Summer Giraffe Call
My Summer 2016 “Giraffe” Prompt Call is open until 9 p.m. Eastern time tonight.
The theme today is “When the best answer is FIRE”
I will write a short flash fiction or the beginning of a story (approx 150-300 words) for the first twelve prompters who post their prompts within the next 24 hours.
I will start posting stories around 7:30 a.m. Eastern time and continue until I run out of prompters/until 9:30 p.m., and then pick up again tomorrow morning with whatever’s left.
Please stop in and leave a prompt or three!
Just. One. Book.
Just. One. Book. I live in a town of 1200 people in the Northern Sierra Nevada –where it meets the Cascade Range near Mt. Lassen National Park and about two hours drive northwest of Reno, NV.…
Source: Just. One. Book.
This is another test post
It is step 3a in my master plan
This is a test post
It is step 3 in my master plan.
Grandpa-to-Me Cooking
There’s a rage, it seems, for Farm-to-Table dining; there’s a few restaurants open in Ithaca right now that tout it and it gets play in some blogs. In short, it’s local food delivered to local consumers – in restaurants, it’s high end stuff made with low-food-miles food. I find it an interesting movement, but I live in the Frozen North, and I like my oranges, and my fresh produce in December, and so on.
There’s also – as we found out when we were taken out to a fancy place for dinner for our birthdays in Troy a few weeks back – a trend for buttermilk-fried ramps right now. And let me tell you, they are delicious. Ommity nommity tasty, with just enough onion flavor. We bought some ramps from our local farmer’s market and tried it out – so good
But to bring this around full circle, trendy things are pricey, and ramps have a very short growing season and are in fashion right now, so much so thatpeople fear overharvesting.
Enter my grandparents’ farm, and the small forest there that my parents harvest for wood. And a visit to meet with my other (surviving) grandmother at my parents’ place 2 weekends past.
And my mother just happens to say “oh, would you like some ramps? We can go dig them.” And then proceeded to dig them right out of the back forty!
Let me tell you, grandpa’s-woods-to-table tastes even better than farm-to-table.
ramps picture source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_houle/4579462538
Posting Schedule
I’ve been trying – with some success – to keep my postings to some sort of schedule. I thought it might keep me on track if I posted said schedule here.
I may be off by up to a day on any given post.
Monday
Edally Academy
Weekend blog post
Tuesday
Patreon “Bonus” post – a flashback, something I missed from the month before, or just a story not yet posted for the month
Wednesday
Edally Academy
Buffy fanfic
Thursday
Patreon – alternating weeks story & serial until serial is caught up
Friday
Edally Academy
Narnia Fanfic into Valdemar
Of course, other fiction will be posted as finished/as whim hits/as commissioned/etc.
Were- — Editor. Author. Librarian.
Time to announce the Table of Contents for the ‘Were-‘ anthology, coming August 2016! Back Cover Copy (tentative, still being tweaked): Werewolves rule the night in urban fantasy, but everyone knows there are other were-creatures out there just as dangerous and deadly, if not as common, each with their own issues as they struggle to […]
Writing is like the monkeys in the silo
I was minding my own business yesterday, doing the dishes and thinking about something on the news, when bam, an idea hit me.
I was playing the “what if” game: “What’s his story? Why did that really happen? What if it happened this way?”
That idea is gone, sadly… I didn’t write it down… but it sparked the idea for this post.
When I was a kid, I’d ask my mom or dad while we were driving: “tell me about that silo out there” or “tell me about that chimney” (around here, you can often find chimneys sort of hanging around with no house). “Tell me why this road is named Hubbel… why this is named Euler.”
(there’s another story there, too…)
And my mom would tell me about the monkeys in the silo, or my dad would tell me about Hub Bill, who wanted the world to revolve around him, or the You Learns (our road is pronounced you-ler, not like the scientist, oddly).
Writing is like that. You look at a thing. You ask a question. And the question leads to a story.
Tell me about that chimney, mom. Tell me about Reed Road, Daddy.
Tell me about that guy walking down the street. He’s carrying bags on a ski pole like a modern yoke. What’s his story?
Publications
In addition to the writing I have posted online, you can find my stories in the following publications:
Unconventional Love – romantic tales of fandom, geekery, and dairy. My short story “Waterwoman Can’t” explores what, exactly, the actress who once played the amazing superhero Waterwoman can and can’t do – and what she’ll do with her new boy hostage.
Do You Feel What I Feel – a heartwarming collection of holiday-themed short stories. My story “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” explores the things we do and don’t tell our families, and all the stresses of having secrets during the holidays.
Bloodlines – 16 Journeys on the Dark Streets of Urban Fantasy. My rust belt noir story “Heartblood of the City” shows a monster in the heart of the city, and the humans fighting her, one way or another.
What Follows – How would an Immortal deal with the End Times? The titular “Monster Godmother” of my story is reviled by the people she has protected in the past. How does she deal?
No Place For Us – They say love is for better or for worse, but what about when the worst has already occurred? Even in an apocalypse, you can find yourself hungry for “Company.”
Shifting Hearts – It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but what if the soul that looks back isn’t as human as you first thought? Sometimes having an animal soul and a human body makes the lines hard to see. Sometimes we’re just “Crossing the Line.”
EMG-Zine, April 2012 – Plants – The planet was uninhabited. But that just meant that their “Xenonegoation” was stranger than normal.
Alder's Grove 