Tag Archive | 30days

30 Days of Flash Fiction, Round 2: The Prompts and the Challenge

Jul15

After [personal profile] ravenswept‘s meme and with permission, [personal profile] kc_obrien and I present the second 30 days meme.

The rules, such as they are:
Write something of approximately 250 words, +/- 50 words, to each prompt.
Go wild with genres (ex; prompt 25 is “noir” but it’s meant as more a mood/flavor).
Have fun.
If, like some people I know (*cough* Clare *cough*), you don’t like flash fiction, feel free to write 30 parts of a very strange 7500-word short story.

As an added bonus! Prize! If you complete the 30 prompts by September 16, 2011, and I know you’re doing this meme, I will enter your name into a random drawing for a $10 Barnes&Nobel or Amazon.com gift card.

Here is your month of prompts:

1) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.”
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG
7) prompt: frigid
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards.”
9) prompt: mourning dead gods
10) write a story set in three different time periods
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written
12) prompt: sweet iced tea
13) re-write a story that everyone knows
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter
15) prompt: ascension
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip
17) write an uncomfortable story
18) prompt: a step too far
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM
20) Write the end of the story “The Purple Bag.”
21) Roll a d20 twice (Random.Org). Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers
22) prompt: knight in shining armor
23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn
24) prompt: founding fathers
25) write a story set in a library
26) prompt: elemental
27) write a story using only one period. Bonus: write the story using only one /ending punctuation at all.
28) write a story set in a laundromat
29) (from Lilifluff) Randomly pick a number between 1 and 28 (Random.Org) . Re-write that prompt as a Spaghetti Western or Melodrama
30) the story ends with the words “coming up.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/75523.html. You can comment here or there.

30daysmeme – Moving Out (Dragons Next Door @inventrix)

Jul8

Day 30 of 30 days of Fiction: “30) Write a scene saying “good bye.”

Dragons Next Door – a prelude.

Stay tuned for the next 30 days Meme!

The ogres next door were moving out.

I should have been happy, I suppose. They were loud, smelly, and messy, and their yard trash not only stank, it attracted wyverns and other strange vermin . Their son, too, tended to throw his “toys” around randomly, and I didn’t really enjoy explaining to my children why there was a rotting leg in the yard.

To say nothing about the threat to my children.

Well, let’s be fair. There’s nothing to say. The ogres would eat human meat when it came to them, hunters and criminals and the like, but they didn’t eat the neighbors and, indeed, had been known to eat the nasty sort of human predator when they spent too much time lurking around. Messy, yes, but they liked their neighborhoods friendly.

And my kids liked them, even my oldest, who was going through one of those phases children go through, where they don’t like anyone or anything. Plus, in this neighborhood, you really, really never know what’s going to move in next to you.

Suffice it to say, their leave-taking was a mixed blessing. We threw them a little party, us and the Brownies across the street. My oldest brought them a cow. I didn’t ask where the money had come from. Cattle thieves run in our family, anyway; we have the rope great-great-grandma was hanged with displayed over our mantle (it didn’t stick, which is good for her progeny). My middle child brought them a voodoo doll; she’d been learning in school. The youngest I kept home; worried about incautious footfalls.

My husband and I made a charm for them, with hopes it would smooth things in their new home. And when they were gone, we stared across the wreckage of their front lawn, wondering who would replace them.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/72243.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days – drawing to a close & restarting!

Jul7

Others I know who are also doing the 30 days meme include:
Meridian Rose
Amanda-Sheree
Inventrix
Ravenswept, whose meme it is
Limiinal
K.C.O’Brien
Lilfluff!

If you know others, let me know, and I’ll add them to the list. Guys, there’s a lot of absolutely awesome stuff here!

[personal profile] kc_obrien and I are working, with [personal profile] ravenswept‘s permission, on another 30 days list. Any requests?

(There may be a prize for this one, too; any requests?)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/71847.html. You can comment here or there.

30DaysMeme: Well, Crap, where am I? (fanfic/Cali/Criminal Minds xover)

Jul6

Day 15 of 30 days of Fiction: “28) Prompt: overhearing a conversation.”

Tir na Cali/Criminal Minds, another scene from that fan fic my brain demanded I write. (Lj Link)…(This was the first one written) (LJ link; this story comes right after this one (LJ Link)).

