Meanwhile…

Wow, already almost half-way through. Well, I guess not. Nine days to go? I have yet to need to turn to the emergency prompts, though, so I take that as a good sign.

I just whipped this piece up, inspired by the current goings on in Iran. There are some incredibly moving images and stories coming out of there. I can’t hope to do any of that justice with my meager skills, but I was inspired nonetheless.

I tend to avoid political discussions, because for the most part they are losing propositions regardless of ideologies, logic, or reason. But I see things like this and it just blows me away. We may be seeing history in the making. Given that we just had eight years of a president pissing all over the Constitution and nothing happened, I don’t know exactly what it would take to have that sort of political unrest here. I’m not sure if we’re the lucky ones or not.

Just over 500 words. Continue reading

I started this mostly as a pretty basic post-apocalypse story, survivors living among the ruins of civilization type story. I kind of like the direction it’s taking, though, so maybe at some point I’ll work some more on this concept. A little over 800 words. Continue reading

Didn’t really get a chance to work on much yesterday, so I’ve already missed a day!

Occasionally I dip my toes into the pool of fantasy, though I’ve yet to finish anything of the sort that I’d consider submitting somewhere. There’s a certain built-in formality to the language of fantasy, a by-product of the epic nature of the genre I guess, that I’m not sure I’m any good at. Plus there’s a lot of world-building to do, which has a lot of different pros and cons involved. And don’t get me started on attempting to cull something new from the genre that doesn’t get mixed up with some half-remembered Tolkein myth or D&D rulebook.

For years I’ve tinkered with a story involving an elf and human teaming up for some quest. It always starts off with the two of them tracking some villainy in a forest, and the elf crafting a weapon from a dead tree to exact vengeance. The names and genders (and even the species – the human was originally some half-breed goblin or something) have shifted and there’s several different versions on various notebooks in my bookshelves.

Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to finishing it. Here’s yet another version of the opening, about 600 words.

Continue reading

First day’s writing complete, a little alternate World War I steampunk-style war scene. The full story came in just under a thousand words. I don’t know if there’s enough story to it to consider submitting it somewhere or not. I’ll have to think about it.

Excerpt after the jump.

Edit – gah, sorry, some intertube gremlins ate the second half of my post. Should be good now. Well, visible, not necessarily good. Continue reading

I nearly forgot, but tomorrow marks the Writer’s Ink Story Every Day contest. We started this last year after my own fool-hearted attempt at something similar on my own. Now all the cool kids are doing it. Every day for two weeks we’ll all attempt to churn out a piece of flash fiction of at least 500 words.

So keep an eye on this space for terrible, hastily-written exercises for the next couple of weeks. I usually get about 9-12 pieces done. With a little luck one or two might be worth polishing up.