Look, I'm Back!

Busy times are busy, but I try to leverage everything that is demanded of me, by myself and others. During the few sparse, awake and creative moments I had last week, I contemplated a bit more Nadiya's life and decided to give her a partner.
Now that I come to think about that, I get the feeling that my flashes are all a bit too heterosexual... I hope nobody gets offended by that! The specific experiment in Fifteen needed to be heterosexual though, since it's also about the good old way of producing offspring.

Prompt fifteen was

""Fear not," he said, in a voice as soft as silk"

which I liked for the topic I chose, but found difficult to include anyway. Having that as the first sentence of a conversation and then a "he" saying it is quite unusual.

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• Fifteen

Help Wanted

Writers, do you know this? You have the outline of a story in your mind, but when you start writing one of the characters comes out the opposite from what you planned, changing the whole story. You try to go with it, but when it's done you hate the outcome. What do you do then?

That's exactly what happened to me with Twelve. I started to write and suddenly the interviewer was an absolute bitch, changing the whole script! I needed some days away from it all to be able to start again. So much time gone to waste! To make matters worse, I've caught a nice, dizzying cold and can't really judge the quality of my writing just now. That's where you come in! Please, if you have some time to spare, go read Twelve and send me your feedback.

By the way, the prompt was

"for there's no sense in believing what's right unless it leads to helping people in distress"

so I can't change that specific sentence. How did I implement it into the story? 

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• Twelve

Angels Again!

"many people are terribly frightened when they see one of the angels of the Lord"

After all, The Christmas Mystery is a book based on religion. What can one do?
Exactly, get back to Arthur and ask him to make another appearance. I think he rather liked his role, to tell the truth. I hope it won't go to his head!

Otherwise, there's not much to tell. Nadiya will be back with the next post with more news.
I hope you remembered Anne! But can you guess who Nadiya's mother is as well?

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• Eleven

Moving Into the Future

This, again, took some time. It was a very busy weekend, and even though I started writing Ten at a museum in Hanover, Germany, while listening to children having fun, it took quite some time to complete (and start the next Flash before uploading this one, of course).
Here's the prompt:

"a few seconds later what Elisabet had thought was a bird took off and flew down in a spiral towards the pilgrims"

Now you know why I needed a girl called Elisabet. :-) Since she is the daughter of Lucy and Dan, who are more or less my generation, we now notice for the first time that we have moved a bit into the future. Of course, other Flashes have been farther still, but they didn't feature innovations like a tunnel that can depict an abandoned road or be transparent as glass (not to mention the perfect sound insulation and the bird camera).
I tried to weave the word "pilgrims" in as naturally as possible. How successful was I?

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• Ten

The Thing With Inspiration

Today I'd like to tell you a bit about my usual writing schedule.
Thanks to Hugo I am now able to write not only at home and at work (I like Google Docs), but also on the go, which is a big plus! Almost all of Nine was written on Hugo on my way home two days ago. Wow. :-)
When I get to a new prompt, I try to first make up my mind what the story should be. The first draft happens almost only in my head, except for some key notes to make sure I won't forget anything in case of a distraction. Then I write the story down for the first time, and, when it's finished, move on to the next prompt. This way, I can get some distance to my writing, which helps with the editing later, and it also ensures that the next post is on the way when I post something. After the notes and maybe the beginning of the next story are written down, I return to the last one, read it over a few times, edit and post. Repeat.
(Sometimes, though, like today, I don't have much on the next one before I post. Today, this is because I won't be home this weekend and wanted to get this posted before.)

Now, why am I telling you this?
Here's why: after finishing the first written version of Eight, I told an old friend that it was finished. He asked if it was erotic, which made me laugh, having Elisabet's baptism in mind. But then I moved on to the next prompt

"they had broken a solemn promise"

and even before I had time to think it through, the erotic story had settled down in my mind and wouldn't budge. Blame him if you don't like it. ;-)

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• Nine

Another Point of View

"part of the glory of heaven that has strayed down to earth"

Isn't this a nice description for a newborn human? How long did it take you to understand what was going on with Elisabet?

