Menu

Prompts

Directory Contests Magazine FAQ

Apps

reedsymarketplace

Hire professionals for your project

reedsyblog

Advice, insights and news

reedsylearning

Online publishing courses

reedsylive

Free publishing webinars

reedsydiscovery

Launch your book in style

Bestseller Podcast Book Cover Art Success Stories

Tools

Book Promotion Sites Book Review Blogs Booktube Channel Guide Book Title Generator Character Name Generator Independent Publishers Literary Agents Literary Magazines Pen Name Generator Plot Generator Publishers Directory Short Story Ideas Writing Contests Writing Exercises Writing Scholarships

Menu

Prompts

Contests

Stories

Blog

Directory

Contests

Magazine

FAQ

Syd B

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Oct, 2020

Stories (4)

Comments

Library

2 Followers

0 Following

4 Stories

61 karma pts

?

Round Here

Syd B

Submitted to Contest #285

Do you remember when we’d get stoned in the parking lot of the one donut shop downtown after our parents locked us out, on those summer days that seep into your pores and settle in your bones? Then we’d hide from the smothering heat while pressing our faces up against the window inside, mesmerized by the dough’s journey around the conveyor belt loop. I know you remember the last time we ever did that. I remember how you whispered encouragement to the fresh batch of future donuts as they disappeared into the machine. You were wearing that awf...

3 likes

Santa Ana

Syd B

Submitted to Contest #274

As we clawed our way into autumn, the wind began to whisper my mother’s name. It was so quiet that we mistook it for the movement of the trees at first. Kathleen sounds that way even when spoken by a human tongue, the first syllable a rustling of leaves and the second a whistling breeze. An October sort of name for an October sort of person. Unfortunately, my mother’s autumnal soul was bound to suburban Southern California, where the leaves turn the brown of old bananas and wait to fall until almost Christmas. She refused to move far from wh...

6 likes

Live, Laugh, Loathe

Syd B

Submitted to Contest #270

Bethany Macintyre clenched her steering wheel as she turned into the strip mall parking lot. “Of course he can’t play without his cleats,” she snapped into her phone, which she had pinned between her ear and shoulder in the position familiar to all stay-at-home moms who haven’t found the time to figure out Bluetooth yet. “Did you look under his bed?” Her husband’s response was garbled beyond recognition. “I can’t hear you!” She resisted the urge to raise her middle finger at the station wagon that had cut in front of her to take the closest ...

5 likes

Devon in the Details

Syd B

Submitted to Contest #266

Nothing says writer’s block like browsing dubious writing blogs for inspiration. KJ French had been browsing them all for weeks. Now, she found herself at the low point of her career so far: scrolling feverishly through pages of search results for her articulate query “how to write good book” at well past 4 AM. By the time she came across an article encouraging a variety of hallucinogenic drugs, she was inspired only to finally shut her laptop down for the night. Then, as one does, she climbed under her bedsheets and continued the search on ...

6 likes