Happy New Year! & A Giveaway

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Courtesy of Stuart Miles freedigitalimages

It’s 2013! Wow, how did that happen?

I hope you all had a lovely night last night 🙂

But it’s not only New Year I’m celebrating…on the 1st of January 2012 I gave myself a challenge, to Blog every single day for a year, and today, I have achieved that! GO ME!!!

So to celebrate my success I’m offering a giveaway. As regular readers will know I am a huge fan of prompts, so any books I come across that are full of prompts go straight on my shelf 😉 This one, is a gooden!

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I’m offering a free brand new copy to one lucky reader who can complete the following sentence……

Vikki rolled over and squinted at the bedside clock, it was 4am, but she’d been trying to sleep for hours.

What did I do next?

Sooooo, leave your answer in the comment box (one sentence will do) and I’ll get the hubster to pick a winner. I’m happy to send overseas by the way and I might even slip in a little extra something 😉

Awwwww, I’m going to miss blogging every day….. But it’ll take the pressure off 😉 Thank you so much for all your comments and likes over the past year. I’ve had a wonderful time. And to all my followers, thank you, most of you I don’t even know! Please leave a comment every once in a while so I can say “Hi” 🙂

Tell me, what was i doing at 4am? Try to keep it relatively clean people Lol

55 thoughts on “Happy New Year! & A Giveaway”

  1. She got up, went to her laptop and logged on–she knew that the party on LouAnn’s blog was still going on, so she joined in. A virtual cocktail or two later, a few dances, and she was ready to go back to bed and sleep the sleep of the happy, fed, and danced out. Those Canadians really know how to party!

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  2. Vikki rolled over and squinted at the bedside clock, it was 4am, but she’d been trying to sleep for hours. She slipped out of the crisp white covers and approached the window sill. Pushing back the curtains, she stared at the streets that lay in the dark; vacant and still. An eerie silence hung over the dark night and even the occasional strong gusts of wind crept with utter-serenity.
    Vikki let her mind wander, she let her imagination kick in and soon she felt herself drifting off to sleep, still stood at the window. She crept back within the safety of her duvet and let herself dream. For the hours she would sleep would be the few hours she’d be able to escape the most daunting, most restrictive thing of all: real life.

    It’s pretty rusty writing as I’m so tired: it’s 2:38 am, but I guess it New Year so, who cares? 🙂 Oh well, it was a fun exercise despite my atrocious outcome to the prompt. I’d not like to enter it into the give away, however I might revisit this prompt at a later date.

    Happy New Year!

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  3. The shadow moved across the window again and she yelled, “get away from me!” What did it want? Why was it following her? By the time the sun speared through the gap in the curtains she would know…

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  4. Hi Vikki, it’s not like you’ve stopped blogging. We will still get out fix just not so often. You’ve changed your layout! I’ve decided to give it a go and spent a good part of yesterday trying to choose a layout. Still haven’t decided. Using both blogger and wordpress at the moment until I decide which suits me best. Hope you find less pressure now (not convinced) and more time for writing. 🙂

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  5. There was a husband-shaped empty space beside her. The 12 year old bed bought in a closing down sale had moulded to their shape of their bodies. Her husband was a neat sleeper and, although taking up more than half of the mattress he was as tidy as a pencil throughout the night, while she was a sprawler, a tosser and turner who needed the feel of his cool flesh to feel safe. It was no good, she realised swinging her legs to the floor, she just could not sleep without him. She thought of him across town stacking supermarket shelve three nights a week, behind a butcher’s counter four mornings, odd jobbing any hour he could, keeping the family together through the power in his biceps and the lop-sided smile on his face. Their story was grim reality, not the stuff of romance she thought as she turned on the light. But I have my hero and perhaps I have my story too. She walked towards the computer as ideas collided. I’m going to write our way out of this fiscal cliff she decided and I’ll start with the day we met. Her husband was right: they were going to be all right.

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  6. “How long does it take for a cat to give birth anyway?” her husband grumbled beside her half asleep.
    “What cat?” Vikki sat up suddenly alarmed. Last time she checked they definitely did not own a cat. “Do we have a cat?” she whispered half mortified. Surely she would have noticed a pregnant feline addition to her home no matter how lost in her writing she became.

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  7. She hurled herself out of bed, opened the bedroom door and looked across the landing. She watched the spare bedroom door open. As light spilled into the hallway tears spilled from her eyes. ‘I’m sorry we argued,’ she said, as her husbands handsome face came into view. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said, ‘Let’s make a New Years resolution never to go to bed on an argument.’ Vikki nodded. ‘Come to bed, she said, leading him into the marital bedroom, ‘I can’t sleep without you beside me.’ ‘Nor me without you,’ her husband said, closing the bedroom door before putting off the light.

