Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors, where writers share 8-10 sentences from their WIP for from a current writing project, published or unpublished, then visit other participants and offer opinions, critiques, support.
I went on a bit of an unofficial/unintended hiatus from blogging in the last 6 weeks or so of 2019, but I’m back now. I have a lot of goals, which you can read about here. I’ve been writing short stories for the last little while, and I’m still doing that. One of my goals is to submit stories to at least four competitions or anthologies throughout 2020. The one I’m working on at the moment is for Cantina Publishing’s Silk & Steel: An Adventure Anthology of Queer Ladies.
In this story, my two ladies participate in a sport wherein contestants in teams of two have to distract a dragon long enough for one of them to steal its egg. Helena and Tori are the favourites in this year’s competition. I haven’t written a whole lot yet, so this is from right at the beginning. Helena is nervous, and Tori has been trying to calm her for the last few minutes.
“Hey,” she says. “We’ve got this. There’s a reason we’re the favourites.” She moves her head to catch Helena’s eye. “Right?”
Helena chews her bottom lip again. It’s downright adorable. “Right,” she finally admits.
“Kiss me for luck?”
Helena smiles as she looked up, and that and her kiss is all the luck that Tori needs.
Helena is definitely the silk while Tori is the steel. I’m looking forward to exploring their relationship more. Who knows, maybe this will turn into a bigger project.
See you all next week!
Emily Wrayburn 
Just an observation . . . the speech patterns of these two sound quite contemporary. Intentional?
LikeLiked by 1 person
That is intentional, yes. Moments before this, Tori takes Helena’s phone off her because she’s working herself up looking at websites about the other teams. I was initially going to try for steampunk but I’ve never written that before and got stuck pretty quickly.
The title of the anthology feels like it leans more towards steampunk/traditional fantasy type things, but they have said that any time period or speculative genre is welcome, so I’m giving it a go this way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a good beginning. Their chemistry works well. I agree with Ed, but it might be taking place present-day in an alternate reality. 🙂 Good luck with your submissions!
Do you subscribe to Authors Publish Magazine? Free–and they send emails listing publishers accepting submissions. Occasionally they send a list of contests, too. https://www.authorspublish.com/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for the link! Iw as not familiar with the magazine at all. I’ll definitely check it out and probably sign up.
And yeah, it is a contemporary story. It’s clearer in context, when the characters are on their phones and that sort of thing.
LikeLike
I love it so far!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Stealing dragon eggs is a game? Sounds a tad risky. Very fun snippet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Probably more than a tad! Though you’ve just made me realise that I currently don’t have anything in there about how they deal with fire breath. That’s probably something I should include!
LikeLike
A good beginning, I think! Enjoyed the excerpt and want to see more of these two ladies…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I like the premise, Emily! I can’t see anything to critique in your snippet. And how did I miss that #WeWriWa is a thing now? How do I get in on this?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Lyn. 🙂
Just sign up each week at the website. Your post has to be up by 9am Sunday EST, which is… I don’t know, probably Monday morning for us. But I usually see if I’m up to it on Saturday and sign up and post during Sunday.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Stealing an egg from anything is risky enough, but a dragon? I hope these two adorable gals are also as good as they clearly believe themselves to be.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fortunately some of the more dangerous dragon traits have been bred out of them, such as fire-breathing. But they’re still very large and have a lot of teeth and claws.
What the characters haven’t quite put two and two together about yet is the fact that the government is using them to capture eggs for their breeding programs so that no one else has to. My current novel-lenght project started life as a short stoyr; I have a vague feeling this might be the next one. 🙃😆
LikeLiked by 1 person