Suggestion Saturday: August 10, 2013

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, comics, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Someone Write Me a Book Based on This Image. My flash fiction response is below. Leave yours in the comment section!

Mabel loved her husband now more than she did when they first met sixty years ago, but sometimes she wondered what her life had been like if True Love’s Kiss hadn’t worn off after a few decades. It had been years since she’d gone dancing.

TP. It’s best if you click on this link with as few preconceived notions of what you’re about to find as possible. (Don’t worry, it’s nothing scary or disturbing!)

Friendship Never Fleeting via RantingnRaven. There’s something weird going on in this story. My theory about what is really happening is posted in the  comment section of this link.

Untitled. The Dr. Who police box I understand. The flowery ribcage, not so much. It’s beautiful, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it represents. Ideas, anyone?

From Do Stop Believing via Dorsalstream:

 My lovely wife, to her credit and wisdom, has insisted that our kids come to these truths on their own. She believes that the various fairies and magic bunnies and nocturnal elves can give a great gift in the opportunity to discover their nonexistence.
This discovery is inevitable. Beliefs and the stories that bind them together tug at each other even as they distribute logical load. Beliefs that don’t square with the stories we tell ourselves tend not to last long. Same with stories that don’t square with beliefs we are reluctant to relinquish. Childhood myths survive until the evidence nags and the desire to know overpowers the desire to believe in their truth or what would allow them to be true.

From Knives:

I was haunted by the most chilling story in the entire Little House on the Prairie series: a chapter called “Knife in the Dark”. Wilder describes boarding with a severely depressed woman who waves a knife at her husband during a nocturnal argument, scaring the daylights out of teenage Laura peeking through a gap in the curtain partition. If the story gave me goosebumps before, now it knotted my stomach.

 

This week I’m thrilled to recommend my friend Daphne Purpus’ “The Egg That Wouldn’t Hatch.” This is her second fantasy novel and third book overall, and it’s been wonderful to see her writing style develop over time.

The Egg That Wouldn’t Hatch is a young adult fantasy novel about a girl named Lucy who has the odds stacked against her several times over again. She’s poor, motherless, physically disabled, bullied, and was raised in an abusive and emotionally cold home.

And then a chance encounter with a Dragon Rider and her dragon changes Lucy’s destiny forever. What I loved about this book was that Lucy’s past was never glossed over. She struggles to undo the emotional damage her father (and peers) cause even after her life changes dramatically for the better. It isn’t always an easy process, but I really appreciated Daphne’s realistic approach to Lucy’s character development. It was delightful to see a frightened little girl learn to express her true self.

Lucy is 7 when this story begins, but I’d recommend for kids who are 9-12 years old due to its frank discussion of abuse, neglect, bullying, and death.

What have you been reading? Have any of my other readers published anything lately? I love promoting the work of friends, so please let me know if you have anything coming out!

4 Comments

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4 Responses to Suggestion Saturday: August 10, 2013

  1. TWF

    Great take on the flash fiction. 🙂 Here’s mine:
    {The nipping November air chafed Hagatha that evening, more so than she remembered last year. “Maybe it’s the dampness,” she tried to comfort herself. But as she gazed at that lavender hat through the shop window, as she had done so many times before, her life-changing decisions all came back to her with more chill and weight than the stormy cold raindrops had carried just an hour ago. “What if I had chosen a different hat?” she thought. “What if I had chosen a different hat?” Her familiar frog felt heavy in her hand.}

    That TP is great! 🙂

    Flower ribcage… Beauty in passing? Breathing new life into old bones?

    • I didn’t want your story to end. Nice job TWF.

      I liked your interpretation of the flower ribcage as well. The only thing I could think is that it was a commentary on the circle of life. I am clearly not used to figuring out art. 🙂

  2. bookaliciouspam

    Love this!

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