Speculative fiction writer, wife, mum, gamer, and adventure seeker who just wants some sleep. She lives in sunny Queensland, but often fantasises about snow capped mountains in cooler climates.
Read More
This is the first time I have entered one of the NY Midnight Challenges a second time, and I was delighted to place fifth and make it through to the second round this time. I was given the genre of drama, with the subject of retirement and had to include a gossipmonger character. Here's my synopsis: A son signs his widowed father up for a retirement program designed especially for farmers. But when the father realizes the labor mech has an actual personality, he questions himself for acceding to his son’s request.
Read more
Another NYC Midnight challenge and I've landed myself another Honorable Mention. Here's my ghost story.
Read more
This year NYC Midnight introduced a new challenge. The Rhyming Story Challenge. So, armed with the knowledge I am terrible at poetry, I thought, why not have a crack at it anyway. All feedback is good feedback, right? I ended up getting one of my favourite genres, but I was unable to flip the theme and emotion into something left of centre enough to stand out from from the crowd to place in the named top 12 for this one, but I did get some awesome, useful feedback. I was handed, Science Fiction, with the theme of 'adrift' and the emotion 'insignificant'. The story I wrote was called The Repair - A ship drifts through space with the last survivors from Earth on it. An unskilled repairer is tasked with fixing the hull to save them all before time runs out.
Read more
The second round was much the same as the first in constraints. 48 hours to write 1000 words. This time I got Spy genre, set on a Freighter, and I had to include a flame thrower. I don't really read a lot of spy books, either, it turns out. I think what I wrote may have been based on experiences from watching Burn Notice and MIB. The story I wrote is called Crisis Control. Secret agents infiltrate a freighter in the pacific ocean to perform an extraction after a distress beacon is triggered by a refugee in a protection program gone wrong. Failure could cause war to break out.
Read more
For this I had 48 hours to write a story in the mystery genre, set in a post office, and it had to include the object 'A child's drawing', with a word limit of 1000 words. My story is called Smashing Delivery. A delivery truck smashes through the front of a post office, killing a man. Police hope a child’s drawing can provide clues about who the killer is.
Read more