Wednesday is the day I get two prompts: the photo for Friday Fictioneers and the roll of the Rory’s Story Cubes, which I’ve been using for the Spy Flash stories. The inspiration for Friday Fictioneers usually comes pretty quickly, and I have it at least drafted by Thursday so I can let it rest for a day then refine it before putting the story on my blog then posting the link on Friday on Madison Woods’ page.

It’s Spy Flash that’s been giving me some trouble lately, and quite often I’ve posted the Spy Flash story for the previous week a few hours before the next week’s prompt shows up. Meh, what’s a week, you say? Skip one and let it go.

Yes, I could do that, but that would defeat the purpose of writing more, so I’ve kept at it, sometimes giving a Spy Flash story two or three false starts before I had something I was pleased with. And, yes, that’s part of the writing process as well.

So, today was a big surprise. The Friday Fictioneers’ story came to be within moments of seeing the picture–not such a surprise–but so did the Spy Flash idea. Maybe the “reboot” I blogged about a couple of weeks ago finally kicked in. It was another “write like a fool” day–two stories and a blog post (for Politics Wednesday, my political blog). Yay, me!

Here’s this week’s roll of the cubes:

And here’s what I saw: l. to r. – keyhole; bee/sting; digging/filling a hole; listening/hearing; globe/world/earth; reading; tent/teepee; counting money; light bulb/idea.

This week’s story is “Footsteps” and harkens back to how Mai Fisher decided to become a spy. True to the profession, she got blackmailed into it.

If you’d like to give the Rory’s Story Cubes challenge a try, write a story of any length based on the objects and actions in the photo above; then, post a link to your story on Jennie Coughlin’s blog.

If you don’t see the link on the title, “Footsteps,” above, then click on the Spy Flash tab at the top of the page and select the story from the drop-down menu.