Fifteen Precious Minutes by R. Brownell

*Here's the short story I used to enter a contest to win Hourglass by Myra McEntire. The point was to write about time-travel in 500 words or less, I came up with it in 45 minutes with 499 words*

 

Fifteen Precious Minutes 

By R. Brownell  

   She was too late, that’s what bothered her the most. She was someone who had always set every clock fifteen minutes ahead, just to be on time. It had always worked in the past, but now rushing time just seemed silly. No matter how far ahead your clock is you can never change what you missed during those precious minutes, minutes that could change a person’s life forever. 

                   ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

                     

    “Go back and change it,” he demanded.

    “You know I can’t do that, it’s against the rules. Something can only be changed in the moment it happens. You can’t change the past, it’s impossible.”

    The wind whirled around seventeen year old Meredith Montgomery’s hair. It sounded like she had been sucked deep into the vortex of a horrific storm. She could hear her brother Kyle’s voice just barely above all the noise.

    “If you don’t believe me then why are you trying,” those were the last words she heard as the vortex sucked her through back to the morning of the meeting. 

Love writing contests

I just officially posted "Vampire Prom" on Meg Cabot's writing club forums. It was only the prom scene, because of the limited number of words I was allowed. I am going to post the full story very soon. I will be submitting it into Novel Novice's Writing Prompt contest, "flashbacks". I chose to use "Vampire Prom" because the entire story is based on flashbacks. As soon as I edit it, I first am going to send it to my self-published friend, who's e-book over easy can be found on Lulu.com (here's a link)  Over Easy by Beth Ellyn,   
, because she is my inspiration and she's always awesome about reading my stories and helping me out. (Yes Beth you will find out on here that I am sending the story your way tehe) 

But as soon as I get her valued opinion I will be posting it here and sending it for the Prompt contest on Novel Novice. 

Another contest that's due at the end of June which is also located on the Novel Novice website is a contest to win a new book. The book is Hourglass by Myra McEntire, about a "time-slip". So the contest is to write a short story about time-travel. I have to cram all of my ideas into 250-500 words, this should be a challenge but I am so up for it. 

So that's where I am at right now. My new goal if I choose to follow is to find contests with writing prompts to strengthen my writing. It seems like a challenge, but I think it will help me keep my mind off of the crap going  through my head right now. 

Maybe in my next entry I will have an excerpt from the un-edited copy of my time-travel short story. For now, it's just me blabbing on about useless information that no one is probably reading. 

Signing off with some.... Peace, Love & Bulletproof Marshmallows (yeah Zac I stole your quote mwahahaa)

An Excerpt from "Vampire Prom"

Here is another excerpt from the "Vampire Prom", I finally finished and posted it on the Meg Cabot message boards for a contest. I will have the rest up when I am finished editing.

Carefully he placed his hand gently on her cheek and like he’d done that night of her sweet sixteen, softly his fingers stroked her face. He leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. She was trembling again, so he held her tighter. When they pulled apart, she felt a sense of déjà vu…

                                           

                                     

A Writing Frenzy ...

I love when I can form ideas from contest guidelines. I discovered today that Meg Cabot has a message board. (Author Of Princess Diaries and her newest book Abandon) There are forums for young writers and in the forums they have contests. I came across one and the rules stated it had to be only 1000 words, and you could choose PROM or GREEK MYTHOLOGY ... I chose Prom.... a vampire prom.... but not just any vampire prom...I shall not spoil the rest.

Well anyway... it's late so I suggest you check back another time and maybe, just maybe I'll have the full story for you. I am excited to share it. On a sad note it turned out way too long to enter in the contest, but there are plenty of other contests it could be used for. 

Once again I say: 
Peace, Love and Bulletproof Marshmallows (ZH)  

*For my readers I leave you with a quote from Vampire Prom* 

"Only in my wildest dreams, but you see the thing is that I knew that you were real, I always did."

Writing isn't just a hobby .. it's a way of life

I absolutely <3 writing. It all started in the fifth grade, Mrs. Powell had to be the most inspirational teacher that I had ever had. She introduced me to writing, we even had time set aside in that class to write. Ever since then you could always find me with a notebook and pencil in hand, either writing fan fictions to my favorite movies, or about my favorite music groups; or writing some stories with my original ideas. (Which I think I'll try to post some, they can be quite amusing) Anyway, Once I got a computer with the most basic word based program you would catch me writing for hours on end in my room as well.

I am now 26 and about sixteen years later you can still catch me carrying around notebooks in my bag, or sitting in front of the computer jamming down on the keys with a flow of ideas. 

Everyone has periods of writers block, I get them often but usually bounce back. Right now I am currently writing what will hopefully be a book. It has almost been a year since I have started writing. For the first few months I was avidly working on it, I got over 250 pages written. I strayed away from the project for a while trying out new ideas but no other idea could go as far as this one did. I don't know how many pages it has reached now with my random additions and revisions, but it's going really well. 

Without saying too much it's basically about your average teenage girl ... here comes even more of a cliche, who finds out about the powers that she holds. A little Harry Potter except they don't need wands and spells to do magic. She get's sent to a school with a rich/beautiful roommate and stuck between the bad-ass and the normal guy. That's all I can really say, it sounds pretty terrible putting it that way, there is sooo much more to it and I wish I could write it all here but I'd prefer for the full details to not be on the internet. 

I think the reason I finally was able to get back into the swing of the story was due to the advice I was given by an author, she told me to ALWAYS write the ending first so that you know where you are going. I have to say that is the best advice I have received regarding ways to actually finish writing things I have started. The second I wrote out the ending scene everything in the middle clicked into place. So if I were to give advice to any of you out there wanting to write, know your ending and try to write it all out, it's definitely a helpful guide, and you can always change things as your story progresses. 

Enough with the chit chat, I don't want to bore you anymore to death than I am now. I always say I am going to keep up with a BLOG but never do, I hope to change that with this one, which is what I said with the last one. I do have plenty to write about/complain about, but I figure who would want to read my rants, but if you are reading this then I guess I am doing something write. *ha* 

For now I will go Back to writing a new scene for my book that came up while re-writing one of my other scenes. 

Stay tuned for more blogs, maybe next time I'll rant and rave about something... but for now this is it.... 

Peace, Love & Bulletproof Marshmallows 
(I used to end all of my Hanson newsletters with this, it's a Hanson thing)

<3 Jina <3