Featured, Once upon a time entries
Parisianne Modert on auto pilot helps our contest fly
(this is the look on my face when I discovered that we only have 18 days left before the next phase of our contest)
Literati!
It is comforting to know that even in the world of the future, be it science fiction or reality TV, that some metaphors are simply irreplaceable. London fog (not the product line!) will ALWAYS be chilling, and always the consistency of pea soup–not bouillon, not chicken soup, not even lobster bisque or cream of mushroom–but pea soup!
Parisianne Modert, our most reliable commentator on this site, has submitted her second entry into our contest, Once Upon a Time.
AND THAT TIME IS RUNNING OUT!
You have until the end of May to submit the prologue to the novel you have always promised yourself and that person snoring next to you that you would write. Five semi-finalists will be announced in June, and shortly thereafter must submit chapter one. Then three finalist submit chapter two. Winners will be announced and rewarded on June 27th, at the fifth annual editor-in-chief surprise birthday party! All semi-finalists get a $25 gift card to the bookstore of their choice, and the overall winner gets their choice of $250 or a date with the editor- in- chief at the Mcdonalds of their choice here in Moscow (dutch). I don’t put-out on the first date, but I do put-up!
So here is part of the competition. The Towers that are A Word with You Press proudly presents
In Between
by Madame Parisianne Modert
Pea soup fog thickly chilling the late London night creeping tension tentacles along the thigh-gartered stockings of Annalise Tuscanini. Her Ferragamo heels clicked rapidly on the cobblestones outside Westminster’s Lady Chapel as she ignored the demands to halt. The cathedral purloined, Māori mask relic jiggled in the expansive Givenchy bag dangling from the crook of her left arm. Intercepted, coded correspondence between Interpol and the British Intelligence Service had left no choice. Ricocheting bullets off the ancient stones lit the outer wall behind Annalise at eye level. The x-file scientists in lab coats, due to arrive in the morning, need not discover the alien metal alloy she ran with nor be allowed to do her autopsy. The dark eyed, raven-haired vixen tossed a phosphorous grenade over her shoulder towards the gunshots, removed her heels while hopping and remotely started her knockoff, cloaked to human eyesight, Lamborghini Egoista with non-human accessories.
The normally orange-lit stealth auto roared west onto London’s Victoria Street flipping open its sloped wings, launching with take off for its flight back to the mothership orbiting Rhea within the fifth ring of Saturn.
British SIS agent Bristols Banning skeptically took DNA samples and routine evidence knowing Annalise Tuscanini’s modus operandi was the ability to vanish herself into thick air never making an error. Interpol’s Alien Search Division would be furious, asking questions why he had allowed the spy to escape stealing the Cook Islands’ space metal, once presumed a meteor pointing towards New Zealand.
Bristols had learned at the crime scene that a Māori Ariki sent Victoria the metal-worked mask as a coronation gift in 1837. The new queen in return permanently lent the hideous artwork to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster who could not refuse or fail to display the mask for fear of alienating the crown.
Annalise’s theft of mask and life came without absolution by the silent priest laid to rest on the chapel’s alter with a respect which almost caused both her life and the mission. The Orionian lady felt self-consternation for delaying too long risking the safety of those of her abandoned sisters and brothers too long stranded upon Earth. Annalise felt genuine remorse for the priest who had tried to restrain her escape while on his walk to night prayers.
Reunion with the Orionian colonists lay several Earth repair years away,so the mothership remained no longer than to retrieve Annalise Tuscanini before returning home. For now the less everyone knew (except for the replacement spy on Earth) the better.
Bristols Banning sighed, turning over evidence to Inspector Yvette Arceneau of Interpol believing she would not discover anything of interest, but he was very wrong.
Once more I wish to thank A Word With You Press for publishing my many story lines which in this case is a prologue to the novel that many of you asked for after reading my finalist flash fiction piece from a previous contest (Linnaea Borealis in Bloom).
The makings of a gripping story. I can see ol’ Harrison chasing leggy Analisi through time and galaxies …One critique.. since it’s an action sequence, I’d cut down on the adjectives in the first graf or two and concentrate on verbs..
Thank you Russ. I plead guilty to my tendency of seeing a novel as a potential movie complete with product endorsements to back that film. Annalise is going to be an extremely minor character, but she creates the opportunity with her one mistake at the crime scene both the absurdity of her replacement spy and the lonely Interpol detective who chases the Orionians across the US, Europe and our sector of the Milky Way.
In Between has the alternative romance which is my genre laced with absurd and surreal humor which is dipped in sci-fy, paranormal, medical, scientific and erotic background assumptions that are beautiful, occasionally vulgar and politically ugly in part. My novels do have my opinions sewn into them of good versus evil.
