The New Girl: NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2

So...it's the second installment of the Flash Fiction Challenge that I entered. And...I sucked it up big time on this one.

Comedy is really hard!

Here are all of the entries if you'd like to read them. They are located in the following forum:

You have to register/sign in to read them.

So...this is the second round. My group was given:
Comedy genre/Luxury Spa/Exit Sign

Here's my entry:

The New Girl

The Waiting Room: NYCMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge

I recently took a break from chewing through the plot of my novel to enter my first writing contest--and I'm so glad I did. It's been incredibly enriching to read other authors and their stories, and it's been nice to get away from my turning and turning and scratching at a plot like a dog trying to make its bed.

Here are all of the entries if you'd like to read them. They are located in the following forum:

You have to register/sign in to read them.

The premise for the contest is that contestants are broken up into 20 groups, and then given the following:
A genre/A setting that must be included/An object to be included.

The story must be under 1000 words, and you have 48 hours to complete it--in this case midnight Friday to 11:59pm Sunday night.

My group was given:
Open genre/The 13th floor of an office building/A toy soldier

Here's my entry:

The Waiting Room

Novel: My Secret Crush on George Clooney and Other Tales from the Quietest Corner of the Room

A disabled 26 year old, unable to communicate, is given the ability through new technology to develop a social life and explore a life she's never had an opportunity to explore. But, when side-effects begin to take effect, and her life is threatened, she is faced with a heartbreaking decision. To live the new life she's come to love, for however short it might be, or to risk the operation that will lengthen her life, but face a certain fate of regressing to a quality of life definitively worse than before.

First chapter: Quietest Corner»

Novel: The No More Moon

For McKenna Ryan, Ben Jacobs has always been something of a lodestar. The only child of a deeply embittered marriage, she had naturally gravitated to his family's warmth—to his parents' laughter, to his brother, Patrick, a quiet loner; and she had fallen into passionate young love with carefree, baseball-playing Ben. But on the night before their wedding, Ben inexplicably disappears—and cuts off all ties to her and to his family, changing their directions forever.

When Ben returns home to Chicago five years later, he discovers evidence that his estranged and troubled older brother has fathered and abandoned a child with McKenna. But, as Ben comes closer to uncovering the past, McKenna finds herself forced to make a choice: keep her secret to protect her daughter, or tell the truth and risk losing the only man she ever really loved.


First chapter: The No More Moon»

Short Story: Never Did Like Her

A recovering alcoholic and a newly-married pregnant woman are thrown together as their friends continue the party around them, and despite their mutual dislike for one another, find themselves developing a tenuous, if not curious, friendship.

Never Did Like Her>>

Novel: Around the Blue Star

South African soccer player, Jed Robinson, attempts to distance himself from a scandal by escaping to Chicago and focusing on the legacy school he hopes to build. When he meets gifted athlete, Nick Castle, an African-American teenager from a rural town in Michigan, he attempts to recruit him, but Nick's father, Carl, is determined that his son focus on a more lucrative sport.

Jed turns on the charm to manipulate Nick's tutor, Tessa, an overweight and plain girl, to help him speak to Carl and Nick on his behalf. But, Tessa is focused on maintaining a quiet existence to recover from a terrible tragedy and when Jed's scandal pulls her right back into the public eye, she is forced to confront her past.

First Chapter: Around the Blue Star»