December 2021 – Elaina Roberts

End of Year Recap, 2021

2021. The year that looked at 2020 and said, “Hold my beer.” With a failed insurrection under our belts, a pandemic still rolling across the country, vaccine reluctance giving the virus fertile soil to mutate into nasty variants, and an unexpected job loss that had us hunkering down and counting pennies until we had income coming in again, to say it’s been stressful has been an understatement.

(Micro)Flash Fiction Friday – The Gallery

Hello! It’s Friday and time for another short snippet of fiction. Things have happened, but most are good things, so I was able to get back to my flash pieces. I have two manuscripts off to beta readers and am plotting the next books in both those series. With a couple of days to completely chill, play video games, and just be, I was able to hop back into things.

The Gallery is based on the featured image below with the prompt “What business is tucked away here, just waiting to be discovered?” It may not be the expected shop, but I enjoyed it!

Trope Tuesdays

It’s December and time for another look at two of the tropes found in romance and/or urban fantasy. I’ll give one I love, one I don’t, and this month I added one which I feel is tricky or problematic. Links are provided for my favorites in case they appeal to anyone else.

(Micro)Flash Fiction Friday – The Hunter

Hello! It’s Friday and time for another short snippet of fiction. This week has been… a lot. You know how they say “when it rains, it pours?” as a euphemism for things going all good or all bad? Yeah. It sucks. Just everything. But never fear! I wrote a happy, cheerful microflash of only 246 words.

*Checks Notes* Oh. Oh, no. It’s… kinda not happy. Or cheerful. It is, however, microflash! That’s gotta count for something, right?

Flash Fiction Friday – The House

Hello! NaNoWriMo has stopped chewing up my brain so it’s time for another short snippet of fiction. This week, I’m keeping things closer to traditional flash fiction length at 544 words. When I saw the photo, I knew I wanted to do something with it, but I had a challenge to meet and a manuscript to finish. With Brienne off to the beta readers, I could return to the photo.

The photo included the prompt of “Does someone still live here? If so, who? If not, what happened to them?” I’d planned to go in an entirely different direction, but it wanted to be this story, so here it is. If anyone else wants to play along, feel free to paste yours in the comments below, link to your own site, or on my Facebook page.