FLASH FICTION FRIDAYS

DOORKNOBS & BODYPAINT ARCHIVES

GUIDES & PROMPTS

from issue 62 Work

The work issue is often very personal.  This issue, however, takes work beyond your narrator’s experience and focuses on other people’s work.  Whether it’s watching a small child choose between fireman or baker; whether it’s someone in a mid-life crisis choosing to continue in a profession or start something new; whether it’s an end of life decision of how best to finish one’s life and work, you choose, and then, write your story within the limits of our contest guidelines. 

In the last paragraph of James Baldwin’s short story, “Sunny’s Blues,” the narrator watches his brother, Sonny, take the stage and begin to play.  While watching him and listening to his music, the narrator gains a profound understanding of his brother.  An understanding, which wipes away all of the hurt and pain each one has caused the other.  The narrator writes:

Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say, amen.  Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others.  And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his.  It was very beautiful because it wasn't hurried and it was no longer a lament.  I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting.

Write a story in 450 words or less about watching someone work and how your narrator gains a new awareness of that person.  Then, post it in comments or send it to Cairo Room at doorknobsandbodypaint@gmail.com

FLASH FICTION FRIDAYS

Doorknobs & BodyPaint Archives

Guides & Prompts

from Issue 71--Noir

Noir.  A private eye, a plainclothes policeman, an aging boxer, a hapless grafter, a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime. So, it’s a man’s story, then. Only a part, the woman are beautiful, mysterious, and always have a hidden agenda.  And, someone, man or women, is always looking for the big payoff.  Someone is always played for the sucker.  And, under it all the power of desire moves the story closer to the edge.

Tears In Rain is the final monologue of the replicant Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, in the movie Blade Runner. In his last scene, the dying Roy introspectively speaks during a rain downpour, moments before his death:

I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain. Time... to die...

In 450 words or less, write a story in the first person about dying.

Write a story and post it in comments or send it to the Cairo Room at doorknobsandbodypaint@gmail.com

PANDEMONIUM PRESS PRESENTS HOT! NEW BOOKS! AT SPICE MONKEY

PANDEMONIUM PRESS PRESENTSHOT! NEW BOOKS!AT SPICE MONKEY

March 4, Pandemonium Press Presents HOT! NEW BOOKS! 

Mary Mackey reads from Travelers With No Ticket Home; 

Indigo Moor reads from Through the Stonecutter's Window; 

Jon Sindell reads from The Roadkill Collection; 

Wayne Goodman reads from The Last Great Hope.  

A half hour open mic precedes and follows the featured readers. The series is on the first Wednesday of each month in The Loft at Spice Monkey, 1628 Webster Street, Oakland, free, 6:45-9:00 (pandemoniumpress@gmail.com)

FLASH FICTION FRIDAYS

DOORKNOBS & BODYPAINT ARCHIEVES

GUIDES AND PROMPTS
from Issue 58--work

Work.  It does or it doesn’t.  We do or we don’t.  Work that is.  Some of us do it without thinking, a bit like working in the dark.  Some of us never stop thinking about it, 24/7.  It consumes us.  We never stop talking about it.  We are always engaged in some form of it.  

DOORKNOBS

1. Maximum length: 250 words.

2. The sub-theme is: exertion.

3. The year is:  1989.

4. Within the story, you must use this text:  one’s place. 

Write a story and post it in comments or send it to the Cairo Room at doorknobsandbodypaint@gmail.ocm

PANDEMONIUM PRESS PRESENTS HOT! NEW BOOKS!

MARCH 4, 6:45 PM, IN THE LOFT AT SPICE MONKEY

Meet these fine writers and hear them read from their new work Wednesday, March 4
in the Loft at Spice Monkey.
Mary Mackey, Indigo Moor, Jon Sindell, and Wayne Goodman.

Book table and signing.
Free drawing for 3 items during the reading. Great food from Spice Monkey.


1628 1628 Webster St., Oakland, Ca.  6:45-9:00 pm..