Tag: Writing

Banana Spam Nuttiness

Posted on Posted in Humour, WritingTagged , , , , 43 Comments

Spam is becoming really  funny these days. Not funny  that it exists of course, but the lengths they go with it. In my early days of blogging I didn’t get the spam protection thing, why would anyone want to send spam my  way? I would get the odd few spam comments, but not take any notice or even delete them, they just sat there. Then I read how some peoples comments ended up in the spam box for no reason, so I started to check and delete it all. The volume has gradually increased, I wonder why? Is it because I have lots of followers  now? What do they hope to gain?

Here is some recent stuff, have any of you received similar ones?                                               Spam comments on my post ‘pets’

My brother suggested I might like this website. He was totally right. This post actually made my day. You can not imagine just how much time I had spent for this information! Thanks! 

Very nice info and straight to the point. I don’t know if this is really the best place to ask but do you folks have any thoughts on where to get some professional writers? Thank you.

Received from ‘healthy banana nut muffins’

Comments on ‘Sunrise’

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You are a very smart individual!  Comment by ‘ banana nut muffins recipe’

I was recommended this web site by my cousin. I’m not sure whether this post is written by him as no one else know such detailed about my problem. You are incredible! Thanks!  By a name that is unmentionable!

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Keep functioning , fantastic job! bananas again.

I’ll do my best to keep functioning! All the banana people are from different IP addresses, seriously weird. My blog isn’t about food, I’ve posted one recipe here and that was way back, so why the muffins? So far banana muffins account for around 20 comments. What type of spam do you get? Please tell! I’m off for a daily delete now.

100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups Week# 44

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, Poetry, WritingTagged , , , , , , 24 Comments

Once again it’s time for the 100 word challenge and this weeks theme is the passing of time – sixty years to be precise and a poem! If you would like to join in pop over to http://jfb57.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/100-word-challenge-for-grown-ups-week44/

Stash Sixty

Sixty a time for six diamonds

uncut but too late for us

diamonds for a daughter

and a daughters daughter

celebrating sixty years

that have passed

Daughter may travel

on her diamonds and back

before we become dust

sixty a time for six diamonds

uncut but too late for us

Daughter’s daughter may plant

roots with her diamonds

a home across town from us

Daughter’s daughter will you

raise an empire

founded on a name

and legacy

of sixty years to trust

Sixty was a time for six diamonds

too late for them

but a future for daughters and sons

100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups Week# 43

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, short story, WritingTagged , , , 37 Comments

Pop over to Julia’s if you would like to try the weekly 100 word challenge http://jfb57.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/100-word-challenge-for-grown-ups-week43/

The prompt this week is ‘The flame flickered before . . .’ and here are my 100 words,

A Cautionary Tale

‘The Flame Flickered Before Her Eyes and Other Stories’ by Randy Walton, ‘What? That’s weird Sal, look. I’m going in.’

‘It’s just a coincidence honey.’

‘But it looks like my photo as well.’

The bell above the door made the shopkeeper briefly raise his head from his own reading, then he tutted when Margi stood over him.

‘This book, it’s self published right?’

‘Yeah and it’s very successful, been at the top of the short fiction charts for weeks. Everyone’s reading short stuff these days.’

Margi turned to the contents page. Twelve short stories. Her short stories, all of them.

#Friday Fictioneers

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, short story, WritingTagged , , , 23 Comments

I know it isn’t Friday now, I’ve been away so I’m late.

But, Madison’s  http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/photo-prompt-for-100-word-flash-fridayfictioneers-30/  photo kept popping into my head so I wrote this.

Going home is copacetic but the journey from my daughter lacks the joy of the one towards. In the bus someone plays a line from the carnival is over on a tinny echoing phone.

I recline and check the double deck view, a twin chakra of rainbows, moments from the M27 with its pylons and industrial units, on a bench that feels like bone on bone to my spine. Hawthorn next and cemetery birds in a corridor called Wellow.

Disgorge at Salisbury, grateful for a wait uninterrupted by a questioning Mancunian, grasping for minutiae from a trapped, hungover, hen party goer.

Puffins, Lottery Tickets and the Crazy Polish Woman

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, Humour, WritingTagged , , , , 11 Comments

Lucid Gypsy and the Crazy Polish Woman went for a lunchtime stroll and as usual we tried to put the world to rights, quite a task in half an hour and we soon got bored with trying! We moved on to the lottery, her desire to win, combined with the impossibility of that, when she doesn’t buy a ticket. She has bought a little globe and wants to go to as many places as possible in the world. Nothing unusual about that is there? Except that when she wins, she will spend the first £5000 visiting Iceland. Again not particularly unusual, I wouldn’t mind myself as long as it was in midsummer. She has a mission though. Puffins. She loves them, and has come across a fact that I for one did not know.

So she wants to travel to Iceland to warn them to leave. Ideally she will speak to each of them individually. Of course we debated whether these conversations should be carried out in English, Polish or Squawk (something she does when she gets excited, angry or just plain Crazy). It has to be Squawk, I don’t think there are many Puffins in Poland – but will be happy to be proved wrong – and they tend to avoid people in England, choosing instead to hang around on Lundy or the Scilly’s.

Aside from getting close enough in Iceland to have a conversation with them, of course there is the problem of recognising which ones you have warned already. Unless you are a Puffin they all look pretty much the same. So if they aren’t prepared to leave immediately, then some sort of label would be needed. Perhaps the ones that CPW has enlightened can be persuaded to spread the word in Puffin speak, and then she may be able to see some geysers and glaciers, in the day long day with the left over money.

