So I’d never actually peeked in on this time period before because I didn’t think anything particularly interesting had happened. But it did. The way hunting was handled began to shift and not too long away comes another great war. Ah, well. Stories surprise us. Hope you like.
So I went ahead and wrote this in the hopes it would help me out with “Dowse and Bleed.” It did a bit. :grins:
So, 2013 opened on a Tuesday, which means I'll be updating each Tuesday on where I'm at in this ambitious challenge. This first week, I finished 4 out of 7 pieces and am hip-deep in number 5, a ficlet that became a monstrosity, my longest short story to date. "Dowse and Bleed" promises to weigh in around 8000 words when all's said and done, and I'd previously maxed out on 6500, which was big for me at the time.
Letting go of strictly flash fiction is a relief in a way. I can relax and take my time, let the characters be random, then sharply bring it all into focus for me and have me scrambling for my computer to hack away at it while I still know what they're telling me.
I decided to do something different with this challenge also. I'm pushing through to the end of each piece. No skipping and coming back to it. I want to force myself to finish before moving on, and I'm highly motivated to move on. There's an average to be struck, and I've never liked being behind.
That said, this week, I wrote in 3 original worlds, 1 fandom. Prompts were from Jocelyn Aitkin, Gwynne Jackson, and Percy O'Leary. All but the last (unless she's been holding out on me) are published and write amazing stuff, so check out their work.
Prompts in progress are from Jocelyn Aitkin and Rabia Gale, another published author with amazing stuff.
And here's the roundup.
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| 4/365 entries. 1.1% done. |
Technically, these prompts are freely available from in_the_blue, but since she’s my beta and one of my dearest online writer friends, the community counts for my 365 Challenge. A double-drabble of 200 words.
Renaiven was known as a harsh man, but almost no one knew why.
Another for the 365 Challenge. I chose prompts from the 100 Word Stories community because it always pleases in_the_blue to have activity on the community, but the letter simply could not be 100 words. I let it grow. Eventually it will join a story called The Academy Letters. Until then, I hope you like it.
Sorry for this taking so long, but I hope you like it after all!
She was a smaller child than Monkey when first her people left her alone beneath those leaves and ordered her to bring home meat. A tiny thing, she was fearful of the dark, for her eyes were black and human, prey not predator.
Yellow eyes startled her out of the night. The jaguar shifted forward from the undergrowth and picked his way on great paws to breathe against her shoulder in a voice she should not have been able to understand. "What is this soul and skin you wear?"
That was when she knew she was Jaguar, when she lifted her small hands to his great shoulders and embraced the beast, breathing back, when she learned how the jaguar hunt.
— from "Breath from a Stone"
Misbehaving. Want to throw the whole thing into a river to float away and leave me alone, thank you!
It's there. Sketched. Awaiting the painting, the vivid colors that will bring it to life, but how do you capture a movie in your head into lyric prose verse?
Rejected by Daily Science Fiction, out to Plasma Frequency Magazine.
Personally rejected by Plasma Frequency Magazine1, out to... Will get back to y'all on that.
And last edit for the night. I want to try it at Abyss and Apex, which is closed until November. Onto the next story for the week.2
Still pending response from Flash Fiction Online, none due for 15+ days
What's on your docket?
At the Door - beta edits complete
She came to the door at midnight, white hair trailing over her long white skirts, mouth wide open, hand raised in supplication, Come with me.
— prompted by Rabia Gale
Breath from a Stone - drafting
She crouches before the fire on the other side and lays her spear over her bare knees. "You can breathe from the stone?" she asks.
The old man laughs. "Cannot all the breathers?"
Jaguar flashes him a smile, all sharp white teeth, then closes them as if she has bitten flesh. "Not the breather I slew."
— prompted by Rabia Gale
[ working title ] - drafting
The two young women did not get along, but no one, not even Professor Xavier, knew because let's face it, sweet and lovely Jean Grey was above all that and would never stoop to telepathic revenge, and beautiful, patronizing Emma Frost would never soil her perfection by engaging with those who were beneath her, at least not without sufficient provocation, worthy of losing her reputation for ladylike behavior. But internally, the study partners were vicious, exploiting every advancement in their race to become the most powerful telepath. Their mutual hatred and ambition served them well: it drove their performance and outward smiles until...
Well.
— prompted by lithiumlaughter
More on this later, but besides the incredibly slow overhaul of the website, I am trying to accomplish the Heinlein challenge to write and submit one short story a week.
Problem? All current WIP shorts resist me, precisely because I'm feeling pressured. :growls unmentionables at recalcitrant muses: So...
It's ficlet o'clock. Name me any sort of prompt, question, or idea your heart desires. If you name a pairing and/or fandom, I may just coopt for a second piece in original fiction land, as I only have until Friday to get this piece shipped.
So, it's that time again. I have a hankering to write some ficlets, and my current docket seems too overwhelming.
I will answer your question in a ficlet of the number of sentences specified in #1.
for lithiumlaughter
He must stay brave to keep the name.
for xenokattz
That wasn't anger in Natasha's eyes, but betrayal.
CHAPTER TWO:
Breaking the Glass
Shelley Huntington was less than thrilled with Kailin University. It was an old, respected institution built on Earth before there were any other inhabited planets to talk about. Ostensibly, the sprawling campus of white stone buildings—likely laced with nanobots and other technology—still belonged in private hands, those of William Scheffer, heir to his grandfather however many times removed that had founded it. The buildings and grounds of manicured lawns and neatly cut road– and skyways likewise failed to impress Shelley. She was an Ybreteh girl. She liked her computers and small spacecraft Abi bought her for her sixteenth birthday and the higher-tech world she had been born on.
"Anywhere, anywhere but here," she muttered to herself under her breath. She had dumped off her things in the dorm room indicated by her room key, a tiny boxed-in affair occupied by three beds—more muttering ensued—and since then, taken to wandering disconsolately about the ridiculous maze of hallways (she didn't even know they still used drywall this extensively) in search of the vocational orientation auditorium marked deceptively on her campus map as just inside the building across from the dorms.
Hayley Lamar was defined by her teachers as a no-good, rebellious troublemaker—anything but a lady and certainly not a good student. Perhaps this should have bothered her. She was raised properly in the good southern Bible belt, after all, but truth was, the moniker didn't bother her at all.
So when her grades came through after secondary school and she saw just how much trouble she'd have hitting a regular college, she planned ahead and applied to every single Alliance priority one school on the world (there were twenty-four) and requested a scholarship. Officially, these schools went to the best of the best of the crop of young people coming up on Earth and, sometimes, throughout the entire twenty-two star systems. In reality, they went to the ones with the highest scores on aptitude tests, and Hayley knew how to score on one of those.
