The Benefits of a Quickie

Ignition
By Gwen Masters
(100 words)

“Hold still,” he whispered.

“But that’s cold!”

Gentleman Jack hit my belly button. Droplets peppered my torso. One of them slipped down my side to pool on the rug. The light of the candles danced, spinning embers in the glass of the whiskey bottle. The liquor splashed between my breasts, seeped into my hair.

He poured fire into my mouth and thrust deep. Hard.

The whiskey flavored us both. He turned up the bottle and drank deeply. We began to move, deep strokes that kindled embers in the pit of my belly.

“It’s not so cold now,” he murmured.

***

I used to hate flash stories. I would chafe at the limited word count. I used to be a very wordy writer, one who went off on tangents to describe every last thing in the story. Some writers can pull it off consistently, but I'm not one of those. The result? Too many words for a story that needed less talk and more action.

Now I love flash stories. I think they are excellent tools to create better writing. In a flash story, the writer must focus on the story itself. Words have to be carefully orchestrated to get the most out of them. I tend to write dozens of 100-word flashers when I'm in the midst of a novel. When writing a word count of 80,000-120,000 words, it's easy to get lost in pastoral description, even when it comes to sex. And who wants their sex to be...well, described to death? That's boring.

I love my quickies. Think of them as you would think of an actual sexual encounter. Making love is great, fucking is good...but the quickies are the dashes of spice. They make everything else more interesting.

It's been a while...

It has definitely been a while since I posted to this blog. But I have an excuse: A new book!

I've been writing hot and heavy these last several weeks. As any writer will tell you, sometimes the stories take months to come into their own, and sometimes they just slip into this world like a baby taking its first breath and it is full-steam-ahead from there.

This one is a runaway train. It started with a bang, picked up some momentum, hit a bump or two, then smoothed out down a long, sloping hill. It's still gathering speed. I'm sure I will have time to sleep when it is done, but right now I'm just along for the ride!

I did take a day off from writing last week and spent all of it on the back of a four-wheeler, wandering through the woods, getting sunburned and loving every minute of it. That has become my favorite way to unwind, and I hope to do it a lot more often this summer.

The tornadoes that ripped through Tennessee managed to miss my house, but there are more coming tonight, so we get another spin in Mother Nature's Roulette. I love everything about storms -- the electricity in the air, the thrill of the wind picking up, the distant lightning coming closer and closer, the thunder that rattles the windows. Then comes the rain. There are few things more decadent than walking outside into my backyard in the middle of the night and greeting the deluge. I love the feeling of wet grass between my toes and water falling from every corner of the heavens to drench me from head to toe. It's sensual as hell and makes me feel like a part of nature itself.

It's funny that we've had so much rain here in Tennessee this week, and this is also the same week my new story is up on Clean Sheets. "In the Rain" is the title -- how appropriate! I hope you enjoy it. Click here to read it.

The story was inspired by Jackson Browne's "Sky Blue and Black". I love that song because the imagery is so sharp. I can taste the shore, hear the tires in the rain, feel the uncertainty and the longing. I prefer songs that really mean something, songs that make me think. When I was in high school and college, I listened to Don McLean's "The Day the Music Died" until I knew every last nuance. I loved it because it was a mystery that had something to say. Those are the best of the best songs, I think.

In addition to listening to music all the time, I'm reading quite a bit lately. I've picked up Three the Hard Way, edited by Susie Bright. William Harrison has a story in this volume. His words always draw me in. I'm also reading Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, and various newsletters and trade magazines that have been piling up in that basket underneath the endtable.

Thunder is rumbling again, so I think I will curl up with one of those books on the front porch and watch the storms roll in.