Welcome to the eighteenth in the series: 5pm Fiction.
Late April 2011 I discovered http://StoryADay.org and the project that is to write 31 stories in 31 days. Anyone who knows me or follows this blog, knows how passionate I am about short stories so my clichéd eyes lit up at this new marvel. And just a few days later there I was, breathing life into new characters. This went on to become (with some editing of course) my 31-story collection eBook Story A Day May 2011.
I was nearing completion of the 2012 project when I decided that I didn’t want to stop at the end of May so 5PM Fiction was born. I put a load of prompts on the 5PM Fiction page and today’s prompt was to write a story starting ‘Listening to the orchestra, Billy’, but just to spice it up, I thought I’d make it a 110-word sentence as Gabriel Valjan mentioned in our recent interview. So here is my 110-worder. Let me know if you think it works (or not). 
An Alien Hum
Listening to the orchestra, Billy couldn’t quite put his finger on what was wrong, the melody soothing as it was, the violinist perhaps or the cello, both musicians concentrating on the conductor, as Billy usually did, but today he scanned each instrument in turn, knowing the stroke of each note so intimately, Eric Satie’s Gnossiene no. 1 an all-time favourite, though today there was an alien hum, an extra instrument perhaps, but as he looked around he felt a tap on his shoulder and heard his wife, who was swatting away a summer bee from her floral dress, telling him it was time to come into the shade for lunch.
So, it was all a dream, usually a no-no in fiction… I think I can be forgiven, just this once?
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Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them) on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are fortnightly episodes, usually released on Sundays, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.
