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#SoCS Feb. 20, 2021 – Nerve

20 Feb 2021 43 Comments

by Ritu in #SoCS Tags: #SoCS, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, nerves, Stream Of Consciousness Saturday

Linda’s #SoCS prompt this week:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “nerve.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!

It really gets on my nerves, you know, how some people are still spouting about COVID-19 and all it’s global implications being a hoax, or a conspiracy theory. Or, that they have lockdown fatigue, and genuinely don’t care anymore, so are beginning to flout rules.

You guys. You are the ones who might end up pushing us back into more lockdowns, if you can’t understand how this thing works. Yes, it’s a virus, and there are plenty out there, but, like various illnesses, they vary in severity, and this one, well, we all know how awful it is.

Just look at the death rates, and way hopsital ICUs are packed. Or take a look at the long term side effects that some people are suffering from: Long Covid. Previously healthy folk, reduced to shells of themselves.

At least we have this vaccine. It might help a little. We may need one annually, but hey, if it gets us out of this mess, I’m game.

Shame not everyone is.

Jsut last night, Lil Man and I were out for a walk and as we walked through town, a woman passed a man she knew. She called out “You getting your vaccination, then?”

His response? “The f*** I am!” He gave her the middle finger salute and waltzed off.

I actually write a huge amount more, but had to delete it because I was getting too het up.

Seriously, my nerves are frayed, now!

(I’m glad I wrote this last night, because I wouldn’t want to spend Saturday wound up, since it’s Lil Princess’s birthday, today!)

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Feb. 20, 2021

February 18: Flash Fiction Challenge – Purpose

19 Feb 2021 43 Comments

by Ritu in #CarrotRanch Tags: 99-Word Fiction, Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Carrot Ranch, Flash Fiction

The Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction Challenge:

February 18, 2021, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story where a character is in the right place at the right time. It may be cause for celebration! Go where the prompt leads!

We All Have A Purpose

Walking home, shoulders slumped, I wondered what my purpose was.

No one really needed me. What use was I?

Might as well just keep walking, until I walked off a cliff. No one would miss me.

A sound caught my ear.

A whimper.

I looked around. No one.

Another little yelp brought me closer to a box.

The flap was open, and inside I found him. The runt of the litter, left, abandoned.

He looked up at me with those eyes, and it was in that moment I realised that I did have someone to live for, after all.

February 18: Flash Fiction Challenge

The Little Ice Cream Shop By The Sea by @Lizzie_Chantree #BlogTour

18 Feb 2021 12 Comments

by Ritu in Blog Tours, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blog Tour, Blogger, Blogging, Lizzie Chantree, New Book, The Little Ice Cream Shop By The Sea

I am delighted to welcome the very talented, and generally very lovely Lizzie Chantree to my blog today, to introduce her new book, releasing tomorrow!

Over to you, Lizzie!

Why did you choose the setting you chose and do the locations hold any real life significance to you?I chose this setting because I’m from Essex and the coastline is beautiful here. I’ve always wanted to write a local story and I was sitting in a little cafe by the sea, when an elderly lady came in, sat down and began crying. The young waitress rushed up to comfort her and they spoke for quite a while. After the lady left the waitress told me they had only just met, which it made me think about the kindness of strangers. The cafe I was in was beautiful and had been family owned for generations. I wondered what would happen if they all fell into a state of disrepair and a story grew from there. The little ice cream shop by the sea is about unexpected friendships through the generations and how family heritage can sometimes mean more to some than others.
This story has a bankrupt celebrity chef in it who flies in to protect his grandmother. What made you think of this character?
Cal has had such success but overstretched his business and his world collapsed around him, so he’s been hiding and licking his wounds. Hearing about the ice cream shop owner, Genie, and her new friendship with his grandmother, he decides that Genie must be after his family money and rushes to protect his grandmother, Ada. He doesn’t realise that a few of his actions make the cracks in Genie’s relationship with her own parents even deeper and he uncovers a family secret he really wishes he hadn’t.

