SixEleven

The Shell Case Shorts Competition

If you’ve been living under a rock recently, you’ll be well aware that recently The Shell Case ran a short story writing competition in January.. this has been followed up by another competition! This time to win a signed copy of Dan Abnett’s ‘Embedded’

I did mean to write an entry for the first competition but having seen the winning entry now, don’t think I stood a chance! Either way, I’ve decided to start writing at the last minute for this one and I’m already about 20% of the way through the word count. I’m just at that point when I’m beginning to think I should stop writing and go and work out a structure of some sort as the story is floundering.. anyway, I thought I’d share a cheeky little snippet of the work in progress for you:

A young blonde man stepped from an opening in the opposite wall, with a short sword in one hand and a pistol in the other.

“Nothing down here but a dead end and some gnawed bo… what’s going on here? Getting a bit jumpy are we Mikael?”

Karl stared pointedly at the empty crossbow in Mikael’s hands.

“It was nothing, I saw a rat… a normal rat I mean… for target practice” – Karl didn’t look convinced with this lie, the raised eyebrows and cocksure grin said as much.

“Well maybe you need more practice, I don’t see that you’ve hit anything! Besides, you may need your quarrels later on, try not to waste any”

Usual disclaimers apply.. i.e. I’m a terrible terrible writer and it’ll probably sound incredibly ham fisted when re-read. Comments and criticism are more than welcome!

edit: Phil has increased the deadline for the competition, entries must now be in by the 29th of February! Gives me a bit more time to piece together my story :)