‘Sunrise at Paradise Gardens’ by Mel Anastasiou

Ring for Fire

From Pulp Literature Issue 49, find an excerpt from Part 3 of The Extra Takes the Castle, ‘Sunrise at Paradise Gardens’, by Mel Anastasiou. To read this section in full, be sure to pick up a copy of Issue 49, Winter 2026. Want to know what happens next? Find more of Frankie Ray and Connie Mooney in Pulp Literature Issue 50!

Here is where we last left Frankie…

Frankie Ray, recently blackballed from Monument Studios, remains determined to rise from extra to credited movie actress. Her hopes are bolstered when, while employed as a chambermaid at the Castello Hotel, she meets Des McMann, Hollywood’s top director and man of the people. Meanwhile, her sleuthing nose is on the scent of a lost, unproduced screenplay by the great director from Hollywood’s earliest days, GX Forrest. It could be her ticket back into the studio, and a giant step towards silver screen success for her and all the struggling extras at Paradise Gardens.

The Extra Takes the Castle, Part 3:
Sunrise at Paradise Gardens

by Mel Anastasiou

Came the dawn — as silent movie titles might have read in Frankie Ray’s childhood — when traffic noises from Sunset Boulevard woke her up in the little bungalow bedroom she shared with her friend Connie Mooney. She washed her face, roused Connie to the new day, and stepped outside Villa 7B to survey the scene after last night’s Paradise Gardens party. In the empty patio area where they’d danced and eaten a sausage supper, the extras had left their plates and forks scattered across the bricks and under shrubberies. Frankie flicked the ants off the crockery and washed everything up in the little sink beside the icebox. By the time she’d stacked them out on the patio for the others to collect, Connie had burnt and buttered the toast. They ate it on their way to their day job as chambermaids at the Castello Hotel.

It was a difficult trick to be late when you lived this close to work, but they nearly managed it. The pair sidled into the hotel foyer only seconds before the manager called to order his dozen or so young hotel staff, wishful actors all. Veronica handed Connie a uniform to slip on over her clothes but had none for Frankie. “One of the uniforms was missing, sorry,” she murmured. “Maybe it’s that hotel thief.”

“If so, the thief ’s got strange taste,” Frankie replied.

Connie nodded. “Nobody would steal a uniform this ugly. I don’t believe in the thief anyway. I think our manager invented him.”

Bellhop William Kidd said, “Oh, yeah? What about those pilfered food deliveries and newspapers?”

“Small potatoes,” Connie argued.

“Light-fingered passers-by,” Frankie said. “Not a dedicated thief. There’s no money to be made from a plate of Swiss steak or a copy of the Gazette. And not a cent to be had from stealing a Castello chambermaid’s uniform.”

Veronica nudged Frankie. “You can have my apron and cap when we all go off to the studios.”

“Oh, thanks.” Frankie tamped down the irony as best she could. Now blackballed from the studios, she had volunteered to let the others run off to be extras in the movies. She had also volunteered to do their hotel work; the staff as a rule did so little cleaning that Frankie could easily cover for them. Luckily for their work-share system, the hotel was poorly managed by this very fellow who stood before them now, clapping for attention.

The manager took up the large hand bell. “Who remembers how many times I would ring for fire? You.”

The manager pointed to William Kidd, who answered confidently, “Fifty rings.”

“We had a fire yesterday, so how can you get it so wrong?” the manager asked. “You heard the bells and helped save the hotel.”

Frankie knew that William Kidd, along with the rest of the staff, had been nowhere near the hotel fire. She’d been the only one present when the alarm had sounded, and now her duty was clear.

Find the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 49, Winter 2026

Have a winning story to share? The 2026 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize is now open to entries! Find the guidelines and our entry form here.

Mel Anastasiou writes the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, the Monument Studios Mysteries, and the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, available at pulpliterature.com. She won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award and was longlisted for the Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for her novel Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries. Look for Stella Ryman and the Search for Thelma Hu, available through online booksellers and at Pulp Literature Press.