About
FLOW for All (The Forces Literary Organisation Worldwide - Patron Dame Vera Lynn) is dedicated to offering assistance to those who have suffered from the effects of war, especially the suffering shared by servicemen and women, their relatives and their friends.
Proceeds from the sales of their books will be used to support FLOW for All, helping them to become a registered charity and to employ counsellors for those in need of care and support.
For more information please visit The Forces Literary Organisation Worldwide's website at www.flowforall.org
Description
<p><strong><em>A tragic warrior lost in two worlds... Which one will he choose?</em></strong></p><p>The war in Iraq ended for Freddie when an IED explosion left his mind and body shattered. Once a skilled gamer as well as a capable soldier, he's now a broken warrior, emerging from a medically induced coma to discover he's inhabiting two separate realities.</p><p>The first is his waking world of pain, family trials, and remorse—and slow rehabilitation through the tender care of Becky, his physical therapist. The second is a dark fantasy realm of quests, demons, and magic, which Freddie enters when he sleeps. The lines soon blur for Freddie, not just caught between two worlds, but lost within himself.</p><p>Is he Lieutenant Freddie Williams, a leader of men, a proud officer in the US Army who has suffered such egregious injury and loss? Or is he Frederick, Prince of Stormwind, who must make sense of his horrific visions in order to save his embattled kingdom from the monstrous Horde, his only solace the beautiful gardener, Rebecca, whose gentle words calm the storms in his soul.</p><p>In the conscious world, the severely wounded vet faces a strangely similar and equally perilous mission to that of the prince—a journey along a dark road, haunted by demons of guilt and memory. Can he let patient, loving Becky into his damaged and shuttered heart? It may be his only way back from Hell.</p>
Story Behind The Book
The short stories in this collection are the winning entries in the 2009 FLOW for All short story
competition. FLOW (the Forces Literary Organisation Worldwide) for All is dedicated to offering assistance to those who have suffered from the effects of war, especially the suffering shared by servicemen and women, their relatives and their friends.
Proceeds from the sale of this book will be used to support the work of FLOW for All, helping them
to become a registered charity and to employ counsellors for those in need of care and support.
Our first competitions were opened in April 2009 and ran for four months. Two competitions ran alongside each other – one accepting submissions of poetry, the other short stories. We received a consistently high standard of entries covering a range of subjects, and all entries were posted on either Forces Poetry or Forces Stories. There were no official judges; stories and poems
were selected for the published collection in the most democratic way – by encouraging all visitors to vote for their favourite story or poem. The top twenty stories made it into 'Stories of the Poppies' and the top seventy poems are to be published in 'Poems of the
Poppies'.
Reading the entries, visitors to the forums met a wonderful cast of characters and nationalities, spent time in a variety of locations and eras, and experienced an array of emotions. Some
stories were uplifting, some touched on conflict and war, others reflected on loss and human dignity. Authors had written from their hearts, and this gave them the ability to reach out and touch the hearts of others.
Congratulations to the twenty authors whose work makes up this year's wonderful collection.
