Write a Blurb Competition, March 2006

 

Here are some of the best entries. Thanks to all who entered.

 

 

Janet is sure that her holiday to Mars can’t get any worse.  She hadn’t wanted to come anyway.  Her twin sister Connie had agreed with her.  But on the thirteenth day of their stay, strange things begin to happen.  Now she feels like her left ear is being tickled every time she thinks about leaving. 

 

It is all very strange, especially when her ear disappears completely!

 

(Prizewinner)

 

Treezy’s life, after the death of her mother, promises little in the way of adventure.  Alone, neurotic, old before her time, she counts off the remaining days of her life, in a house which still reverberates with her mother’s antagonistic presence.

 

A chance to escape presents itself in the form of Grifford Yea, the vague yet charming chairman of a local humanitarian organisation, and within a week, Treezy finds herself on a flight for north eastern Romania.

 

What awaits Treezy in the forbidding city of Bacouia?  And does she really think she can escape her dead mother so easily?

 

G White

 

(Prizewinner)

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Charlie Grey was a perfectly ordinary boy until a troll, a witch and a pixie appear in his bedroom!  Rumple the troll, Salra the witch and Finiky the pixie are not the easiest creatures to hide and live with.  After Finiky goes missing Charlie doesn’t think his life can be more difficult.  How wrong he was!

 

Chloe Robertson

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“Descent into Ecstasy” by Benjamin Harris

 

Here for the first time we have a copy of the long lost private diary of the second mate of the tea clipper “albatross”.  It details his friendship with one of the coolie overseers, who supervised the coolie labourers loading the tea cargo in Shanghai.

 

Even more importantly we have an account of his first introduction to the Shanghai opium, where his western wealth made him a valued and fated visitor.  From the euphoric ecstasy of these first visits we see in the diary his progressive addiction as opium takes its relentless hold.

 

The text degenerates, until finally he writes of being cast adrift in Shanghai by his irate captain.  The diaries themselves seem to have been sold to a Chinese merchant for one last pipe of opium.

 

Murdo McKay

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As Rachel Barnes and her fiancé stroll past a row of ancient cottages – soon to be demolished, on a whim Rachel ventures inside one and explores the interior.  At first all seems deserted but as she climbs the stairs she sees furniture and carpet and something stirs in her memory.

 

“Rachel!” her fiancé was growing impatient outside … but “Chella” a deep voice calls from the kitchen, “Chella your folk have arrived” …

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