This prompt gave me the chance to introduce Elisabet ahead of time, since her name is part of prompt number ten. She is the daughter of Lucy and Dan, or rather, the daughter of Lucy and an unknown stranger. Being blond, Lucy grew up with the goal of saving her natural hair colour from extinction by having blond children. Dan, being more on the dark side and almost her exact opposite, didn't fit the concept, but lucky for her fathering children proved a biological difficulty for him. He agreed to the in vitro fertilisation and even let Lucy select the father. In turn, naming the baby would be his call.
Now, Dan might not be very fond of reading books in general, but Lucy changed him somewhat. His favourite book, probably for its strangeness and easy of reading, turned out to be "The Christmas Mystery". When he knew that a blond girl was on the way, there was no doubt about what her name should be. Lucy wasn't very happy with this, and tried once to at least adjust the spelling to a more common version, but Dan wouldn't budge. In the end, bound by the promise she had give him, Lucy had to surrender and get used to the name.

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• Eight

Of Heaven and Lost Memories

Gah, I am so very late again! My sincerest apologies! Distractions are everywhere, in so many forms. One of them will - hopefully - be posted here later today. ;-)
First, though, is the seventh prompt:

"in heaven we've always considered this to be a slight exaggeration"

Can you see the problems I had with this?
I mean, heaven. It's such a specific term! Is there any way that "we in heaven" could be other creatures than angels? I tried to work around that, since angels don't really fit my concept, but in the end I gave in and created Arthur inside the dream world.
My next problem was the exaggeration. What could it be? Well, once I had come to terms with the angel and real heaven thing, it wasn't so difficult. Himalaya was already part of the story and could easily be used as stairway to heaven...
Then I was stuck, though. I had promised that all the 24 Flashes would be independent, but thinking of heaven and angels and Himalaya, I couldn't help thinking of Five and the poor, confused Brian. It also seemed that Five was harder to understand than I thought, which made a sequel all the more appealing. So there you have it, I hope you don't mind.
Is it clearer now?

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• Five
• Seven

Love, Anyone?

Happy New Year, guys and girls!

I am so distracted right now, and have been for some days! I don't know how I can keep up with writing in this state! Nevertheless, I managed to write another one, for a very interesting prompt.

"a camel can move from place to place as well, a bit like the castles on a chessboard"

It's something one of the three Magi says when they are discussing towers (which tend not to move) and watching the stars. I kept quite close to the meaning this time, since I couldn't find any other way to fit a camel on a chessboard into the world in my head.

The style is inspired by Sir Terry Pratchett, at least partly. I like the way he talks directly to the reader sometimes, and I like to experiment with writing styles. It got a bit geeky as well...
I hope you liked it!

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• Six

A Trip to the Future

"it's a very unusual way of travelling"

Another prompt referencing the time travel in The Christmas Mystery. Honestly, I think these are the worst! It took me hours and lots of really stupid ideas until I came up with a - very imperfect - idea of an unusual way of travelling: through a kind of surveillance picture/portal in the guard's cave. If you don't like it, believe me, it could have been a lot worse.

So, who do you think those two are? I think it's pretty obvious, but then, I currently live with these characters in my head and know them better than you do (or at least I hope so).

By the way, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

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• Five

A Cold Wind is Blowing...

First things first: Yes, I took the name from Harry Potter. Sue me. :-P

When I first thought of this project I assumed the greatest difficulty would be to connect all 24 posts in some way or another. Now that I've arrived at prompt number four I notice that the real difficulty is to keep them separate. The first thing I think when I look up the next sentence is: to which character would this fit best? Not: which plot best supports this sentence?

I have to drag my mind away from what I already know, try to clear it completely and approach the prompt with no background screaming to be integrated. It's already starting to drive me insane, but then, it's a great test for my perseverance and capabilities which I intend to pass.

"he scarcely had time to look surprised"

could be anything, really. After some internal arguments I managed to use it to introduce Norbert and the concept of the guard dragons for the world where strong dreams come alive in.