Blurb

From the international bestselling author of If you love me, I’m yours, Ninja School
Mum and Babe Driven.
Genie’s family is in crisis. Their seafront business is failing with the loss of Genie’s
grandmother and her legendary ice cream flavours. Genie is determined to be the one to save
her family’s heritage, but suddenly her mother wants to sell to developers and leave their shared
history behind.
Buying the business and taking on a sixty-eight year old business partner, Ada, with a
mysterious past and a gorgeous but distracting grandson, Genie sets out to prove her parents
wrong.
Ada’s grandson, Cal, wants to protect his gran from ‘pensioner persuader’, Genie, but soon
realises that living in a little seaside town and away from the paparazzi in Hollywood can actually
give him time to heal. Hiding in a seafront business with its fiery owner and working as kitchen
staff, is the only way he can think of to keep his ex-Hollywood glamour-puss, gran from harm.
But his meddling might also ruin Ada’s second chance at love.
Hiring a private detective and learning about Genie’s parent’s past makes Cal regret his own
impulsiveness. The information he has unearthed could destroy their blossoming romance and
turn Genie’s world upside down.
Genie soon discovers that friends can become enemies and your closest family can have lied to
you for your whole life.

Book links: Lizzie Chantree.

Universal book buy link for The little ice cream shop: viewbook.at/IceCreamShopByTheSea

Universal book buy link: Networking for writers: viewbook.at/NetworkingForWriters

Universal book buy link: If you love me, I’m yours: viewbook.at/IfYouLoveMe-ImYours

Universal book buy link: Ninja School Mum: viewBook.at/NinjaSchoolMum

Universal book buy link: Babe Driven: viewbook.at/BabeDriven

Universal book buy link: Love’s Child: viewBook.at/Amazon-LovesChild

Universal book buy link: Finding Gina: viewbook.at/FindingGina

Bio
International bestselling author Lizzie Chantree, started her own business
at the age of 18 and became one of Fair Play London and The Patent
Office’s British Female Inventors of the Year. She writes books full of
friendship and laughter, about women with unusual businesses, who are
stronger than they realise.

Social media links:

Romantic reads by Lizzie Chantree

Website: www.lizziechantree.com

Author page: https://www.viewAuthor.at/LizzieChantree

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Lizzie_Chantree

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LizzieChantree/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7391757.Lizzie_Chantree

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizzie_chantree/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/LizzieChantree/pins/

FB Groups: https://www.facebook.com/groups/647115202160536/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lizzie-chantree

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizzie-chantree-03006425/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnCop-RlAcGqggZG3JfE-Mw

Sobering Spirits #FlashFiction

18 Feb 2021 33 Comments

by Ritu in Fiction Tags: Blog, Blog Post, Blogger, Blogging, Flash Fiction, Sobering Spirits

A little silly story from me!

Sobering Spirits!

Now, this is a situation I’ve never been in, before.

I’ve worked at plenty of conferences, in my time: A bunch of stuffy business-people, meant to be listening to the pearls of wisdom of the overpaid speakers, instead, talking over one another, filled with self-importance.

Then their evening ‘dos’.

The cheap alcohol flows and minimal food means that we are left trying to empty the venue of extremely drunk folk more often than not.

I’m used to it now. To be honest, it’s ruined my enjoyment of a good drink.

Tonight, however, we had a unique gathering of individuals. I can’t really call them people. More, erm, ‘beings’.

You see today we had the first-ever Spirit Spooktacular event; there were ghoulish ‘spookers’, spectres, phantoms – basically, I was in a room full of ghosts.

It was impossible at the door.

They have no idea about queueing.

No, I lie. Some did, but there were the ones who simply floated through the queue and went in. One or two floated through the walls straight into the hall!

And there was absolutely no point in us having a seating structure for them either. They hovered, or suspended themselves wherever they saw fit, to listen to whichever spook was spooking!

It was the evening event though, that really got me.

What a bunch of lightweights.

The thing is, spirits are not designed to ingest spirits. Or any alcohol.

I know how to get most drunken humans to sober up; by giving them a bit of food, water, fresh air, and on occasion, I have been known to pour said water over certain stubborn heads (but don’t tell my boss!) – it works.

But not for sobering spirits up.

For a start, they don’t eat. I was surprised they drank, to be honest.

And the thing with being a ghost, you don’t have a body, so it only took a couple of sips for their vapours to become intoxicated.

I can reach a drunk person, laying on the floor, or sat, propped up on a chair. But what do you do with the spirits who are drunkenly floating up against the ceiling?

We needed to clear the hall and set up for the next day’s event. I’m not sure whether the estate agents would appreciate ghostly residue during their conference – though maybe they wouldn’t mind. After all, some had to sell haunted houses…

Back to now, though.

Anyone? Got experience with sobering spirits?