Without Fear

This ol’ train keeps rolling round the bend. Some of these are really fun to put together and then work on tightly constructing. It makes me think deeply about the POV, the narrative style/voice/tone, and the place I want to start – description of a location, dialogue, etc. All choices have a different effect, and that’s the fun of story building/construction.

As always, hope you continue to dig :]

For anyone wondering – yes, the last one is a Deer Editor entry. The Truth is the newspaper Bucky works for, and this is his story.

I miss Deer Editor. So glad he could live on for one day of Noirvember.

It’s week two of Noirvember, and this little writing prompt game has yielded more fun and twisted intrigue. Here’s what came out of my head for the seven prompts of madness:

May they bring you more crime-riddled thoughts in this coming week.

This month I’ve been celebrating my own little Noirvember – I’ve set up 30 prompts, and for each one I’m writing a title and an intro to a story that could be.

It’s a fun writing activity that’s helping me get my pulp on, or consider interesting characters, just for a few paragraphs.

Here are the first 7 days of it, enjoy in moderation.

I don’t know which one is my favourite, but I like that I got to do a whole bunch of different things in this week. If you’ve got a favourite, I’d love to know which one it is.

All month long to celebrate Noirvember, I will be writing a short story title and opening moment to match these prompts I made up.

The aim of the game is to be as pulpy, troubled, and crime-riddled as possible.

Happy Noirvember to you and yours wherever and however you celebrate.

Here’s the first one to whet your whistle on the 1st of Noirvember – Wake Up.

I guess the show must go on…

Let’s try something involving elections and the downward spiral, and that’s fiction 😐 Roll on 0009

PROBLEMATIC

Jane Berry has proof her local elected official is a murderer. And yet she can’t get the world to listen. Reporters turn her away, the Party attempt to have her silenced, and her own family – who all voted for him – shun her completely.

The only person who cares is the politician’s daughter, who completely believes Jane. The only problem is, Jane once helped cover up one of the murders and she knows the world cares more about protecting a man, and blaming a woman for past actions – even committed under duress – than doing the complete right thing.

So Jane has a choice to make. If you’re going to die on your sword, should it first be coated in the blood of your enemy? Or do you use it to hack into the landscape and hope the scar becomes a beacon and a reminder.

As Jane walks quietly through the rain, she makes her decision, and heads straight to his house. Words will be spoken.

Over a week into the

When will the madness end? Not tonight, tonight it is time for 0008:

INSIDE POCKET

Paul Daniels is killed in a stupid bar fight. He leaves behind two kids he never cared about, half a beer on the table, a lifetime of regrets, and the jacket he wore on the night of his demise – which was stolen seconds after his head hit the floor.

Lisa Porter stole it to keep warm, but she doesn’t realise it might just burn her whole world down. Because there’s a note in the inside breast pocket, and the police, the Yakuza, an ex-KGB agent, and Paul’s ex-wife all want the information scribbled on it.

There are many options available to Lisa, but she takes the dumb one – she reads the note. Now she’s on the run, through the darkness of midnight, trying to work out if Paul Daniels, the previous owner of her jacket, was right about the entire mess of humanity or not.

Let’s start the week with some fresh:

Tonight we’ll stay overnight at the 0007 star lodgings at:

THE BLACK CAROUSEL

Amanda Yannick is staying at The Black Carousel for a week after her last PI gig went south. It’s supposed to be a place and time to regroup, but she’s thrust back into the shit when her elevator opens early and shows her the third floor, which is covered in dead bodies.

No violence, no sign of a crime, just dead bodies gently laid in most rooms, the hallway, and one on the fire escape.

As she walks through the cooling human litter, Amanda hears a song, one she hasn’t heard since she was a child. And that memory is of the first time she saw a dead body, in her kitchen…

Lazy Sunday:

LEFT OF TARGET

Billie is still in the first year of running her own cafe. The first year is a dangerous time, many small businesses don’t make it out, and this small business owner might not make it out alive.

As she’s closing the cafe one lazy Sunday afternoon, a tall woman barrels through the door and dives onto the ground. The blood streak left behind her unconscious body on the linoleum floor is the first alarm bell.

But Billie was raised to help others when you can, so she tends to the mysterious woman’s wounds while waiting for paramedics to arrive. When they finally enter, Billie feels off about it, but she doesn’t say anything. Not until she sees the weapons they try to conceal from her view. Billie realises something is amiss and forces these apparent helpers back into their ambulance.

Upon waking, the bleeding woman helps Billie, and then shoots the van up. She tells Billie that she isn’t safe, and she knows this because she’s been hired to kill her.

Now Billie’s best chance of surviving a night on the run from thrill killing Hollywood elites is to trust the woman sent to kill her.

Making with the noir story title/idea/blurbs since:

Here lies instalment 0005, gone too soon:

ACROSS THE STREET, YOU’LL FIND ME THERE

Hannah and Martha live across the street from each other. They have for over 50 years. And they have hated each other for about 47 of those years, with vitriol.

So when Hannah is given a few weeks to live, Martha steps up to do the right thing and protect Hannah’s classified files from invaders in the neighbourhood who would want to know what secrets a retired international spy dying of nuclear contamination poisoning might be hiding in her walls.

But the fools arriving on Rutherford Lane didn’t count Martha into their plans, and they’re going to find this job surprisingly difficult because she might have spent half a century hating her old partner, but she still feels a duty to protect the work they built together.