She really is very worried about them and a world without Puffins would of course be terrible. If you are a follower of some of the celebrity chefs, you may already know what her fears are. If not, well please stop reading if you are of a sensitive disposition. You see it’s because they are eaten. Icelanders consider raw Puffin heart to be a delicacy.

I am going to buy CPW a lottery ticket.

One Year and Twenty Five Thousand for Lucid Gypsy

Posted on Posted in WritingTagged , , , , 40 Comments

A year ago today I very tentatively started a blog and Lucid Gypsy was born. I had no idea where we were taking each other and if anyone would visit, just a vague plan to write travel and short fiction. It was a very slow start; I had to learn the techy stuff and kept it very simple for the first few days. Then I kind of worked out how to post photos and published Nest of Primates my first travel piece, which I still think is one of my best posts, but hasn’t had that many reads. (Interestingly, I’ve wondered for ages how to change the words on a link and have finally done it – WordPress has forced me to learn!) I posted five times last May and then disappeared for a while to Turkey, returning with a head stuffed with stories and a couple thousand photos.

I was stumbling though with no clue what to write or how to be seen. A turning point came when I discovered the Weekly Photo Challenge and was able to indulge my other passion, photography. Finding out how to tag and categorise well, made all the difference and eventually in November I had more than a thousand views. You may wonder why it took me so long; instructions are there to be read of course. Trouble is I can’t do instructions books for anything. I try to read how, but don’t get it and have to muddle my way through.

Slowly a following came and I began to meet some interesting people around the world. Does anyone remember having a pen friend as a child? Usually one foisted on you by school? Well the blogosphere is like having hundreds of pen friends, a fascinating way of learning about other cultures, and seeing photos of places taken by real people in everyday places as well as the grand tourist destinations.

Being a Gemini and a writer I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and each time I look at someone’s blog I am transported to another person’s world, be it in the next county or a garden in the southern hemisphere. Lovely people I can’t thank you enough for your support, inspiration, laughter and tears.

At some point in the remaining four hours of today one of my five hundred plus followers will become the twenty five thousandth hit on Lucid Gypsy, how amazing that I should reach that number today!

Thank you so much.

100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups Week #42

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, WritingTagged , , , , , 33 Comments

This week’s 100 word challenge over at Julia’s http://jfb57.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/100-word-challenge-for-grown-ups-week-42/

has five words for the prompt. They are LIBERTY, APPLE, YELLOW, ENORMOUS AND EMPIRE. I’m told my attempt is too cryptic this time so you may not get it 😦

Speed Date

It took me all night to make this. I’m so out of practice, haven’t cut a pattern for years. Enormous amount of fabric, Liberty print the length of the hall. Thank goodness it’s bright yellow; you can’t really see where I spilt the apple juice.

Hooray for chicken fillets, I’ve always wanted to wear an Empire line dress. A bonnet would be too much, but my hair’s up. I feel like a bride, perhaps that’s a good omen.

Speed dating with an Austen theme, only in Winchester eh? Is this the right room?

Oh my God.

Austen.

Powers.

Not Jane.

# Friday Fictioneers – Lunacy

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, short story, WritingTagged , , , 52 Comments

This is my first Friday Fictioneers 100 word post. The photo below is the prompt for this week.

moon

Here is the link if you would like to join in. http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/photo-prompt-for-100-word-flash-fridayfictioneers-29/ and my story.

Lunacy

‘Daughter, at last it is favourable. Yesterday’s rains have made the earth soft, and moist. Now, the moon is shining her benevolence.’

‘This is a good time mummy? What makes it so?’

‘She is waning and her energy draws into the soil, she makes roots grow strong, it is time to sow our yam seed.’ They bent to dig and plant the seed together.

‘Wife what is this crazy woman talk you put in the child’s head? Plants need sun and water, not this lunacy. Tell me when you’ve finished and I will slaughter the goat and sprinkle its blood.’

100 Word Challenge Week # 41

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, Photography, WritingTagged , , , , , , 41 Comments

Julia at http://jfb57.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/100-word-challenge-for-grown-ups-week41/ has created a new challenge for this week. The prompt is a photo and the words ‘A pile of bones’.

This is my response.

A Rainbow of Wings

Grandfather’s shell reached the cliff of passing

 each pressed mahogany hands to their heart.

A fleece bag at his waist

 they filled with gold.

‘Grandfather, descend the chasm

  rejoin the earth of our fathers.

Ancient ones, welcome the flesh of your son.

Take his earthly remains

 and breathe his soul

into the child that waits.’

 

The old being fell, shattered, into the abyss

 where a haunting of vultures

created a  pile of bones

dotted with precious element.

A rainbow of wings rose to sing

welcome to the new life,

as the spirit heralded the grandchild

flourishing forth with first breath.

A Sequel to Short Listing

Posted on Posted in Creative writing, flash fiction, short story, WritingTagged , , , , , , , 28 Comments

This is the logo for Flash Fiction South West and I am proud and excited to be part of the very first published anthology, Kissing Frankenstein and Other Stories. Not only is it a first for FFSW, it’s a first for me! My very first time  in print.

I know that lots of you are published writers, do you remember the feeling you had when you first held a book with your name inside? I’ve been bouncing for twenty four hours now!

May 16th is National flash Fiction Day, perhaps you will be inspired to write something on that day. If not, check out the talent that the West Country has to offer,

http://flashfictionsw.co.uk/ and it’s even better to run your hands over the sleek cover and inhale the fresh, gorgeousness of new book.