Just talked to the conference chair, and we've decided it'll be fine to let her not judge, since we have five categories in the contest and are planning for six editors and agents. Phew!

Yay!

And now she'll have you in her mind as someone reasonable and accommodating.

Susan, that's a very good way to get off the hook. One reason less to worry.

Sorry -- me so slow today.

New drabble topic! Challenge #41 (degrees) is now closed; thank you for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for all the contestants.

Challenge #42 is fire. Just no Beavis & Butthead, please.

(Heh. Heh heh. Fire. Fire fire fire.)

Like the Song Says

The girl 's too young for this, at least if you believe her ID. She's sixteen. Legs that are legs all the way up, hair down to her ass. She's wearing vintage velvet, her grandmother's heirloom mink, coloured beads laced through individual strands of hair.

She's a rocker, a fox. Sweet sixteen, icy hot or, as one boyfriend says, only fourteen but she knows how to draw.

High heels, onstage, amps at her back, dancing the night away. The musicians are ten years her senior, making all that noise, making all those passes.

Nothing makes her happier than playing with fire.

warning...porny!

Fire drabble

Her body is a drawn bow above him, taut and arched. Her mouth is open, lips flushing a deeper pink with each breath, and her lashes flutter though her eyes are closed. Hair clings to her cheek and neck. Tiny droplets of sweat form on her breasts, rolling slowly down her abdomen as she grips hot, red fingerprints into his chest. Her legs are folded tight against his waist like unfurled wings.

She is humming with blood and lust and desire; if you touched her skin, it would burn.

She rises out of him, a phoenix on fire, being reborn.

Hot damn.

drabble

To a fireman, Fire is a goddess, cruel and beautiful, supremely powerful, beckoning her acolytes into the battle that can never be won, only brought to a draw. She has a voice which can only be heard when you step into the living, burning heart that makes Hell a frail word. Those who have heard that voice and survived live only to search it out again.

She will ask your pain and your blood, force you to listen to the screams of your brothers and sisters as they fall before her. And when you heal--physically, for the mental scars are a lifetime's sacrifice to her--you pursue her again. For those who have faced the elemental heart of chaos, all other lives are dark.

Whoa. Powerful, all of them.

Very. I particularly like the imagery in Kristin's. I've semi-done connie's and would have written about it, but now it wouldn't work. Good thing I have all week to think about it.