4.01.2015

#AtoZChallenge and IWSG!

Happy April everyone!
It's going to be a busy month round these parts, what with April A-Z Challenge, and also participating in Camp NaNoWriMo. Oh, and today is Insecure Writer's Support Group as well (see bottom of post, though I encourage you to read the whole thing!).

My theme for A-Z this year is interactive fiction. So every day I will write a short bit of a story, and then my lovely readers will get the opportunity to vote for what direction they want the story to go next by leaving a comment. I have absolutely no idea where this is going to go because it is up to y'all, so it should be fun! Here we go...

A:
Amy had never been to the bazaar. She'd read about it of course, but this was her first time walking into the heady swirl of colors, music, smells and humans. And not humans. Monkeys? Eew. Frankly, it was overwhelming. Also entirely enchanting. She found herself trying to focus on just one item, one person, at a time, allowing the rest of it to wash over her.

Each time she engaged with a vendor, she gave them her entire attention. However she was indiscriminate about what booths she stopped at, and that was how she found herself poring over a table of objects of dubious origin. Her best efforts to deflect the vendor's sales pitch failed so she tuned him out with the rest of the clamor of the bazaar. Several objects on the table attracted her attention, though.

Which object should Amy inspect?
A Basket full of Bits of fabric
The Blue Bottle, decorated with riBBon and twine
The Bouquet of interesting herbs and grasses

Please vote below for your favorite option for tomorrow's bit of adventure! I will tally the votes after 8pm Mountain Time and use them to write my next post.
Voting has closed for this post! Please visit the Blue Bottle post to continue reading :)

IWSG reflection:
Last week I saw one of my favorite authors, Jacqueline Winspear, speak in Fort Collins. She ended her talk by telling us that she does not allow herself writer's block because so many have lost their lives to give us our freedom of speech:

"What a privilege to be able to make up stories for a living. There are those who would, and have, died for that privilege. If you have it, you MUST use it."

Gives new meaning to the phrase, 'I write because I must,' and was exactly what I needed to hear last week as I embarked upon writing full-time.