Parthenope’s Bindery . . .
(Parthenope seated at her workbench, Bacigalupo in an easy chair by the fireplace.)
Bacigalupo: ‘May I speak?’
Parthenope: ‘One moment. Counting.’ (pause)
Bacigalupo: ‘Is this one of the very tiny ones?’
(Parthenope seated at her workbench, Bacigalupo in an easy chair by the fireplace.)
Bacigalupo: ‘May I speak?’
Parthenope: ‘One moment. Counting.’ (pause)
Bacigalupo: ‘Is this one of the very tiny ones?’
With all this talk of balls and dancing, I (this is me, mesmered, this time) tried to think back to when balls first held a fascination for me. And perhaps it was when television came to our home when I was young. There were wonderful old movies, costume dramas where dashing officers with pristine white regimental jackets would hold beautiful women in their arms and sweep around massive dance-floors, the gowns of silk rippling as the couples spun ever faster.
When I began the journey to hold a Masked Ball on Mesmered’s blog, I never dreamed that a story would emerge from it, two stories in fact. One is a short-story called The Masked Ball which is entirely different than the blog-story and which Pat from Bo Press Miniature Books is using in one of her brilliant limited edition creations. But here on Mesmered, another story is developing and it’s exciting for me to see what my co-conspirators come up with each day. Till now, we haven’t communicated a story-line with each other, we have just run off with the last line of the previous submission to write our own submission and move the story forward. It’s become an exercise in fleet wordage and spare detail for me and I find I am learning quite a lot about the craft of writing and getting the message across in the shortest possible time. Please sit back now and enjoy Pat Sweet’s continuation of her part in The Masked Ball as Parthenope Neroli:
I was reading Book Blogs today and came across a list that a blogger had written: 10 Places to Read. I was staggered. I love reading but there’s no way I could make a list of ten places in which I read.
I’m one of those readers who has, for all of my life, taken stories at face value. Which I suppose contributes to my failure as a member of bookclubs: because I was never able or desirous of finding meanings within stories, subtle or otherwise.