1528: Weekly meeting of the Writers’ Club

(The opening sentence for this story was suggested by Marina (M.L.) of Letters from Athens.  If you want to join in the fun of suggesting a future opening sentence for these stories, click here for a peek as to what’s what.)

It was a dark and stormy night. Rhoda droned on and on reading her week’s effort aloud at the Writers’ Club meeting. The rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies)…

“Don’t you know,” interrupted Cassandra, “that the passage you are reading, claiming it to be your own, is familiar to everyone in this room? We all know it’s straight out of Wuthering Heights.”

“It’s not,” declared Rowena. “It’s Jane Austen. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall if I remember correctly.”

“I think you mean Northanger Abbey,” said Jennifer.

“It sounds like Charles Dickens to me,” added Wilfred.

Things grew into a cataclysmic argument. Rhoda droned on as if nothing was happening. …rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness…

Arnold got out of his chair and stormed out of the room. “You people are so thick. This is a waste of time. And I’m not coming back.” He was closely followed out by Meredith.

“Good riddance to them both,” declared Declan. “Goodbye to both of them and the affair they’re having.”

“Thanks for that reading, Rhonda,” said Phyllis. She was chairing the meeting. “That’s got rid of them and their loud negative opinions of our weekly efforts. Thanks to Rhonda and the writing of Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton we can get on with sharing our weekly efforts uninterrupted.”