One man - determined to save...
G Raghuveera Rao is a man of principles and honour. A man of integrity and valour. A man now desperate enough to make a deal with the Devil himself, if that is what it takes to save his son.
One favour - destroy to s...
And finally I bite the bullet. Forgive the cliché, but it is true, so there is no point in reinventing the wheel, even if it being a literary wheel. Again another cliché. Anyway getting back to what I wanted to say.
I was determined not to do the ONC this year, I did it for the first time last year and made it to the long list too (which is a good achievement in my books) but it left it me exhausted. I put my ongoing novels on hiatus, tried writing short stories and flash fiction (which I did, quite succesfully too) but could not get my novel writing mojo back. Finally I managed to start a new novel, wrote down about six hundred words in my ongoing-indefinitely-on-hold novel, when it became clear that I could not resist it.
The prompts, which on first reading has seemed...what would be the best word- difficult, uninspiring, not enticing enough...none fit exactly, but you get the drift. But then I kept going back and soon had ideas bounding in my head.
A couple of the prompts resounded; one was about dragons. Need I say that with my eternal fascination with dragons, I would find it irresistible. I thought about it, drafted a few chapters, jotted down a few possible names for the dragons (names are important, you would agree) and then...nada. The prompt refused to speak to me. So I gave up till I started reading the blurbs of the other submissions and then went back to the prompts. This time I picked two and story began to come together (I got carried away and almost have the ending set and partly written, so the challenge is to write the beginning and the rest of the tale - no pressure right?)
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My tale would not be a very strict representation of prompts, more like a derivation of the same. I wonder where it would take me, or rather, how it would take me for the ending is already drafted out but there have been times when the story meanders and ends far differently from what I planned originally. So we will have to see.
So to every reader who starts this tale, a hug for giving it a chance. And if you stick for the journey and be with me till the end, you have my gratitude (infinite and eternal) and a couple of more hugs.
DISCLAIMER:
This is a fictional story and names, the characterisation, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of my imagination or, in rare cases, actual events used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
There are certain medical instances mentioned in the story; the factual accuracy might not be proven but the same are medically plausible. There are also certain historical events mentioned in this story. However, where some of the people, places and events are slightly referenced to certain historical events, places and narratives, it is merely to serve as a reference for the time line of the story.
CREDITS:
Cover: Man in the night by Free-Photos on Pixabay and Number 7 by JL G on pixabay.
Banners: Background by Silke Lemcke on Pixabay; Number 7 by JL G on pixabay; the Pentagram by Enrique Meseguer on Pixabay. The paintings are by Sandro Botticelli (one) and the rest are by Piero del Pollaiolo painted during the years 1469 to 1472. The photographs have been taken commons.wikipedia.org and are a "faithful photographic representation of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art." Other images are also used from those available on Pixabay.