If it helps the reader to visualize Yvette, I saw her being played by Jane Lynch of various movie and television (Glee, Two and A Half Men) comic fame. Yvette becomes the living symbol of the danger the stranded Orionian colonist face if their communities are unearthed with controversy.
Last thought Russ for writers including you to consider. I target a very specific group of readers with a wide array of characters, settings, devices which are not meant for academic literature classes nor workshop nor writer’s retreats of the future. I’ll leave my dark and erotic poetry someday to the academics and the remainder of my written works to the lonely of heart women, very much like me, who wish to believe in true love and miracles. I believe in using sets, scenes, action, narrative and dialogue as subtext to the psyches of my characters. I ask my reader to climb inside those characters and experience life through a different set of eyes, feeling emotions from a different set of hearts and experiencing life as sometimes those characters and sometimes the camera person on the movie set.
I can always count on your to have the text drip with good wordage… the last line is an I dare you to read more… always entertaining.
Thank you Tiffany. I especially appreciate, “text drip with good wordage”, because that is one of the keys to exploding a storyline. Sometimes a prologue requires a setting to tension more than any individual character. While there are main characters left out of this prologue, the tension facing the Orionian descendants of stranded colonist on Earth is properly charged up. The mask is a sub-text symbol of hiding, fear of discovery, strangeness and sense of danger. The avoided autopsy is a theme used in science fiction to let the reader to imagine the vulnerability of a minority species desperately wishing to hold on to their privacy long enough to escape.
The prologue also begins a cat and mouse game between quirky, but worthy opponents where there should never be such need. Every story to me needs romance which is yet to come, distinctive characters, a clear set of locations and surrounding scenes for sub-text along with a storyline dialogue. When I write, there should be a balance between familiar tools and never read before surprises. Otherwise, why should any reader turn the page. Novels require a lot of time for research with a steep learning curve to bring the believable into the absurdity of science fiction and/or the paranormal. Even more reality based scenes must have realistic elements.
I like to place clues early on which won’t make sense for a couple of hundred pages. Any author with an affection for elements of mystery will tell you that this is great fun. If Chapter One is allowed, I am hoping the readers will wonder how a piece of metal landed on one of the Cook Islands with the direction of New Zealand mentioned. I hope they will be asking who the replacement spy is as they read and be drawn enough into the real main characters of the first half of the novel to make the storyline plausible to them and compelling enough to desire Chapter Two.
Finally Tiffany, I want to say that my main interest in asking brief parts of my writings to be published is the family we have gathered at A Word With You Press. Here are some of my dearest friends in the world over the expanse of my lifetime. Who better to share my inner compulsions with?
Okay. I have defered long enough. I do agree with Mr. Shor, however with a sweeter ear. Writing for film drives me crazy when I think about it. I wrote a few children’s screenplays a few years ago and that experience was thrilling. It gave me depth into the characters and the scenes around them I never before noticed. Wonderful! Not my screenplays mind you (never went anywhere) but screenwriting as an art.
So okay, I take off the silver screen glasses and notice an action packed, sci-fi, (romance?) blast that takes me beyond the forward to anticipate the rest. What’s not to love?
Bring it.
Thank you Michael. Novel writing was the vehicle I used to become a better writer, while attempting to getting over the grieving of the loss of my life partner. When I look back at my earlier writings, I am horrified at how much worse I was. This Prologue was written after my first Prologue was entered. The novel that it attaches to is the one which includes my finalist piece from before “Linnaea Borealis In Bloom”. Many people at that time were complimentary enough to request the novel, so here we potentially go.
I have a third Prologue entered which hasn’t been posted yet. It is the risk taker out of the three in that I will have to crash the hours long into the night if it advances. I have chapters one and two ready for the first and two prologues entered, edited and ready to go. In total I have written 12 complete novels and several partial ones in reserve.
This novel is science fiction (medical, astronomical, cultural, political, sexual, erotic), humor (sophisticated and not), romance and religious assumptions about Christianity which the Roman Catholic Church will probably ban across the globe. My friends prefer In-Between and have never stopped talking about it; while The Paradoxes and Contradictions of Romantic Flight is as dear to my heart. I will be pleased to give chapter one up for either of the first two and panicked to write and edit chapter one if the third one sneaks in. Even if none of the three are advanced, I feel it has been a priviledge as before to be considered among such fine writers as yourself.
Wow. Mysterious cookies laced with a drowsy wine might leave my head feeling this way. Your creative word play and fearless irascible narrative voice really lend your pieces a gut punch. This is my favorite so far of your entries. It smacks of smoky rooms and crazy realities, and me likes!
I adore strong females (being rather irascible myself in real life, or at least obstreperous) I am powerfully attracted to your gut-punch style.
Your are positively leaking creativity with mad cojones, girl.
Amazing:)
Find regards,
Shawna