#BlogTour-‘A Story A Day May’ by Morgen Bailey

About the book…

This collection was written from a variety of prompts supplied by storyaday.org and originally published on Morgen’s blog (morgenbailey.wordpress.com – where you can still read the list of prompts), during May 2011, 2012, and 2013.

In this book there are stories of revenge, overcoming obstacles, newfound and lost love, shopping, chocolate, legends of history, and the occasional alien or two.

We have crimes afoot, writer’s block, characters with and without friends, homages, humans and non-humans, scratches, squeaks and barks.From Chelsea buns to casseroles, we share the highs and lows, but the stories all go to show what can be done with a prompt, a few hours, and a colourful imagination…

Today I am thrilled to be sharing one of these stories with you!
Here is ‘Too Beautiful For Words‘, I hope you enjoy it!

 

While all around her bustles, Evelyn McHale lies serene. Still clutching the pearls, a recent gift from her fiancé, she is as elegant in death as in life.

A crowd gathers but she’s too beautiful for words. They wait… not for her to move, they know she won’t, can’t, after a fall like that.

A man, unknown to the others, takes a photograph, the click the only noise, sets someone talking, then voices become a low buzz.

The man rushes off to his darkroom, eager to catch the evening news then tomorrow’s first edition.

A siren laments in the distance as if to know its prey.

*

A woman returns to her car in the busy urban street but struggles to get through the crowd. As she pushes people aside she sees the black sleek metal crumpled, moulded itself around the body of a woman, just a few years younger than herself. She wants to scream but knows it’s the wrong thing to do. No one around her is reacting, just talking in whispers, pointing to her car and the woman it’s cradling.

She looks up to the Empire State Building imagining the woman’s flight. It would have been silent, the scream as missing then as now.

She wonders what had made her so desperate, what had been taken away from her to leave her no choice. Would she have felt free as she fell? A band of quiet between streams of strangers, those she left behind becoming smaller as those approaching grew.

As she fell into the clutches of aluminium, would she have felt safe? Would she have felt at all?

Blue lights flash behind the woman and a policeman talking to her. She just wants to get in her car and drive home, return to her husband, tell him she’s fine, that she wasn’t the woman who threw herself from their local tourist attraction.

And that’s what she’s become. Her, the woman, and their car. Both as attached to it as each other. She knows both will be separated and never see either again, none of them recovering from the impact of such an event.’

I don’t know about you but I have chills!
Please check out Morgen’s book and her social media links below, you won’t be disappointed!

About the author…

Morgen Bailey (Morgen with an E) is an author (of novels, short stories, writing and editing guides), freelance editor (for publishers and indie authors), writing tutor (in person and online), Writers’ Forum magazine ‘Competitive Edge’ columnist, blogger, speaker, and co-founder of Northants Authors.

The former Chair of three writing groups, she has judged the H.E. Bates Short Story Competition, RONE, as well as the BBC Radio 2, BeaconLit, and Althorp Literary Festival children’s short story competitions.

She also runs her own monthly 100-word competition. 2018 events include talks and workshops at Troubador’s Self Publishing Conference speakers, workshops and panels at Delapre Book Festival, interviewing and workshops at BeaconLit, and NAWG Fest with her ‘Editing your Fiction’ weekend residential course.

Morgen can be found on Twitter, Facebook, and many others. Her blog is http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com, and email address morgen@morgenbailey.com.

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