Parrots & Piracy

.Back in late June 2010, a prompt was posted on the Write Anything blog for their Fiction Friday challenge (the goal being to take the prompt and write a piece of flash fiction every Friday). It was a simple prompt - "Include a telepathic parrot in your story". I sat and thought, and a snippet of dialogue popped into my head.

"Thusie, ye made it"

"My name is Methuselah".

And thus Methuselah was born. Captain Scarlight wasn't far behind, and I duly posted my flash, Pieces O' Eight. By July, I had an idea for another flash, and so Polly Wants A Cracker went live. Since then, there have been three more adventures - Captain Karaoke (in which Captain Scarlight tries his hand at karaoke), Not For Sale (in which a voodoo woman tries to buy Methuselah) and The Dead Calm (in which we find out how Captain Scarlight gets his ship).

Despite questions to that effect, Captain Scarlight and Methuselah are not the stars of a serial. That's not to say there won't be more adventures as there will be. The difference occurs in that I want their adventures to be more self-contained. I'm hoping that you could read any of their stories and still enjoy it, without having to read the others. Obviously, I hope that you enjoy the tale enough to want to read the others, but the idea is still that of the adventure "in isolation". There's not much that anyone needs to know about the pair other than the fact that the Captain likes drinking rum and playing poker, and Methuselah is telepathic, so in theory, the project should work.

I'll be adding more flashes to this index page as I write them - the list of links appears in the order that I write the flashes, but feel free to read whichever catches your fancy!

You can also now follow Captain Scarlight and Methuselah on Twitter!