to "give it a go" don't bother applying.

2. A sense of constructivity, in work, commitment, mutual motivation.

3. A willingness to (briefly) critique flashes and critique stories (authors are anonymous) and NOT to respond when your own story is critiqued 4. NO Flames. I do not warn people. I simply delete them, IMMEDIATELY.

All the January Hits..

Here is January as a snapshot

11 Hits, THREE first prizes, two seconds and a third

$972


001 0,000 Dan in Print at Ascent Aspirations, US Mag with "Once in a Bloodless land"

002 0,001 Tom earns $1 for a poem in on-line mag http://www.geocities.com/theshantytownanomaly

003 0,100 Nancy wins $100 C-i-N Anthology with "Smollensky"

004 0,000 Cally Second in C-i-N Anthology with "The Creature Between Us"

005 0,600 Jason Jackson wins $600 First Prize at Writers Forum with "Final Knockings"

006 0,020 TomC gets twenty bucks from "Big Pulp" for "Skin Like Shining Armour"

007 0,000 Cally gets into print mag Aesthetica with "Waiting For Julia"

2008-008 Tom C places a poem at the shantytownanolmaly and earns $1

2008-009 Claire places a CIN poem at ezine "Apt"

2008-010 Another CIN hit, this time Rupert places "The Sparrow" at Southern Ocean Review

2008-011 Jason Jackson $50 3rd place at JBWB Short Story Comp

2008-012 Caroline wins $200 First Prize at JBWB (Poetry)

More Hits, Another First Prize $972

January finishes with a flourish...


2008-008 Tom C places a poem at the shantytownanolmaly and earns $1
2008-009 Claire places a CIN poem at ezine "Apt"
2008-010 Another CIN hit, this time Rupert places "The Sparrow" at Southern Ocean Review
2008-011 Jason Jackson $50 3rd place at JBWB Short Story Comp
2008-012 Caroline wins $200 First Prize at JBWB (Poetry)

Stats Update 2 2008 HITS $721

001 0,000 Dan in Print at Ascent Aspirations, US Mag with "Once in a Bloodless land"

002 0,001 Tom earns $1 for a poem in on-line mag http://www.geocities.com/theshantytownanomaly

003 0,100 Nancy wins $100 C-i-N Anthology with "Smollensky"

004 0,000 Cally Second in C-i-N Anthology with "The Creature Between Us"

005 0,600 Jason Jackson wins $600 First Prize at Writers Forum with "Final Knockings"

006 0,020 TomC gets twenty bucks from "Big Pulp" for "Skin Like Shining Armour"

007 0,000 Caly gets into print mag Aesthetica with "Waiting For Julia"



999 0,721 Dollars


Further NOTES (Small Hits)

CIN Anthology

Though many of the entrants are in-house BCers, there were still many stories to beat and a third of the entrants were not current BCers.

There is just the first prize to award (Nancy Saunders) but the awards would be 1-2-3 with only one prize per person

1 Nancy Saunders
2 Cally Taylor
3 Jonathan Pinnock (non-BC)

IMO the others are WORTH hits, but we should call them notes.

16 Smollensky - Nancy Saunders
07 There is Only One Story - Nancy Saunders
06 Creature Between Us - Cally Taylor
04 Dog Maths - Jonathan Pinnock
04 3-Headed Penis - Dan Malach
03 Click-Sparrow - Cally Taylor
03 8 out of 10 Cats - Antony Davies (non-BC but ex-BC)
03 Fig(ht) - Dave Prescott (non-BC, but ex-BC)
02 Sword in Garden - Nancy Saunders
02 Ignorance of Men - Tom Conoboy
01 Big George - Colin Upton
01 Grab Attention - Jonathan Pinnock (non-BC)
01 Heavy Boots - Jonathan Pinnock (non-BC)
01 Walking by the Beach - Tom Conoboy


Caroline has had two acceptances for poems at ????? which she prefers to recod as notes and not full hits

Stats Update 2008 Publications $1,020

2008


001 Eclectica: Alex, "Blinking at the Sun"
002 Eclectica: Cally "xxxx" ($100) First Prize
003 Eclectica: Colin, "xxxx" ($50) 2nd prize
004 Eclectica: Alex, "Cull"
005 Momaya Anthology: Cally, "C is for Cuckoo"
006 Momaya Anthology: Alex, "The Quarry." ($270)
007 Smokebox: Chrissie, "Bling"
008 Smokebox: Joel, "The Name"
009 Smokebox: Cedric, "Shape Shifting"
010 Leaf Books Anthology: Jenny Jackson, "Jared Williams Again"
011 Writers Forum $600 First Prize Jason Jackson Story

Update

172 Hits

$6,666


666, see what they say about Keegan is true...

