Pleading Mercy for my absence

 Apologies, but mind-space as much as time ran out last week; I did make progress with ‘Mercy for a Friday Child’, having had good advice and encouragement from writing friends and didn’t want to waste the inspiration. So thank you to those who did contribute, and to Holly in particular for her intriguing ‘Salacity [23] which left a lot of space for imagination to roam. 

Words for the coming week:  burn quicksand  result 

Entries by midnight Thursday 7th July, new words posted Friday 8th  July 

Usual rules: 100 words maximum (excluding title) of flash fiction or poetry using all three words above in the genres of horror, fantasy, science fiction or noir. Serialised fiction is, as always, welcome. All variants and uses of the words and stems are fine. Feel free to post links to your stories on Twitter or Facebook or whichever.

Problems ☹ ☹ ☹

Firstly, apologies for my lack of posts this week -- a week without time spent on 'Mercy', my current wip, left  me desperate to pick it up again and note down the random ideas I had while away (and I'm not done yet!) A good time had, though, weather kind and I re-established my liking for mussels, scallops and whisky.

Jim's struggles to post fill me with despair as I have no remedy to suggest. There seems to be some blame levelled at Google, who apparently recently took over Blogger, but the lack of logic – why do comments stick but not posts? – defeats me. If the problem persists all I can do is ask if someone else has the know-how to set up a site with similar functions.

What MIGHT be a solution - the site might be full. I propose going to the archives and attempting to delete some of the 472 posts, starting from December 2013, trusting you have all saved what you'd like to keep

What was easier this week was the picking of a winner - I was enchanted by Antonia's incorporation of Charon in her untitled piece, but much enjoyed all other entries.

 Words for the coming week (fingers crossed all may play) decide lace tide

Entries by midnight Thursday  19th May, new words posted Friday  20th

 Usual rules: 100 words maximum (excluding title) of flash fiction or poetry using all three words above in the genres of horror, fantasy, science fiction or noir. Serialised fiction is, as always, welcome. All variants and uses of the words and stems are fine. Feel free to post links to your stories on Twitter or Facebook or whichever.

A wealth of entertainments

 As Antonia so rightly says, each of us brings here, every week, well-worded stories to meet whatever triple-worded prompt I throw at you (this week courtesy of a Seamus Heaney poem). More often than not there are two or three which have a marginally greater impact than some of the others. Often others' comments open my mind to other interpretations, And sometimes, as I have said, it's nigh on impossible to separate them and is a source of some embarrassment that in choosing one, it might appear the rest are rejected.  (Even though I know we're all grown(-ish) up enough not to be too hurt.)

This week the choice is exceptionally difficult.  All are outstandingly, magically written. Jim's, without doubt, is the most horrifying; the final line of John's 'A hunting we will go' would've propelled it to top spot, but in the end (and I've re-written this three times) I'm picking Perry's 'Port in a storm'. 

New words for the coming week are:  pilgrim  plait  roadblock 

Entries by midnight Thursday 4th February, new words posted Friday 5th 

Usual rules: 100 words maximum (excluding title) of flash fiction or poetry using all three words above in the genres of horror, fantasy, science fiction or noir. Serialised fiction is, as always, welcome. All variants and uses of the words and stems are fine. Feel free to post links to your stories on Twitter or Facebook or whichever.