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Writing Challenge – Somehow I lost several days of the writing challenge emails. I’m short a couple of day and then I didn’t like today’s challenge which was to write a letter of encouragement to the person I was on the first day of the challenge. Instead I decided to repeat the last challenge to write a crappy first chapter. I’m really good at writing crappy beginning.

How could everything have gone so wrong? Our first mission ending in an inquisition. The first called in three hundred years. I glanced on either side of me and saw the worn tired faces of my team members, my younger sisters. Was it my imagination or did they look broken?

The empty seat of our necromancer, cousin Sarh, caught my eye.

I remembered when my Aunt and Uncle had realized their precious little darling was born to raise the dead. Sarh had barely been four. Her parents were hosting the mid-summers celebration. Everyone had been there. Imagine her parents’ shock when the family cat, dead two weeks came romping through the house. Their golden haired four year old following after. I was only six and still remembered my horror. I was always a little repulsed by her after that.

“Why did you not call for assistance?” The voice of the inquisitor brought me back.

My hand trembled, my eyes stung. I blinked. I couldn’t cry during the inquisition. I would win their sympathy perhaps, but they would never let me off world again. Let alone lead my team.

“We have no elders. The rest of my family are younger than us, still in school. We couldn’t risk their lifes. I wasn’t sure we would even make it.”

The old men magicked our family history. The shimmering outline of the text was in front of them.

“Surely there was someone,” the old man said, as he flipped through the text. “Ah, here.”

I closed my eyes and began counting to myself, trying to block out the memory of the mid-summer’s celebration that took the rest of my family.

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haunted-house

On my way to New Orleans, I stayed in a less expensive hotel in order to save a little money. It seemed fine enough, except the carpet was sticky, there were no washcloths and no soap. The front desk clerk said they were out of soap, but I could have an extra packet of shampoo.

I slept with my coat on. I feel dirty and not in a good way.

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garden girl

My phone number belonged to a call girl before I got it from T-Mobile. She must have been really good because she still gets calls. I thought about answering numbers I don’t know with some themed response.

Since it was Christmas –

Do you want a one horse open sleigh or the whole team?

We’re running a two for one special on Santa’s Little Helper.

Would you like the two French hens and my partridge in your pear tree?

 

With this kind of talent, I should be writing erotica.

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I have been known to nod off in long meetings in which the topic has little to nothing to do with me. I’ve invented a game to stay awake, the one line game. Here’s a few from yesterday:

I new insanity was pervasive here, I just didn’t realize it was contagious.

Blue reminds me of the ocean, crystal clear skies, calm summer days. I hate blue.

I had under estimated the creature I hunted and Paulo had paid for it with his life.

Moments like this are why I don’t keep chocolate in my desk.

The edge of anything is always a bad place to be.

And one for you to finish –

Somewhere an old brain cell must have fired up again when I remembered <fill in the blank>.

Until the next boring meeting.

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Picture it, a dark, smoke filled bar. I hiked myself up on a black leather stool. The bartender slid a glass of soda water with lime in front of me. (I gave up alcohol two weeks ago and can’t for the life of me remember why.)

I recognized a frail, elderly lady from a writer’s group at the end of the bar. She looked like the typical Grandmother: petite, prim and proper. She reminded me of Estelle Getty as Sofia on the Golden Girls. Let’s call her Gert.

I decided to join her trying to tap in to the wisdom a seasoned writer might impart.

“I’m taking it up the ass on ebooks,” Gert said as she down the last of her drink. She motioned to the bartender. “Give me another whiskey and make it the cheap stuff this time.” She sucked deeply on the cigarette she had in one hand. If I thought it was for show, she then blew so much smoke out of her nose I wondered at her lung capacity.

“Really?” I was curious now.

“Oh yea, Honey. I’ve been writing a long time. There wasn’t e-publishing back then.”

“I guess things were different.”

“Hells bells, I wrote my first manuscripts on a manual typewriter. It’s not like I saw it coming,” she continued, lighting another cigarette. “Bartender.” She motioned to her glass. “Give me another and no ice this time.” She launched into a coughing fit that I, as none smoker I was trying hard not to join.

This tiny, old lady continued discussing the good old days using expletives that would rival sailors and slamming whiskey straight up. My idea about Grandmas were completely shattered by this point.

Finally, I asked, “What genre do you write?”

“Erotica and none of this light hearted crap. I write hard core. The kind of stuff that use to come wrapped in brown paper.”

That’s when I almost choked on a peanut. Exercise caution when talking to whiskey slamming, chain smoking, foul mouthed Grandmas who writes hard core erotica.

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swimmin boy fish kid

I was with my sister and nephew on a beach in Spain. It wasn’t a nudist beach, but apparently sometimes stuff just happens.

My nephew had just come to tell me, “Jesus walked on that water. I vomited in it.” Though geographically challenged, he was still cute.