Did any of you already guess who his successor will be?

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• Four

Love is...

Sorry for the long break! With the holidays almost upon us it gets a bit harder to focus. Plus, telling the story from inside Lucy's mind was hard and prompt number three was a difficult one.

"like running before the wind - or like hurtling down a moving staircase"

What do you think this could be?
The obvious, when you know The Christmas Mystery, is of course their way of travelling from Norway to Bethlehem while going backwards in time. But my blog shouldn't be this close to the book...

In the end I went for love. Love can be a lot of things, and love at first sight can happen so quickly, right?

So now you've met Dan and Lucy! What's your first impression?

Yes, I know, Lucy seems a bit... well, let's say disagreeable. But you have to understand, she had a really bad day at work, not enough sleep for over a week... And her highlight of the day was meant to be a date with Brian, who always makes her forget the woes of the real world. But he didn't show up! You can't blame her for being so aggressive, can you?
Dan, by the way, is a colleague of Anne, who also works at the Café. Just in case you wanted a stronger connection to the characters you already know...

Now, about those last two sentences I ended the story with... The second one wasn't planned, it just happened that, when I wrote "matter of Brian", my brain went straight to a large pink balloon going gloop, gloop. Blame Terry Pratchett.

The most important question:
Do you really think that excerpts from Harry Potter in English would make this story easier to read than the Italian ones? Won't thy get mixed up with the ongoing story too much?

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• Three

Childhood Mysteries

The second prompt was one of those I was really looking forward to. Especially the German version always had a mysterious and alluring effect on me, while the English sounds a bit boring:

"I know of a short cut, and that's the path we're taking now."

This is -  and always has been - a sentence whispered by a stranger, taking a girl by the hand and taking her somewhere. Good or bad? That was hard to decide.

In the end I chose a childhood experience for Anne, not meant to harm her, but with quite a damaging effect. Brian wanted to do her a favour, of that I am quite sure. Not entirely sure, mind you, but quite.

You see, Brian is a mystery to me - he was created as one. The weird kid, the willing outsider, the red head who always has dirt stuck under his fingernails and smeared over his face... Honestly, I can't tell you much about him, while I could tell you just about anything about Anne you'd possibly want to know.

I'm looking forward to get to know Brian a bit over the next few weeks. :-)

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• Two

The first Flash is up!

It has begun. :-)
The sentence I had to include in my first post was

"perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead".

In The Christmas Mystery this is a thought Elisabet has when she follows the lamb from the shopping centre, because that's when she starts running back in time, although she doesn't know it.

Going the same travel-back-in-time route seemed a bit lazy to me, so I looked for something else. Dreams are always a nice place for clocks going backwards, aren't they? Dreams and premonitions...

Anyway, how do you like Anne? She is 18 at this time, has left her home almost a year ago and is now back to take care of the house while her parents are on a wonderful three weeks Christmas vacation. Lucky that nothing did go wrong in the end, right?

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• One

About This Blog

Hey,
my name is Sarah and I have a blog. It's called "24 Flashes" and will, over time, become a collection of 24 flash fiction works I intend to write.

Why?
Oh, well, there are various reasons. I can safely name two of them:
One is that I lacked greatly in the creativity department. There were a lot of things I wanted to do, but none that I actually felt like doing. I wanted to do something, though, so I started something entirely new instead of forcing myself to continue with old stuff.
The second reason was that I was thinking about a blog for work for months, but didn't get the support I needed. I think the fact that I had a blog in mind for so long also prompted me to start one for myself.

So, what is it about?
I was never really searching for inspiration, it just came when I finally got to my December reading. "The Christmas Mystery" is a wonderful pre-Christmas book, and the index contains phrases from the 24 chapters. Every phrase serves as a prompt for me now, to write flash fiction that (hopefully) works on it's own, but is still somehow connected to every other prompt result.

Backstage?
Yes, backstage. I'm not sure how I'll manage that as well, to be honest, but I would like to post some insights as I go about writing for the prompts. I think it will be fun.