Valentine’s Day Is Creepy. Let’s Write Flash Together This Weekend Instead.

Stop and think about it for a second:  The line between healthy love and boiling-bunnies crazy is mighty mighty thin.

Don’t believe me?

Take the Ponds from Doctor Who.

Take the number of times (at least twice) where they quite literally pull a Romeo & Juliet suicide pact.  Oh, sure it’s not really.  But they have no reason to think that going into it.  It sounds an awful lot like the way manipulative people sound when they threaten self-harm to keep someone in an emotionally abusive relationship.

It’s all a matter of a very small degree.  (Is the bunny boiling, or just simmering?)

Even straight-up “normal” Valentine’s Day stuff can be pretty creepy:

 

So this Saturday (yes, tomorrow), join me and others for Shock Totem’s bi-weekly one hour flash fiction challenge at 8pm EST.

You’ll need to make an account on their message board (free);  that way the work you post isn’t “previously published”.  The rules are pretty straightforward.

 

  • An image is posted at 8pm to inspire you
  • You have one hour to write up to 1K words in any genre (though a lot of people do horror and dark fantasy, just FYI.)
  • You post your story, and everyone reads, critiques, and votes.

The official rules are right here.

That’s it!  I really enjoy it – it forces me to put my brain in a different writing space than normal, and that helps jar it out of whatever problems I’m running into at the time.

I look forward to seeing what you write tomorrow night!  And remember…