On the blanket next to us, a guy and girl somewhere between 18 and stupid decided to have an all out wrestling match tongue included. I decided we should probably leave before my nephew caught on.

But my timing was a little off, because he was suddenly filled with righteous indignation saying, “You’re not allowed to fight with girls. They’re not as tough as us.”

As heads began turning, I grabbed his hand and started towards his mom and the car.

But my nephew wasn’t done yet. He loudly spewed some of his mother, saying, “You’re in  trouble. Wait until your father gets home.” Not quite finished, he yelled over his shoulder. “Give her her shirt back. You are in so much trouble young man.”

When I found my sister, his mother my parting words were – “Here that’s your.” Before I left her with my nephew.

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sleeping princess woman

I’m lying on the exam table in my doctor’s office the Wednesday before my wedding. The room seems bleary through my watery eyes. It probably smells like antiseptic, but how would I know my nose has been stuffed up for four days now.

No amount of NyQuil has helped me. I have a raging head cold. With only three days to go before my wedding, I’m seeking professional help.

The door pops open. My doctor is reading my chart when she looks at me, doing a double take.

“Oh, you very ugly for your wedding,” she says. “You’re nose all red. Watch you going to do?”

I blink not once, not twice, but three times. “I don’t know, go to my doctor.”

Ugly indeed.

 

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When I was a kid, I had an idea that all worlds were a combination of science and magic. My idea was that magical teams were dispatched to worlds where the magic was out of balance. Only family members could combine and magnify each other’s magic, so these SWAT teams would be composed of people from the same family.

I waited for a mystical vortex to open and a stranger to explain, “You are in the wrong world we need to take you to the magical realm where you belong.” However, much to my great disappointment, it never happened so I still reside in this world almost devoid of magical energy. This is based on the same idea when the Liza and her sisters got their first assignment.

The tapestry shimmered before Liza, a brilliant orange and red with a shimmer of royal blue. It was taking the shape of an egg, more accurately an egg-shaped box. Five more stitches to go.

Her fingers moved slowly, pulling at the threads of magick around her. Liza tore through the tangle of fibers she had gathered, pulling a bright crimson thread. She eased it free, careful not to snap it.

Magick appeared differently to different people. To her it was threads to be woven into a tapestry. She was a spell weaver after all.

She began to weave.

One. Two. Three. Almost there.

She would use the magick to gather spare matter and transform it into another form.

A box lined with crystaline.  Jerl needed one to keep his newly acquired dragon egg. Her younger cousin was an animage. His powers were uncanny. In fact, their abilities were all unusually powerful.

Four, one more stitch.

Some said it was in their blood. She thought most people said that out of sympathy, knowing their family history. She had always thought it was the shared trauma of the Midsummer’s day. None of them had escaped unscathed. A few of them wore their scars on the outside. All on the inside, more easily hidden, but perhaps more troubling.

Five and the knot.

The door slammed against the wall. Aelese rushed in, waving a parchment above her head.

“It’s here.” She gulped, gasping for air as she collided with a chair.

The carefully woven tapestry, hours of work, collapsed into a pile of sparks slowly extinguishing like the last coals in the ashes of a dying fire.

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I hate it when I’m working late at night. All’s quiet and dark, when my cursor starts moving across the screen like the pointer on a Ouija Board. It scares the crap out of me. I’m like, “Grandma?”

 

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Instead of writing, I’m writing a blog post about cleaning out the closet in my office.

First thing, the closet is filled with empty containers. No wonder I don’t have room for anything in here.  I next encountered three alarm clocks still in boxes, funny since I’m always late.

Just found my Gramms’ old photo album perfect distraction. I can flip through these for a while. Ah, my eyes! There’s a picture of my Gramms in her industrial brassiere and a man’s tie around her neck drinking whiskey from the bottle. No, it wasn’t taken yesterday, she looks about twenty. I see what Gramps was attracted to, but I wonder who’s taking the pciture?

Four beanie babies I’ll set those aside for the kidlings.

Cloth grocery bags I never take to the grocery store. Perfect for storing the twenty plus empty containers.

Something in a box from IKEA called Rationell. Don’t know what it is. The only picture on the box is of a man throwing away trash. Those Swedes are so neat. Opened it. Put it together. Still don’t know what it is. I’m using it to hold notebooks on my desk.

Lots of trash, extra wrapping paper. Huge matted balls of cables for who knows what. Pictures that were never hung.

Oh dang it, Blind Dog made off with one of the beanie babies. Think it was a grey dog. Too late, Blind Dog’s chewed the nose off.

My apologies to Blockbuster. Apparently you didn’t lose that movie several years ago. My bad.

That’s about it. Wait somethings in the very back. Okay, no clue how this got back there. Tucked in the very back behind the vacuum and several large pictures is a lasso, a green lasso.  I have absolutely no idea where that could have come from.

Check your closets. If you find a stray cowboy, send him round for his lasso.

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