January Challenge Winners – Excuses

Thanks to everyone who entered the Write On! January Challenge – Excuses. And, thanks, Tina Haapala, Excuse Editor, for choosing the winners!

1st Place: Roberta Annicks – Read Roberta’s winning story – The Chocolate Cake Excuse – below
(A medium-length (or 21,000 word) one-reader iScript (an iScript is a digital recording of a manuscript, read by an actor))

2nd Place: Cristofer Gross
(Excuse Me, Your Soul Mate Is Waiting, signed by author/matchmaker Marla Martenson)

3rd Place: Monica Newton
(The Devastator Quarterly#2, autographed by Editor-in-Chief Geoffrey Golden)

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“The Chocolate Cake Excuse” by Roberta Annicks

Mix three chocolate baking squares with butter, sugar, eggs and all necessary ingredients to make a scrumptious chocolate Devil’s food cake. I reach for the bowl. Haikus waiting to be typed throw their 5-7-5 tempos into the cabinet like a ventriloquist. On the back burner of my mind, revisions for poems on the desk come and go. “Change that line to this…”

“Yeah, where is that poem?” I ask myself but aroma of chocolate gets my attention.

So I mix it beat it, scrape and turn the batter into a floured baking dish. As I reach to open the oven door, animated characters from my screenplay in progress roar from the desk drawer. I look over. The drawer handles shake. “Yeah Archie, I know you want out,” I yell – then pop the cake into a 350 degree oven.

Mmm good batter! I clean out the bowl with two fingers and put the flour away. A bee buzzes by the window. I push the curtain aside and look out. There I am in my father’s orchard 40 years ago. The unfinished memoir piece is projecting from my subconscious. “Bees are swarming around my body and I forget the soft blossom fragrance…” A whiff of brown sweetness pulls me back.

Pop the cake out, cool and dust with powdered sugar. What’s that? Do you hear it? The oven timer is keeping a beat. Music is in the air.  The song lyric due to the composer in the morning is humming in my ear. Do-Wop, Do-Wop. Oh but you must wait your turn dear song lyric. Pen and paper and keyboard, you must all wait … until … slice a warm piece of cake. Pick it up and bite. This is the best chocolate cake excuse, ever-ever.