Saturday Mix – April 22, 2017

Hello Everyone!

I’m sure that at least at one time or another we’ve all decided to read a book that we thought we knew everything about – but never having read it didn’t in fact.  This has happened to me recently.  I decided to read Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel,  “Dracula”.

Of course I’ve known about Dracula since I was a teen … and although vampires were nothing as popular as they are in our present age, they were at least familiar to all of us.  Who hadn’t seen Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee at least once, if not at the movies at least on TV.  And yet, I’d never bothered to read Stoker’s book.

So, after watching two different TV shows one called Doyle and Houdini and the other Murdoch Mysteries – both which had made reference to Bram Stoker  I decided to download the original version from the Gutenberg Project (and now you can too) and see what Stoker had actually written and was quite surprised indeed!

The book is in the form of a collection of diaries and letters. I’m sure that it might have been scary for someone reading the book in the 1897 when it came out, but quite frankly, the book is nearly humorous compared to how the character has evolved over the past century and a bit (as you can see from the trailer above).  Alas,  I shudder to think what will become of Bilbo Baggins – sigh.

But now this brings me to what I’m going to ask you to write this week.  I don’t require a horror story, but a page from a diary.  This is the photo that should inspire your diary entry …

Photo: Glenn Hunt

I’d like your piece to be 150 words or less.  If you prefer poetry to prose, you may write a set shadorma or perhaps you’d like to write a choka:

Classical Japanese choka were long, elegiac poems that told an epic or commemorative tale and may have reached 100 lines.  Today the choka is much shorter and simply tells a story.  Choka are formed by writing alternately 5 /7 syllable couplets and then ending the poem with an extra seven-syllable line.

If one chooses to write a choke it should not be more than 150 words.

Once you’ve written your piece please tag your work Mindlovesmisery’s Menagerie and Saturday Mix then either ping back or put a link to your work in the comments below.  To make things simpler you can add your link to the Mr. Linky app below so everyone will be able to quickly find your work.

This will be my last post until September.  I’m taking a sabbatical from writing to explore my new life and who knows what I’ll have to say in September.  I’ll drop in before I leave to read your work of course.  I hope you have a lovely summer (or winter) full of inspiration.  Hugs to all, Bastet.