More Competition Prizes

After thirteen hits posted yesterday, more good news!!


Joel wins $100 Third Place at WriteSpace

Cally gets $30 as a runner-up

Chrissie places a story at Doodledog

Which Takes Us To...

169 Hits

$6,536

13 Boot Camp Hits: $322

1 Jason picks up Third Place ($200) ad in the H E Bates Short-Story Competition (Print)

2 Joel gets Highly recommended in the H E Bates Short-Story Comp, also (Print)

3 Jason Jackson was shortlisted at Guildford

4 TomC is accepted for "Chaos Theory" ($10)

5 Cally earns $50 and a nice Oz publication in "Etchings" (Print)

6 Rupert gets into Diddledog

7 Christina has a flash accepted for Smokebox

8 Louise Cypher gets $20 and a pub in "Murky Depths" print mag

9 Jason Jackson earns $30 with a story at Espresso Fiction

10 Matt gets a story into January's "Transmission" (Print)

11 Tom gets a story into "Fly in Amber" ($10)

12 Tom has a story in "Balderdash" and earns a whole $2

13 Rupert has a story accepted for print-mag "Four Volts"

11 Joel gets highly recommended at JBWB

Saturday 04:00 Prompts

A beautiful building, an ugly one
A billion, more or less
A brave and rare man, Hungarian
A furious woman
A garden, a slum
A soldier boy, dark, and tall. He is marked with a target
Blodwen is pregnant
Does that explain it?
Double your money
Dreams must remain damp to lessen shrinkage
Driving West through Wales
Everyone prefers good looks to ugliness
Has anyone seen my sky?
He spent seven years in solitary, dreaming of fires
I am considering eating your budgie
I bitterly resented the way men grabbed me
I can, thenk God, walk forever
I cannot run more than a few yards
I have what every poet hates
I ought to be happy
I place my hope upon the water. It sinks
I think I had no self-consciousness
I took my looks for granted
Irish carpentry, American kindness
Lamplight, yellow windows, light bleeding
Love is liquid
May I borrow your gun? I have my own bullets
My body is wearing out
My friends started dying when I was quite young.
My immortal soul
Neither here nor there, and almost arriving
Now it strikes me as a huge joke
Outside yellow corn, yellow, yellow, yellow
Popcorn
Somehow made tolerable
Something is broken
Stone, harsh wind
The body, face, brain are all oneself
The dogs will stop me writing
The meteor is coming. It fills the sky
The street was lined with fish
The wife is twenty years younger
The world is emptier
War and the pity of war
What the hell did they mean wanting my body?
Whenever I phone, the answers come first
Where can I go to escape the smell?
Will there also be singing?
You decided to come in the back way
You know the people there.
You think of looks always in relation to sex. I don't.
You went out to buy cigarettes. I killed myself quickly then hid
You will know who they are by their absence
You wrote that a friend had died

Thursday prompts

This version of the story is in English. In Milan.

Sadness, that's normal, it goes with the territory.

Squinting against the late-afternoon sun as it cut through the birch trees
In the afternoons before the holidays Trish had started frequenting a restaurant a few blocks west of the apartment.

I loved a girl once. Every story starts that way, right?

There she goes. Who? That girl. What girl? You know. What's-her-name.

Florence Melnick went to the library every day.

They're married, but not to each other.

On the way home from hospital, Ava tells Charlotte that after her first husband was killed during a German air attack on Bari in 1943, she cried without pause for weeks, only to emerge from her stunning grief temporarily blind.

Once upon a time two men lived down the bottom of a nuclear missile silo.

Years before my sister Allie became the champion you know and love – winner of the International Matzo-Eating Contest, title-holder of the Conch Fritter Invitational, the girl who down nine sticks of butter in five minutes – she binged her way through a dinner dare that became her finest hour (and my longest).

Dolly's first big idea was the hat.

When I started out volunteering on Monday nights at New Day House, it was just me, Karen, and a rotating cast of eight or ten kids who, with their sticky marker-covered hands and mysteriously damp clothes, would greet us by lunging into our arms and leading us into the basement playroom.

From Wanda Farrelly-Johnson. Are we God's Children of Ham? And other Dilemmas of Black Historical Research (Pilot, N.C.: Lizard Ladies Press, 1983):

Tommy's cousin Gabe. Tommy's distant cousin Gabe from Stillwater, Minnesota. Tommy's cousin Gabe, related to my husband through divorce and remarriage, in lieu of actual blood, who arrives on my front porch at dinnertime with a duffel bag and fanny-pack. Industrial-sized.

Dear Doctor X, if I may call you that. Perhaps I should introduce myself.

I met Adam at the bookstore. He was in the section marked Biography/History.

You thought everybody in America had a car and a gun, your uncles and aunts thought so too.