A good writing week. Well, any time I’m writing, it’s good. There’s one exception, though. I wanted to enter a contest whose deadline is May 17. The story can be up to 8,000 words, which, after all my flash fiction writing, seems like an enormous amount. I’m trying to adapt a chapter from one of my novels, but it’s not quite working out; however, I’ll keep at it until the deadline and make a decision then.

Tonight is the fifth anniversary of Charlottesville, VA’s WriterHouse, where you can find a quiet place to write and some excellent writing and publishing workshops. At tonight’s party, there will be a contest: You had to submit a 500-word story based on the theme “emerald.” (Emerald is the fifth anniversary gem stone and Pantone’s color of the year for 2013.) So, I’ll be there tonight for the live judging of my story, one of thirteen. An actor will read each story to the assembled masses, and then we vote. Fingers crossed they’ll like my little fantasy tale, “Marakata.”

A great photo today by Friday Fictioneer Ted Strutz brought back memories of various pick-up lines tried on me in bars. I remember one alleged Navy pilot who tried the “there-I-was-at-10,000-feet-with-MiGs-on-my-tail” approach, who then slid away after I questioned his aviation knowledge–he didn’t know I was a pilot. It was obvious he wasn’t after just a few sentences. Ah, good times.

For some reason Ted’s photo brought out the hopeless romantic in me and resulted in “If at First You Don’t Succeed…” Light and airy and very different from what I usually do, which is dark and dense, so I’ll need to go write some mayhem to restore the balance in the universe.

As usual, if you can’t see the link on the title above, scroll to the top of the page and click on the Friday Fictioneers tab. Then, you can select the story from the drop-down list.