Reid woke slowly, groggy, and cotton-mouthed, the last of the drug cocktail leaving the world hazy and his stomach uneasy. He was still bound – no, not still, bound again. For one, he was no longer in a chair; his knees were almost at his chest and the floor under him was padded. For another, whatever was holding him now was both less uncomfortable and had less give than the ropes Tobias had tied him with. His hands were behind his back, his ankles together, and he was leaning sideways against something padded. His eyes, when he opened them, were covered, hooded or blindfolded.

When the first voice he heard was male, he almost believed Tobias had sprouted a new personality.

“So, you’ve got him, now what are you going to do with him, then?” His accent had the peculiar combination of Irish and pioneer that suggested Californian working-class. Unlikely to be Tobias, then. All his personalities had Georgian accents.

“What we do when we kidnap someone.” The second voice was female. From the swallowed, lazy consonants, she might be royalty. This wasn’t looking all that good.

“Mor, he’s an American Federal Agent. You can’t just go kidnapping fibbies.”

“I don’t see why not.” And that was a third voice, another female, working-class. So the bleary memories he had of getting snatched from Tobias’ hands were accurate. He wondered what they’d done with his captor. “Ours now, isn’t he?”

That couldn’t be good. He cleared his throat into the moment of silence. “Excuse me,” he croaked. “Could I have some water?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/70222.html. You can comment here or there.

30 Days, Daily Prompt, Kink Bingo… Make you Mine

Jul5

Day 25 of 30 days of Fiction: “27) Prompt: trapped.”

From [community profile] dailyprompt: “life and liberty”.

A double up on [community profile] kink_bingo – O-1 – possession/marking – from my card.

An excuse to use a new icon from djinni

And in the Harem sub-setting of Tir na Cali. (all that for 500 words!!)

“‘… among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’”

Stephen was talking to himself when Ursula came into her suite. She’d left the manor for a couple days, her ostensible purpose a meeting at the Agency but her side goal giving him a little time to get used to the room and the idea of being hers.

She returned to find him staring out over the vineyards from her balcony, murmuring what she believed was probably part of the American’s Declaration of Independence, over and over again.

“ ‘That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,’” she provided from memory, and was rewarded by a twitch in his shoulder blades.

“I didn’t know you were back.” He hadn’t turned around yet, but he did remember to add, rather belatedly, “my Lady.”

“I just got home. We have most of the American documents in our library, you know.”

“I was just thinking,” he said, his bare back still to her and his back tense, “that I took it for granted, back home. I never really thought about the Declaration, or any of that. Liberty. You people barely even have the concept.”

“That’s like saying your people don’t have the idea of ‘pursuit of happiness,’ just because ours do it better,” she objected mildly. “It’s just not a priority for us, the way it is for Americans.” She hadn’t intended to argue with him today. She never intended to.

“I guessed that.” Now, now he turned around, frowning, and raked his eyes over her in a way that would have gotten him whipped by most of her cousins and peers. His eyes stopped at the narrow gold collar she was holding in her left hand. “Being trapped here, and all.” His gesture was a bit choppy as it took in the scenic vista behind him.

“Trapped,” she agreed softly. He was, after all, with her or in the harems. He was never going to go home again. “How are you enjoying your new cage?”

He winced, and she almost felt guilty. Almost. “The newspaper on the bottom is nicer, and it’s a bit roomier than the old one,” he quipped back. “Quieter, too. I’m still not sure about that part.”

“I’ll try to be sure you don’t get too lonely,” she assured him. His eyes were still on the collar in her hand; she wondered how long he could keep making jokes while staring at it.

Not long, it seemed. “I already have a collar,” he snapped abruptly. “Where are you going to lock that one?”

“You have my grandmother’s collar.” She set this new one down on the table, her eyes still on him. “Kneel for me, Stephan.”

“Make me,” he snapped back, his hands going to the steel band around his neck. “What’s the difference? A collar is a collar. They all make me a slave, right?”

He was, she noted, really freaking out. “This one will make you mine.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/69723.html. You can comment here or there.

30daysmeme, Sparkle Lust

Jul5

Day 25 of 30 days of Fiction: “26) Write a personalized rejection letter for the YA novel ‘Sparkle Lust.'”

