Untimely #16 - Iron Lion Zion

That song about Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot! was on the radio. Yes…

My dog, Proud Warrior, had suddenly burst from behind a well-greased 50’s motorbike chasing our ugly foreign neighbours’ cat.

“Bark!!” he woofed jeeringly.

“Dat right bwoy! You give that pussy footin’ blaad-clat what him deserve!” creaked I in my soft west-counrty drawl.

“Bark!”

“G’wan den, ya ion lion from zion! Mash him up!”

And I kid you not when I say that that Spartan-hound did indeed mash that cat right up. Then my neighbour arrived and all hell broke loose…

Next day, police made me put him down.

UNTIMELY #16 – I Can’t Stand the Rain

And.

***

It.

***

Was.

***

Wet.

***
***

Rain pelted blackly, diagonally up from the charnel house of the river’s gashed and roiled surface. “Blast thees eenfirnall rrrain!” Alfredo Gonzales ejaculated wildly. Water dripped from the ends of his lacquered moustaches, the gaping cavities of his pendulous ears filled with a maddening drip-drip, and his wet, tobacco-blackened lips jutted forth petulantly – not even his monumental unibrow could shield them from the storm. Suddenly all hell broke loose!! The sky was rent with an almighty crack like the sound of a million beetles snapping in half into a microphone inside a cathedral in space.

Untimely #16 - Love Will Tear Us Apart

Before.

School. Baby. Mrs. Band. Fame. Now.

School. Baby. Him. Motherhood. Motherhood. Now.

Monday last all hell broke loose.

A Teutonic sky black and clear as moral war. The moon in the mirror and me face its younger brother. I watch me movements. See thin unholy fingers unnoose me belt through one-by-one black loops of me pants. See thin scarred wrists from previous. See it again but different. The baby screams. Blue yowl of foxes rutting like barbed wire. Her indoors. Divorce. She’d choked gravely. See me redo me belt thin and tight. Sing Love Will Tear Us Apart. Now!

Untimely Stimulus #16

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules for Writing

1 Never open a book with weather.

2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue ­following an introduction that comes after a foreword.

3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . he admonished gravely.

5 Keep your exclamation points under control.

6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose".

7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9 Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language.

10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Break all of these rules in one hundred words or less. Respond!