Thursday 8 December 2011

Featured Writer - Challenge No 26 - Response to Image - The House in the Snow

Hi all! Great to be back and writing stories/poems for RFWer isn't it? Just finished my second sweep in quest of a winner for Featured Writer. I heartily plead with you if you have not disallowed 'Word Verification' please help your readers out by getting rid of it. It really serves no purpose other than to slow down your speedy commenters.

Welcome to our new followers. I hope you tippy toed around and read some entries and gained enough confidence to join us for our theme Sparkle! on December 16. I'm polishing my baubles in readiness!

I'm trialling a poll this week. It may be a bit of a dud as I didn't get the word around early enough, but I hope to poll you all on your choices in future. I know it's tempting to just vote for yourself, and that's okay if you really think yours was the best story. To overcome that I've been researching different polls and found one where we can have two votes. The Blogger Poll is very basic - allows one or multiple! (Postscript: Yes, a bit of a dud as only half voted when I went to air and no doubt some self votes there).

So, to our entries this week. The image conjured up largely atmospheric pieces. It was great reading the many and varied descriptions, along with misty characters. Thank you all so much for hours of reading pleasure. Being an Aussie from Queensland in the north/east of Oz, snow is strictly reserved for trips to Europe in the northern winter, of which I've had a few. Even been in a blizzard from Brussels to Luxembourg. Will never forget that! Magical! Whoops, sidetracked. Most of you are quite familiar with snow, especially at Christmas.

As always, it was terribly difficult to narrow down the wonderful entries to two sparkling ones. Most entries had atmosphere, great characters, some romance, some nostalgia, er, and some ghostly apparitions.


I must give an honourable mention to Anna, whose story this week was so great. Anna, participating in RFWer has improved your writing remarkably. I'd be enchanted if you took the Encouragement Award again this week for your sweet and mystical story of Jakob and Jenny.

Now to runner up. Maybe because it resonated with me with the idea of experiencing a different kind of Christmas, yet hot and steamy in the cold clime. I loved the sensual goodness of Kerrin Hearfield's Snowed In. Congratulations Kerrin for a wonderful response to image. Please take the Runner Up badge for your blog.


Featured Writer this week goes to a traditional story of mistletoe, the heart-rending yet heart-warming story of two lost souls finding each other. Yes, Nancy William's story of Jane and Martin touched me. Nancy is a fine writer and her story zoomed to the top of my chart. Nancy, please take the Featured Writer badge for your blog. I'll be adding your story to our Featured Writer page.

I thought the quality was very good this week, maybe because there was more time to think about our stories/poems. I won't forget Adura's 'misled toes' for awhile, or Li's poignant story of homecoming, the romance of a place. We saw Andy speak with a somewhat different edgy voice this week with his cruel lover. And Donna's creepy ghost story will have me looking over my shoulder should I be renting a Christmas Cottage, lol. Everyone, you are such a great group of writers. I can't mention you all, heck, why not - Marsha, your story enchanted me, Roland, loved your Inn at the End of the World, Ballerina's Smile, a beautiful sensuous poem, Francine, as always your historical romance sweeps me away and I quite liked my little girl and her Dada. There were many potential winners this week! Can't wait to see you Sparkle!

Have a great writing week.

Looking forward to your entries for Sparkle! on December 16!

Denise (L'Aussie)

12 comments:

  1. Hello Denise & fellow RFWers.
    Congratulations to Nancy, Kerrin & Anna!

    I agree about word verification (I had to check to make sure I didn't have it on). When you have a lot of blogs to go through, it does indeed get annoying. I can honestly say I've probably only ever had 4 or 5 instances of spam.

    See you soon for "Sparkle!"

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  2. Thanks for agreeing Andy. I've only ever had one spam (know I shouldn't speak too soon) but that was when I had WV on! Blogger now has good spam protection on comments.

    Looking forward to your sparkly poem!

    Denise

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  3. Oh and thank you to the mystery voter who came in late and voted for my story. So sweet.

    Denise

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  4. Congratulations to Kerrin and Anna. They truly had wonderful stories. I am thrilled that you all loved my story. I did vote, but I never vote for myself so three of you loved mine. Thank you, thank you.

    As an added tidbit. Many of you know how sick I have been. One night after looking at the cottage and thinking about writing a story I went to bed with a fever and dreamt my little story up. I have never done that before. LOL
    Nancy

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  5. Congrats to Nancy, Kerrin and Anna. Well deserved. A lovely weekend to you all. Oh, there's still Friday - TGIF soon!

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  6. Congrats to the winners! Yay! Just dropped by for a quick hello.

    I'm feeling the pressures of Christmas and I may be getting a nasty cold bug :O(

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  7. Hi,

    Congrats Nancy! All the best to Anna and Kerrin.

    Must say I would hope no one took it upon themselves to go for a self-vote, though in truth any voting system is open to manipulation!

    Denise: I'm not posting for "in-it-to-win-it" so always count me out on that aspect of the challenges. I'm only posting to support the group! ;)

    best
    F

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  8. awesome, thanks Denise! are you able to email a larger pic of the runner up please. when i click on it it is tiny and it won't resized.
    kerrinhearfield@hotmail.com
    Cheers!

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  9. Hey Kerrin, I've resized it by 100. I hope it's big enough for you now.Let me know if you need it any bigger.

    Denise

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  10. And Nancy, that is an amazing story. No wonder it was so good.

    Thanks again to all those who took the time to vote. Looks like the People's Choice that we have was for Nancy too.

    Denise

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  11. Kerrin: It's the one in the sidebar.

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  12. Dear Denise,
    Thank you, thank you for the encouragement award and for the 'fair dinkum' award too!
    Congratulations to Nancy Williams for her well-deserved featured-writer-award and to Kerrin Hearfield for the runner-up award!
    There are so many good texts for this challenge. It was fun fun/uplifting/delightful/heartwrenching to read all of the posts.

    Dear Nancy,
    Hope you are feeling better. Amazing that you dreamed about your story first! It shows just how 'in gear' your imagination is!

    Best wishes to all RFWers,
    Anna
    Anna's RFW challenge No 26 picture prompt

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