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Just before sunset refraction in the atmosphere can make the last little bit of the sun appear blue or green…

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For camp NaNoWriMo in April I decided to write seven short stories each one set later in history and with an older main character than the one before. Some of these stories have worked very well I think and others less well but I'm offering then all here with only basic editing.1. The horse conjurer - A little girl in the stone age sees art in a new way2. Hair the colour of the dawn - A story of Viking America based on an Icelandic saga seen from both a European and a native American point of view.3. Undiscovered talents - In Victorian England a young woman finds that she can challenge men in a way that surprises them.4. Love letters - Set in the present day a man makes a discovery in the aftermath of his father's funeral.5. Neighbours - Millions of people live in one huge building but hardly ever see their neighbours. A chance meeting can change someone's life.6. Running to stand still - On semi - terraformed Callisto you have to keep moving to stay under the Sun or the freezing night will catch you.7. Rock of Ages - Billions of years from now the expanding Sun has nearly engulfed the Earth. Explorers look for a treasure left behind after the Exodus.…

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This isn't so much a story as a short glimpse into the life of two lovers. Although nothing like this has happened to me it all seems very real almost as though I actually was there. I don't think that the app described here really exists but there are so many about these days you never know. I've marked this as complete, at least for now, but its always possible that some other incident from the lives of Tessa and Brian will pop into my head and compel me to write down. The picture is by Chuck Felix courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.…

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I enjoy a competition so here is my contribution to the National Geographic one about plastics in the sea. It's not immediately obvious that that's what it's about but stay with it. It's only 493 words. The picture is royalty free from pixabay.com…

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There's a lot of teenage romance on wattpad and even though I haven't been a teenager for a long time here is my contribution. Alice's relationship with Leo is on the rocks after they attempted to lose their virginity together and didn't quite make it. After Alice's father has had an affair, her mother Maggie takes her on holiday to Greece but it's not really the kind of holiday she had in mind. I orginally posted part one as a stand alone short story but after I got a follower I started thinking about how the story might continue and I've now completed 7 chapters which is where I've stopped for now.The path of true love never runs smooth and after meeting Pieter in Greece Alice certainly has to overcome a few bumps along the way before she can get home to Leo.The cover is part of a watercolour that I did of Paleochora in Crete. Paleochora isn't exactly like the village in the story but there are some similarities.…

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Peter, Mark and Cleopas meet up 30 years after the crucifixion. If you like it feel free to use this play but let me know if you do.…

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This is the true story of a dog apparently fed up with wandering the streets of Athens all day who decided to give itself a purpose in life. I have to confess to "borrowing" the picture off the internet but the dog shown here is very similar to the one I saw.…

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I wrote this for an online competition which required Vinegar Taxes and Carpenter to be included in a story of less than 500 words. Unfortunately I forgot to send it in before the deadline which was a pity because I thought it was quite good so instead I will share it with you here…

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Six children growing up on a distant planet start to have the same feelings for each other that young people everywhere have but their parents haven't got round to telling them what a date is. This is an extract from a novel and is my favorite part of the story.…

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Flying across the Mississippi flood plain I could see where the river had changed it's course many times in the past and it got me thinking about how the people who used to live an that region had to adapt to where the river was instead of trying to keep it in one place as we do today. It wasn't much of an idea to start with but I've enjoyed the way the story developed as I pushed it around the page and turned it over in my head. The people in the story are not supposed to represent any particular historical group and the details of their way of life and religious beliefs are imaginary.…

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In a poetry class we were given the task of either rewriting a poem as prose or converting a piece of prose to a poem. So here's my take on George Orwell's 1984 summarised as a short poem.…

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This story has been developed from an idea by mercuryocean . If you visit her page you will see her original outline which I have used with her permission. Paul and Pamela are deeply in love but their relationship is limited by the moral strictures of the 1950s until they can marry. After falling asleep in a park Paul awakes to find that he is in the 21st century without Pamela and has to turn to the shockingly liberated Zoe for help. But what has happened to Pamela and can they ever be reunited?…

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This is a little poem that I did in 2012 looking at the effect of technological developments on relationships…

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Here is what I wrote in 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.…

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If you slept with a ghost would that be cheating? But is this a ghost story or is something else going on? The cover is a picture of some quince flowers growing in my garden. If you want to know the significance of that read on.…

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This story is adapted from an episode in a novel that I wrote and exists in several versions of which this is the shortest. However someone suggested that I could write an even shorter version that brought the reader more directly into the action so I'm going to give it a go. I also wondered if I could develop the idea to be a full length novel on it's own rather than just a sub plot but that might be taking things too far. In spite of the title this is not really a ghost story but rather looks at what would happen if you really could record your mind into a computer and, as Ross put it in Friends "Live forever as a machine." But the consequences of being able to do that might be more difficult to live with than first meets the eye.…

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Steve longed to meet the girl he talked to at the call centre. But things don't turn out quite like he expected.…