In Search of Perdition

And so it is here, my last time to judge the entries, a task made so hard week in, week out through the sheer quality of writing which has been poured forth onto these pages. My winner this week is an absent friend who returned this week. That friend is  Crimson Archer  with his entry Try and Try Again . Paul - I thought that the writing was exquisite. That opening line "A whole shattered into fragments becomes an enigma." was just beautiful and there were so many other phrases to admire. And then that shock of an ending. Wow. I do hope you won't be a stranger to The Prediction at Colleen's place with writing like that. No runners-up but, and this is the second time of me doing this, a more than honourable mention to RR Kovar and Colleen for their Nate and Seth series. I have become seriously addicted to this series and am not sure if it will continue at Prediction Fiction . It feels like there is still a bit more to come and I would love to read it. Now this is...

Well, this time next week I shall be posting up the winners for the final time before rushing on over to Colleen's place at http://predictionfiction.blogspot.co.uk/  to find out what the new words will be. Exciting times. I for one cannot wait to continue the party over at her place! But, before I announce this week's winners, I have some news to share. I was greeted with a rather wonderful package in the post today. Sandra Davies has collated her tale The Blacksmith's Wife, crafted at The Prediction (both under Lily's and my watch), into a wonderfully illustrated printed version and more can be found out about it on Sandra's blog . Thank you so much Sandra - a pleasure to be re-acquainted with her and to see her in print. Now this week's winner I suspect will not come as much of a surprise to anyone looking at the comments made. With a runner-up spot in his last visit, David Barber  goes one better this time round with God's Work . Dave - you made me we...

Gosh, it's getting closer with every day now. In two weeks time I shall be switching off the lights for The Prediction at Phlambler's World before passing the baton to Colleen Foley over at http://predictionfiction.blogspot.co.uk/  from 1 February. If you've not visited or favourited her site yet then do so (but not until you've seen who the winners are this week). Before we do that though, a couple of opportunities to plug. Kobo are holding a competition to win free enrolment to a Curtis Brown online novel course. The Jeffrey Archer Short Story competition requires entry of a 100 word piece (hmmm, sound like something you guys can manage). More details here  and thanks to Chris Allinotte for flagging it to me. Do take note of the eligibility criteria as it is restricted to certain countries. Secondly, check out the post below this one for details of how to submit to Siren's Call Publishing  for their female horror writer's month in their monthly publi...

For those of you that haven't clocked it in the comments section of last week's Prediction challenge, I have great news about the future of The Prediction. Colleen Foley has kindly agreed to take on hosting The Prediction from 1 February 2013 and has even set up a new place in anticipation. Do go and take a sneak peak at her new site here:  http://predictionfiction.blogspot.co.uk/ . I couldn't ask to hand it over to a better person, with her great serial about Seth and Nate (written in a tag style fashion with RR Kovar) and her always supportive comments, I am sure that The Prediction will continue to florish under her watch. Thank you Colleen for accepting the next watch. Right, I still have a few weeks left and have judging duties to do. So, here are my winners for this week. In the top spot I have chosen  Shaun Adams with A Pit of Yellow Stars . Shaun - you captured the bleakness of war here with a man lying in an open grave surrounded by death. You teased us wit...

Firstly, may I wish you all a happy new year. May it be full of opportunity and joy for you all. Secondly, I have news this week, something which I have been pondering for a little bit and something which I hope you will understand. I have decided that I will retire from hosting The Prediction, having taken it on from Lily back in May last year. Whilst it has been a great honour to host such fine writers over the past eight or nine months, I am finding that my time is getting more and more limited in life and my own time for writing has dwindled greatly. Something needs to give and, unfortunately, it is The Prediction. Please be assured it is not a decision I have taken lightly and I have changed my mind a number of times (even whilst writing this) but this feels (kind of) the right decision for me at this time in my life. My biggest concern is letting you all down and I apologise that I will be unable to host this wonderfully supportive group in the future. If anyone would ...

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 rea...

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 t...

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 fla...

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...

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 s...