erika, I honestly don't know what people send these days, but I know it's not the whole publication. When I got out of college 11 years ago, all my clips that I sent out were photocopies (versus the original newsprint clippings), and that seemed to be fine.

Also, this week's drabble challenge coming up....

I haven't had to send out writing samples before, but Teppy's suggestion makes admirable good sense to me; a photocopy of the piece should work just fine.

Challenge #14 (theme = revenge; using words from a list) is now closed.

This week's challenge is a style challenge rather than a theme challenge, though I'm throwing in one thematic element. (And I swear that I'll drabble this one -- I keep coming up with the challenges and then not drabbling!)

This week's challenge is to write a drabble in present tense. The one thematic element that must be included is shoes. Jimmy Choos, horseshoes, brake shoes -- whatever. And present tense.

Go to it!

Hunt

They're missing. I bought them specifically to go with that leather dress, and the damned things have gone walkabout. How ironic.

It's like some LSD-addled exercise in spatial reality: my closet empties out and the piles of shoeboxes on the bed behind me grows in direct proportion. The Via Spigas, no, too clunky. The Maude Frizons, too sedate. The Pradas, too casual. Those Blahniks - ugh. Temporary insanity. What was I thinking?

Shitshitshit. Sixty-eight boxes. Everything's out.

My husband wanders in, holding a Neiman's Bag. "I found this in the car. Weren't these those red Steigers you bought for the wedding?"

He licks his lips and tries not to appear desperate. The place is quiet except for the clink of glass, the murmur of croupiers, the infrequent squeal of a winner. The evening is wrapped in ice and green felt and the white coats of the large men who drift around the edges of the room and occasionally make a determined foray into the crowd, emerging with an oddly silent, white-faced person sagging between them, on his way out.

He licks his lips again and blows on the dice. "Come on," he whispers urgently, "Baby needs a new pair of shoes."

(edited for a stray word. word count, 100)

funny...I write about shoes all the time, but doing it on purpose? I can't think of anything.

Bev, I thought for a minute you were going entirely somewhere else with the shoe reference in that one: I suck at cards (no gambling gene at all), but isn't the thing the croupier in a casino uses called a shoe?

erika! Kay and her shoes?

The cards are indeed in a shoe.

Yeah, I did that to Kay Howard a number of times.

Can anybody play? 100 words, right? Forthwith:

Mrs. McNaughton’s erstwhile second-best heels announce their arrival home.

The children are abed, eyes closed, having heard the car and zipped their secret way up the stairs. Under the blankets, they are still wearing drinking glasses on their hands.

Lena takes a last swipe at the jelly fingerprints on the countertop and tries to wash her hands. "They were really a bunch of characters tonight," she wheezes. Mr. McNaughton's bowtie flaps as he swallows.

Mrs. McNaughton has not yet gone into the living room, where her formerly best shoes lie behind the television, full of peanut butter and sock lint.