In Search of Perdition

Phew, you made it past the apocalypse and ploughed your way through richly deserved Christmas merriments. I have to apologise to everyone as I have become befuddled with days of the week over this yuletide period and thought today was Thursday hence now being a day late to proclaim my winner! So, without further ado, and much grovelling for forgiveness, here is my winner for this week.... ..... RR Kovar with Pageant . Rebecca - if I am right this is the second time you have provided poetry for us and grabbed first place. I really liked Pageant, the way it weaved stories within stories. A beautiful mythos unfolding as we discover more about the world, and the fate, that the orphan queen has thrust herself into. Just felt that this one had a wonderful sense of legend about it at this time of the year. A deserved winner. My congratulations to Rebecca and I will abstain from naming a runner-up this week in my haste to get new words out to all. Needless to say, I have enjoyed reading

If you believe the stories being bandied around on the internet and in the tabloids, the world is due to end on Friday 21 December as foretold (or not) by the Mayans. So, will the impending apocalypse inspire you or send you screaming to the hills? Well, I guess we shall have to see. In the meantime, you have a fortnight to get your entries in as I have a social engagement on Thursday next week so will be unable to judge. Therefore I will close The Prediction on Thursday 27 December so you have a bit more time to fit writing around last minute Christmas shopping (or world destroying meteor showers, whichever comes first). If you want a chance to write over both weeks then don't forget to check out Hunted , our collaborative chain story. Sandra added another piece this week. Do go and check it out and write the next installment if you are so inclined. Now on to the winner for this week. Tough, tough decision this week (isn't it always though) and I've thought long and

It's starting to get a bit cold outside, I'm having to scrape frost off the car of a morning and there are definitely a few more layers going on before I step out. And yet the weather doesn't chill me half as much as the tales which you lay at my door every week. Speaking of tales, a while back I started up a collaborative chain story on here called Hunted . With the site design it rapidly fell down the pages until a brainwave hit me! I have now put a permanent link to the story on the right hand menu. Take a look and add to the story as you see fit. Marietta has added another twist to the tale just this week. Really want to see where you all take us with it. Now on to this week's judging. As always the entires were of the finest quality yet one still managed to shine out to me above the rest. My winner this week is Zaiuregrey with Stolen Youth . Zaiure - this was a masterclass in description. Some excellent turns of phrase which painted such a vivid picture for

And so we start to veer towards the Christmas season. Whilst the supermarkets have had their decorations up for a whole month already, we in our household shall uphold tradition and not put up our sparklies until 1 December. Santa Claus is firmly in the mind of my son and, with all this in mind, I do have to ask all my visitors, have you been naughty or nice this year ;-) Having read the entries this week I think I know the answer to my question. So, who has been the most devious? My winner this week is Mr John Xero with Wildwood . John, this was an absolutely perfect example of how to do horror in 100 words. MR James would have been proud to produce such a piece and I can hear the trees whispering as I walk past them on my way home of an evening now. Excellent! My runner-up this week is Sandra Davies  with It's not me, it's hymn . Sandra - I loved the way that this initially felt like a kitchen sink drama, a loveless marriage leading to years of drudgery, but then we are

As my friends across the pond celebrate Thanksgiving, I thought it only right to offer a word of thanks to each and everyone of you, irrespective of nationality, that visits my humble blog each week for The Prediction. I stalk follow a number of you on social media outlets and often see comments about how the community here has spurred people on in their writing endeavours when those voices of doubt about writing ability have crept into people's heads. Do give yourselves a pat on the back and take my thanks for coming by each week to read, write and comment. Speaking of social media, Cindy Vaskova is celebrating the 1 year anniversary of her blog . As a one off special, she is inviting people to drop by before Sunday and offer three words for her to write a 100 word flash. She will write a flash for EACH set of prompts given. I urge you to go visit as I am sure the resulting tales will be amazing. One more quick plug and then the winners, 99fiction (where my flash Screamless

So, it's NaNoWriMo at the moment or, as I believe it is called, National Novel Writing Month where people have one month to write a novel. I am envious of people who are capable of doing this as it takes me ages to craft such a thing. However, I would be really interested to hear from any Predictioneers who are taking part and how they are finding it. What I do tend to do quickly though is flash and I was pleased that 99 Fiction decided to published my flash fiction piece Screamless this month. Take a look here and see what you think. Right, you read that, back now, good. That brings me on to this week's winner which is.....drum roll please..... ......well I've got joint winners as I just cannot separate them, both being so good that it wouldn't be fair for one to 'lose'. My winners are AJ Hayes and Zaiuregrey . AJ - I loved The Ladies In Hats . There was something about the way you intertwined the exquisiteness of the fine Sunday morning dining and the

So Halloween has been and gone. I trust that you came through it with your souls intact and your demons sated. Now before I go into judging mode I want to make note of a couple of things. The first is, for those who didn't clock it in the comments section last week, that our very own John Xero came runner-up in The Times' 50 word ghost story competition out of a field of about 1,500 entries. Our sincerest congratulations to John, the talented bugger, whose story can be found here: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/competitions/article3580545.ece . And secondly, I have not paid tribute to Sandra Davies for her long running serial The Blacksmith's Wife. For 41 episodes (which is equivalent to ten months!) Sandra kept us enthralled with the tales of our headstrong heroine. Some of us, me included, were unsure if she would survive the end of episode 41 but our worst fears were realised. A toast to Sandra whose complete work can be found here: http://sandra-linesofcommuni

