FREE Stuff
Members of my reading community get more free reads and personal insights than any internet search provides. Join my reading community as we explore captivating worlds and brave dark corners.
Book Trailers
Short Stories
Two of my author friends and I started with the writing prompt:
The old dog, faithful as always…
The Wattpad story Bound by the Past by Lesley Donaldson, Tapley discovers more than he wants to know about man’s best friend. It begins:
The old dog, faithful as always, stayed with Tapley when Hicara trekked back to the outpost with the skeletons.
Short Story Preview: The Gentlesword
“The Gentlesword” is my short story released in 2021 as part of the From the Ashes: Legends Never Die IFA Anthology. Dedicated battle heroine sworn to protect the Cobalt Oligarchy and its citadel, Kifra sets out to prove her worth after being made redundant in a political shift that allied her homeland with their traditional enemy. When the monster she’s tracking threatens the life of her squire, her last connection to her beloved lifestyle, she seeks the help of a retired mage. What will become of Kifra when she has no battles left to fight and no one left to teach?
Flash Fiction
Finalist, Ontario Writer’s Conference Story Starter Contest
September 2014
“This overcast day screams for bubbles. It stopped raining. Rain, or tears from heaven? It doesn’t matter now. I watch the wisps of liquid sunshine floating on the delicate spheres. When they disappear, I take another deep breath and pause.
Slippery coolness envelopes my clubbed fingers. How many more breaths do I have left? Exhaled into a tiny prison, my breath is freed from its cage. The wind spirits my life away. Past pedestrians in the morning rush, it kisses a red car. My last dance. The bubble pops, delivering my gift to another soul.”
©2014 Lesley Donaldson
October 2014
“Today, I start the countdown. Enough warnings. When first I let my children loose among my gardens, they prospered. Each generation brought a deeper insight into the learning of those who went before. There was, I remember, a time of peace. Under my watchful guidance, they filled the aching expanse.
How I loved them, my seeds of inspiration. Yet now they dredge the last ounces of my veins. Seek not the stars to escape my tempest. I shall wash your sins away with my bounteous tears. We will begin anew, your surviving grasses making lush the dryness of my heart.”
©2014 Lesley Donaldson
© 2022 Lesley Donaldson, writerlesleydonaldson.com, and Aquhorthies Publishing.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of original material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Lesley Donaldson and writerlesleydonaldson.com with appropriate and specific URL direction to the original content. Please direct all questions and comments to aquhorthies@bell.net