Magenta Monster

Picture a Story is a series of photographs and images by Sarah Snell-Pym that other writers may use as writing inspiration.

It’s that time of year again when I start to think about my writing schedules and what I want from publication etc… for a start this year instead of waiting for midnight and just starting to sort it all out as the festivities began to die down… I watched a film and went to bed and then didn’t bother the next day or the next and gave myself the space of the 12 days of Christmas just to be. Well that’s not entirely true I had a lot of family around and it was harder work than work but I did not layer on any extra stress where my writing was concerned.

And this I think has been a very good thing 🙂

I have some large writing projects coming up in 2019 including being a publisher so it is all systems go!

So what do I have planned for the coming year?

1) try traditional publishing for some of my writing

2) sort the blogs out as they are rather out dated in many respects

3) do something for Independent Press Day

4) finish the first wave of the pandora prose boxes and pop them out at events

5) make the second wave of the pandora story boxes

6) find more events for flash fiction and story telling

7) type up and edit stuff written in long hand

8) find a writing group I can just go to and not run

9) make story starters and various other writing exercises available

And last but not least – oh no definitely not least!

10) Launch the Punk Universe website

And that is quiet enough to be getting on with so I shall now disappear to actually do some of it!

Picture a Story is a series of photographs and images by Sarah Snell-Pym that other writers may use as writing inspiration.

Picture a Story is a series of photographs and images by Sarah Snell-Pym that other writers may use as writing inspiration.

Picture a Story is a series of photographs and images by Sarah Snell-Pym that other writers may use as writing inspiration.

The pale spectra of a woman clad in dark red velvet with dark hair slightly disarrayed was curled infront of the old manor house as it began to be comsumed by flames. The rudy light of flames not yet visible seemed to enrich her full skirt, she trembled and shock with sobs she did not dear let out, incase they were heard.

She had set the fire, she had condemned them all to hell. No redemption now and she could not show them her regrets. They would burn, she lay paralysed with a malaise – she wished to joined them, part of her always would, how could she not, she was after all their mother.

They did not yet know fire, they did not know to run. She could have killed them one by one but she had not the stomach for that, could not look into their eyes and see the knowing, them then knowing her betrayal. No – this had been the only way.

Echoes of their voices called to her, in confusion and none understanding MOTHER, muther, mooooother. Over and over. She had made them, she had hoped…. but they were not right, she had known that, and yet she had still cared for them, their little eyes seeking her out, hungry and in need.

They were the only things that had ever loved her… Velvetina the doll bride. Beautiful and cold as the porcelain of her face, her dresses made to some archaic aesthetic that held velvet fluff warm and plush to be the companion of the hard cold smoothness. She was a construct as much as her children. Maybe that was where she had gone wrong?

The Lord… he had wanted children and so she had made him children, they had dined on him and he deserved that for what he had done to them and to her but the maid girl? That had been… wrong.. yes that was the word and so now she destroyed all that she loved.

Did fire melt porcelain? Or would it just crack her glaze? She had been baked multiple times in extremes of heat, her surface a glaze of fused glass. She was supposed to be unbreakable. Maybe the tower stones would crash down and brake her. She wanted nothing less.

“MOOOTHER!” came the cries once more – they knew now – they knew something was wrong and the horror and anguish of it all ripped as a sob from her.

A window smashed and a tentacle, thick and undulous arose, “there you are!” came the voices and it wrapped itself around her waist, she did not fight it as it pulled her back into the Manor. Why had she thought to leave, she belonged here she was a monster the same as them, she was there mother – she should sing them to sleep.

Flames roared.

We all recieved the same letter, none of us had met previously but we all got the exact same letter inviting us to The Book Club, we were all lonely and isolated in different ways but the result was similar – we all jumped at the chance of something gentle that wasn’t a pub or club and would not cost a fortune like night classes would besides we had nearly all tried the evening classes or day classes for that matter and never did any lasting friendship occur. It was like we only existed in that space and the fiends we made never invited us to anything or made any attempt to keep the relationship alive.

Those of us that had attempted follow ups by being the initiator had found active hostility or brutal rebuttal.

Yes a book club appealed to all of us, and so we all came, every single one of use, clutching in fear and hope the exact same letter. And still no one knew who had sent it. The setting was a little weird and it should have warned us all that we needed to get out of there but we were so desperate, so in need of each other and there was no threat from each other and so was sat in the old victorian building with flapping sheet plastic at the windows and not enough dust for where we were.

The books were all arranged on the chairs, in neat little circles all precise and the way we liked them and so we sat and wondered what the place had been and who our benefactor was. Lighting and tea were provided by a admittedly annoying generator chugging away in another room and so we sat and we began to read, many of us knew full well that this was not how book clubs worked. no not at all and yet we stayed in the companionship reading and dinking tea and there was coffee for those who drank coffee and juice for those who did not do hot drinks and even biscuits.

In some ways it was a heaven to the hell we, each and everyone of us had been living and so we stayed and stayed and the night wore on and we just huddled closer together until we were nestled in blankets and on cushions that someone had found. And sometimes we chatted and… we never wanted that night to end, never wanted to leave that wondrous moment of the Book Club inaugural meeting.

And we didn’t, because the gas game whilst we dosed and dripped us into unconsciousness and for a minority even death. Then they stripped us and put us in the old sausage blender, some of us sadly awoke during this process and even with the pain they went through we still do not know who invited us to the Book Club and so we are all still here, still in this building huddled, no longer alone at least I suppose.

What is going on here? How can a T-rex plant a tree with it’s tiny arms? Is it frustrated?

Picture a Story is a series of photographs and images by Sarah Snell-Pym that other writers may use as writing inspiration.

Special and unusual friends – what is the story behind this picture? Try writing about it for 10 mins straight!

Picture a Story is a series of photographs and images by Sarah Snell-Pym that other writers may use as writing inspiration.

Create a story from this photo!