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  9. Hours of anxiety on top of three quarters of a bottle of red had made her tongue as dry as a nun’s gusset. Despite the uncomfortable twisting of her heart, she had to smile. That was one of Dylan’s favourite sayings. Dylan… Foolish tears burned the corners of her eyes. She had to move on, but it was almost too hard bear. Silently, so as not to disturb the gently snoring form of her husband, she swung her feet to the floor and tip-toed out onto the landing. The stairs creaked slightly on her way down, reminding her of all the times they’d crept up and down in the early years, their hearts in their mouths for fear of waking the grizzly, lightly-sleeping children. Things changed; things had to change. In the moon-lit kitchen she fumbled in her bag for her mobile. No messages. Vikki stared at the screen, biting her lip. His was the last number she’d called, wishing him a Happy New Year. If he’d sounded happier to hear from her, perhaps she wouldn’t be feeling so anxious now. What if that unsatisfactory exchange turned out to be the last they ever had? The lump in her throat doubled in size. He was eighteen. He had his own social life. Not coming home didn’t mean he was lying bleeding in an alley. The phone landed back in the bag soundlessly. The glass clinked a little against the tap. Vikki stepped out of the kitchen.

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  10. But, Vikki – this is what I REALLY wanted to write…

    It was no good.
    “Dave?” she whispered, sliding her hand across the Egyptian cotton sheet. “You awake?”
    “No.”
    “Pity.” Her fingers snaked closer, finding the warmth of the skin of his thigh.
    He shifted towards her slightly but still didn’t open his eyes. “Babe,” he moaned, but it didn’t exactly sound like a complaint.
    “What?” Vikki moved closer, brushing her palm across the soft flesh of his abdomen.
    Dave’s eyes flickered open and his sleep-soaked arm landed heavily across her hips. “Again?”
    “Seems a shame not to mess up the sheets a bit more before we check out…”

    OK, it’s not quite what I wanted to write, but I’m respecting the respectability of your blog, LOL! 😉

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  11. Great post, wonderful comments too! But as this is you, Vikki, surely the first thing you did at 4am was think about having a fag ;0) Well done on a year of daily posts – fantastic achievement and I know it will stand you in great stead as you continue your writing journey… x

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  13. It was the first day of a new year, so many many things to do. Stories to write, blogs to post. How could she possibly sleep with so much possibility in front of her.

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  14. Looking around the room this wasn’t how she remembered it. What had happened? Was she in the middle of a dream and who was this man laying beside her? She’d never seen him before except on the television and in films and she’d always thought him mediocre.

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  15. She threw the covers back. Silently she padded down the steps to the kitchen. She knew what to do. A quick flick of the wrist started the tea kettle to boiling. Grabbed her favorite tea cup, the one with the delicate blue flowers. She was soon sipping a strong cup of chamomile tea as she waited for her laptop to fire up. She needed to write. Her mind was too restless for sleep.

    Her husband was still away and it would be another three days before he returned from his trip. She didn’t like how they had left things before he left. They had talked on the phone, of course, but she could never quite pour her heart out the way she could in writing. She would have the letter waiting for him. Maybe they could work things out. She needed him to return to her, but so much more than physically.

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  16. Vikki rolled over and squinted at the bedside clock. It was 4am, but she’d been trying to sleep for hours. She probably shouldn’t have had that venti triple shot Americano at 2am. Glancing at the empty coffee cup sitting on her nightstand, Vikki wondered what had even possessed her to drink caffeine that late at night. Then she shouted, “CRAP!”, leaped from her bed, and raced downstairs to finish the project that was due at 8am the next morning. Her husband chuckled, muttered, “Classic Vikki,” and fell back asleep.

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  18. Pingback: Between Us « Discovery

  19. Her conversation with Jaun a few hours before didn’t go as she’d planned. Sure he had told her about gun…and the note — the note that he would leave to the world if he ever decided to do it. I mean actually do it. Not talk about it like he had been doing for the past few years.

    She wanted him to know that she was always there for him, as a good friend should be. But somehow Jaun had taken that to mean something twisted and different…something romantic. The thought of being with him made her shudder — not that he wasn’t desirable, but he wasn’t…interesting.

    She rolled back over and stared at the droning ceiling fan. If he only knew that she was in love with his brother…then the note and the gun might have been all that was left of him. She closed her eyes both to sleep and to shut away the responsibility of holding one man’s fate in her hands.

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  20. Who was she kidding? Vikki had no intention of sleeping. Her first novel was being released in just a few hours and she wasn’t going to miss a single moment of her first day as a published novelist.

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  21. Happy New Year Vikki! Congratulations on achieving your blogging goal, that’s totally awesome. I’m afraid a 4am wake-up is so close to home (like, last night, for me) that my brain’s too addled to even think of a decent response. I know what I did, but that’s hardly appropriate for this space, LOL! Keep rocking!

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