And so we approach that annual witching hour that we call Halloween where spooks and spirits seek to suck our souls to hell (depending on what beliefs you subscribe to). Me, I see this as a gloriously wonderful time of year where the scary gets celebrated and we get the chance to see some glorious tales to chill our very cores. I'm hoping that the Predictioneers will all rise to the challenge this week and give me something with a ghostly tinge to honour this time of year. But before then I am sure you want to know who the winner was from last week. After much deliberation I have decided that my winner is......RR Kovar with Impact. Rebecca - this is a tale which I confessed in my comments that I didn't grasp at first (my dimwittedness rather than your writing) but when I understood the fullness of it, boy was I blown away. Clever, clever stuff which I would encourage everyone to go back and read. My runner-up this week is Matt Farr with his two takes on Only the Mundane V

Hello all, my apologies that this will be a brief piece from me this week. Sadly my grandmother died recently and I have been away for the funeral which was later in the month than anticipated. Therefore I hope you forgive me my lack of commentary this time and I will post pictures of Lily and I plus review of FantasyCon next week when normal service will resume. My winner this week is Matt Farr with In the Midst of Death. Matt - as I said in my comments, really good imagery and some emotionally charged stuff to boot. I loved the concept that the devil's playground is the war ravaged plains of Earth rather than some subterranean cavern deep below. Runner-up is Sandra Davies with her two latest installments of The Blacksmith's Wife. Sandra - you left me shell-shocked at the end of both pieces and I doubt there was any other reader who didn't feel the same way. I fear for our heroine and yet am desperate to see what happens next (peeking from behind my fingers). Congrat

This weekend I am off to brush shoulders with some of the great genre writers of our time at FantasyCon in Brighton. I shall also get to meet the wonderful Lily Childs in person for the first time. I shall be sure to send her love and warm feelings from The Prediction gang.   Now, how the hell do I judge last week's offerings? Each one would normally have been a winner in its own right on any other week but it seems that the changing of the seasons has inspired you all into even higher levels of literary excellence. So a winner there must be and that winner is....   .... MuckieDuckie with Riven . MD - you tugged on my heartstrings here to great effect. So much heartache throughout this piece, touching pieces of sentimentality littered throughout that work so well, and that final line just had me welling up. I will hug my son hard tonight. A well deserved win for an intense tale.   And my runner-up is, well I have two. Firstly Antonia Woodville with Twilight Thoug

It's that time of year when the leaves are changing colour, the nights are drawing in and we're all asking ourselves what happened to summer (well those of us in the UK, I hope the sun is shining on our international friends). I hope that the beauty of the season will inspire you all in your writing endeavours. Now before I announce the winner this week, I just wanted to highlight a query that came up in last week's comments. Is it ok to promote other writing sites on here? Absolutely, as long as they are reputable sites then plug away. I very much see this site as a place for everyone to support each other and have some fun writing. So please feel free to let people know about any writing opportunities that are out there - I know that I'll be following up on them! Now, onto this week's winner. After much deliberation, the person who stood out for me this week was.... ..... Marietta Miles with Forgiveness . Marietta -  this piece started gently, a ta

So, after several weeks and a multitude of time zones, I find myself back here at Phlambler's World judging the latest Prediction entries. In my travels I have stood atop volcanos, seen near extinct species flocking and watched mighty beasts breaching from the ocean, yet I am still amazed by the quality of writing and the diversity of imagination from amongst the Predictioneers.   It was great, and possibly worring for my exalted position, to see The Prediction continue to run so smoothly in my absence [even with some generous interpretations of the word swag into swagger along the way ;-) ] and I offer my thanks to my guest judges Matt, Rebecca and William for keeping this ship afloat.   Well, it's been a while since I've said this but my winner for this week is........   .....John Xero! John stunned me with the beautifully crafted Crepuscular. It painted a vividly bleak future for mankind. The way you created such a fully formed world and brought Carla to l

And here we are into the final week before I can give my time back to judging your entries.   Now, if everything went to plan then we had a winner announced for last week. If said writer would be so kind, do let everyone know who you thought was the outstanding entry this week. As I said last week, no obligation but would be nice if you could.   If we had no winner announced then such is life and you shall still have your new words. The winner for this week will not have to judge the coming entries. Normal service will resume and I shall be announcing winners on Thursday night.   We're now into the third week of our leather clad beast's rampage and reports of another victim abound. He was found babbling in the bushes, repeating the same words over and over again: Eclipse Stiff Dangle   The usual rules apply: 100 words maximum, excluding the title, of flash fiction or poetry using all of the three words above in the genres of horror, fantasy or science

Why, hello again. More words from the past coming to greet you. Hope that everyone enjoyed the bank holiday weekend and that you were able to have some fun with 'squid'.   Now, if everything went to plan then we had a winner announced for last week. If said writer would be so kind, do let everyone know who you thought was the outstanding entry this week. As I said last week, no obligation but would be nice if you could.   If we had no winner announced then such is life and you shall still have your new words.   Further to last week's newspaper stories about a strange beastie causing havoc on the moors, there are unconfirmed rumours of an actual attack! Etched into the victim's body were three simple words : Post Shield Immoral   The usual rules apply: 100 words maximum, excluding the title, of flash fiction or poetry using all of the three words above in the genres of horror, fantasy or science fiction. All variants and use of the words as stem

Greetings all, Phil here speaking from the past! I hope that you have been treating The Prediction well in my absence. If I am right in my planning then this week should be bank holiday in Britain so an extra day of writing to be had. It will be raining anyway!!!   Now, if everything went to plan then we had a winner announced for last week. If said writer would be so kind, do let everyone know who you thought was the outstanding entry this week. As I said last week, no obligation but would be nice if you could.   If we had no winner announced then such is life and you shall still have your new words.   There have been stories in the papers of a vicious, leather clad beast roaming the moors, muttering strange words. Now the words drifted to me in my sleep by some unholy union and they sounded like : Ration Squid Flatter Oooh, squid looks like it could be nasty but I am sure you will all come up with amazing takes on that trio.   The usual rules apply: 100