
Having not entered the Pictonaut Challenge (to write a 1000 word short story based on a picture found at The Rogue Verbumancer’s blog) for a couple of months, I thought I would get in a bit early with January’s one. Initially the picture didn’t fill me with ideas. ‘Cowboys,’ I thought, ‘and horse bums. Oh.’ Then I thought, what about the person seeing the picture – the one watching them plod away. Who is she? There was never any question in my mind over the fact it was a she.
So I wrote about her, and why the others were leaving, and thought my tale quite OK (although over the word limit a bit). Then, reading it back this week, it occurred to me it owes a lot to The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, which I read towards the end of last year. That is a lovely book, which I would certainly recommend – particularly if you like my story and want to read something in the same setting and better written…
