Hello! Welcome to Blog Battle, a weekly writing prompt competition! If you haven’t already, check out the rules (more like instructions on how to participate & have fun).
Winning story for the week will earn this badge! 🙂 BUT that’s not all! One of our talented authors, Cathleen Townsend, has kindly offered her time, experience, and expertise to help make that winning story even better by giving the winner a free critique. If your story wins you can contact Cathleen by clicking here. She’s tough but kind!
**Last Week’s Winner: Cool Customer by The Urban Spaceman**
Post your story to your blog any time on Tuesday until Midnight PST (there is a grace period into Weds morning, so just let me know if you are late getting it done). Throughout the course of the day, we’ll add the links (to your blog w/story title) here.
This Week’s Story WORD theme: Bribery
This week’s Story GENRE style: FREE CHOICE
STORIES:
**The Bribe and the Bargain by Mark Templar
Whispers by The Urban Spaceman
Healing by Phoenix Grey
One Reason to Smile by Rachael Ritchey
A Calculating Man by David Williamson
Of Coming Home by Beaton M.
PS If I’m missing your story, just leave me a comment to let me know!
Read all the stories & PLEASE VOTE for your top 3 favorites.
Click here for the Instructions for Participation!
To find out the next battle info click THEME & GENRE on the main menu
You have until the next Monday at midnight EST (9 PM PST / 5 AM GMT Tues) to read the submitted stories & vote for your top three. Please consider the expert use of the theme word when choosing.
BlogBattle 
Thought I would give this a go. Great idea! Hope it’s not too late.
https://marktemplar.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/the-bribe-and-bargain/
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Hey Mark! I’m all about flexibility. We’ll add you in ASAP. 🙂 Welcome to the battle!
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I really like the set up of Blog Battles and like participating in them. I get to step out of my comfort zone for these prompts and stretch my writing muscles (and a few other cliches). 😉 Really, the only reason I’m not participating is time. I’ve been struggling to keep up with everything. I miss Blog Battles. Hope to be returning soon.
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I figure it’s “life” for most of us, that gets in the way of doing blog battles. They’re not as quick as some of the others for word count and style, so they might take more thought and effort, especially when it comes to the reading part. But it’s so good for me to keep at it, I can’t see myself letting go of battles any time soon. I just wish I had more time to devote to them to make them awesomely irresistible. 🙂 You know?
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I do know. I really do.
I wish I had time to do a lot of things I’d like to do. The time and effort I put into these stories, though, have resulted in some pretty cool pieces. I don’t want to let go of this, either.
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Same here. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Fiction by Rachael Ritchey and commented:
Read and Vote, my friends. 🙂
On another note: What keeps you from participating in Blog Battles?
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Pingback: Of Coming Home | Becoming The Muse
Yay! 😀
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If it’s not too late or too long (it is), here’s my entry for this week.
http://davidmwilliamson.net/2017/04/19/blogbattle-entry-a-calculating-man/
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No! Not tooooo late! YAY! 🙂 Thanks for writing a piece for the battle this week, David. 🙂
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Just out of curiosity, what’s the maximum word limit you’ll accept? I’ll massacre my darlings brutally to keep them under the word limit (also, I’m kinda lazy, so if I can tell a story in 500 words rather than 5000, then yay!) but there are times when I feel like I’m pruning an occasional word just for brevity.
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Welllllll….I say 1000, but that’s just a guideline. It’s just up to that amount, but if you GO OVER, that’s okay too. Just not by like more than say 250 words or so. 🙂 Or 500….I don’t count! haha
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Ahh, cool. I’m rather tough with pruning but it’s good to know there’s a bit of flexibility if one of my stories refuses to budge below 1000. 🙂
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Pingback: One Reason to Smile #BlogBattle 15 “Bribery” – Fiction by Rachael Ritchey
Reblogged this on All About Writing and more.
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Done: https://theurbanspaceman.net/2017/04/18/whispers-flash-fiction/
Also, something on this site is making my anti-virus go crazy. It’s related to an untrusted certificate on Carl Bystrom’s site (maybe a dodgy link somewhere?) however, when I go to Carl’s site directly, it’s perfectly fine. Might just be my AV being a little over-sensitive, but thought I’d mention it in case anyone else is having issues.
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Oh, that’s strange! I haven’t had any issues that have popped up. I’ll keep an eye out. I have no idea how to check that sort of stuff on purpose, though. Hmmmm.. If anyone else has seen this issue, let me know. I guess I can contact WP and find out if they can help figure it out if there’s a problem? Beyond that! Welcome back to the battle, Mr. Spaceman! 😀
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Congrats, Spaceman! Well deserved – I really enjoyed your story!
I don’t have an entry for this week but I look forward to reading everyone else’s submissions!
I’ll look into my SSL certs and see if there is something there that I need to clean up. Thanks for the heads-up!
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Where is this “SSL certs”? Then maybe I can make sure the issue isn’t with me…
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I am not hosted on WordPress.com so I just went to my provider and installed the free SSL Certificate for WordPress from there. If the problem was actually with my site, then I expect that Spaceman will no longer see errors (although it may take a little time for things to propagate).
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Ah! Cool. I’ll research more about SSL when I get a chance. 🙂 Thank you for doing that, Carl. How is the writing and revising going?
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So far things are going well. I’ve got one story in the submission queue and finishing up another today. I want to get three or four out there before digging in seriously with the bigger projects. And somehow I need to make time to keep the blog going too. Lot’s of work – but loving it! = )
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Sounds like you’re on the right track! Keep it up. 🙂 And keep me posted if there’s anything I can do to help along the way.
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Thanks, Carl! A shame you won’t be entering this week, but I look forward to your return.
Updating your SSL certs must’ve worked: anti-virus is as quiet as ever, now. 🙂
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Excellent!
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I can edit that correction in for you. 😀
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Thanks. That’s what I get for not proof-reading. *facepalm*
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Happens to me allllll the time. ;P
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