This is an in-joke of sorts off of the Addergoole setting; one might wonder why, of everyone, you never see Ardell’s Change…

Dear Ardell Drake:

Thank you for submitting your novel “Sparkle Lust” for consideration. However, we are not interested in publishing it at this time for several reasons.

Firstly, although you billed this as YA, and I acknowledge that the main characters are, indeed, teenagers throughout most of the story, the subject matter is uncomfortably dark even for jaded adults.

The story itself, of a stifling, abusive stepfather, a distant father, an inappropriately interested professor, and a heavy-handed first boyfriend, bears telling, I believe, but the dark and fantastic elements that you choose to couch it in bring it into the realm of a terrifying acid trip. In addition, although I am impressed with the way your metaphors carry through the entire tale, I am not certain why you chose to use something so reminiscent of recent well-known YA novels as a symbol for uncertain sexuality.

That similarity – the sparkle which you even put in the title of your novel – would open this publishing house up to potential lawsuits, since it cannot be said that your novel is a parody or satire of the original.

Additionally, the thinly-veiled autobiographical nature of some of your details is worrisome, and would likely cause many of our customers distress. If such things are truly happening in an American boarding school; action should be taken.

And, as a personal reason, Dr. Regine Avonmorea gives this publishing house quite a bit of money, and would be very irked with this novel. And your stepfather would break my neck.

My apologies, and we wish you luck with another publishing house,

Lyn Thorne-Alder
Editor,
Alder’s Grove Press

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/69391.html. You can comment here or there.

30daysmeme, The Mommy Cases (Dragons Next Door)

Jul1

Day 25 of 30 days of Fiction: “25) Prompt: noir style.”

Dragons Next Door setting

It had been a long, grey, gritty day by the time the little man walked into my office. Cleaning floors is never a fun time, and, let me tell you, cleaning blood off of floors just adds a fine red mist to your entire day. Blood and soccer mud, well, there isn’t a dame in town that won’t tell you that’s the worst.

So there I was, up to my elbows in dirty water, tired of it all, with the stink of blood in my nose, when the little man strode in like he owned the place. My place, I might add.

“Someone stole my truck!” he declared. The boy could put on a sob story with the best of them, let me tell you, alligator tears and wide-eyed innocence. “It was Juniper! You have to stop her!”

It had been a while since I’d had a case, and, right then, I would have done anything to get off my knees and out of the dirt and blood. Especially if I could get someone else to deal with the dirt while I was gone. “Tell you what, little man,” I told him. “Get me my fedora, and I will find your truck.”

Chances his story was on the up and up were pretty slim. I knew his sort, and these sob stories almost always turned out to be song and dance routines to shift the blame. It got me off the floor, though, so I’d take it.

“Okay, Mommy.”

Mommy. That’s the name on my door.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/68044.html. You can comment here or there.

30Daysmeme, On the Set

Jun30

Day 24 of 30 days of Fiction: “24) Write a scene on a movie set”

In FaeApoc setting, or, at least, meta about the faeapoc setting, specifically the web-serial Addergoole.

Fae Apoc has A Landing Page (LJ Link).

“So, wait, what’s supposed to be going on here? Isn’t this a little unbelievable? Instant lust at first sight?”

Arthur rolled his eyes at Mindy. The actress had the arrogance and the look to play Shahin, but she understood none of the subtlety, and he was pretty sure she hadn’t even bothered to read the script, much less the source material.

The girl they’d gotten to play Kailani was a brilliant actress, but that was the only way she could ever be called brilliant. She didn’t need to be, of course; her lines were all written for her. The guy playing Conrad had the smile down, and that was all he really needed. Olly, playing Jamian, on the other hand, was so impressive at the role that Arthur had yet to figure out if the actor was in actuality a guy or a girl.

And Arthur himself? He stepped up to Mindy, setting a hand on her bare back. “It’s not quite first sight,” he murmured; “they’ve been courting all week. And, of course, there’s the magic to contend with.”

“The magic,” she said flatly, thinking, clearly, that it was a come-on. Yeah, she hadn’t read the script.

“They are made for each other,” he smiled, without a touch of shame. “Almost literally. They are carried away with lust, not because they’re both so damn hot,” he allowed that to be a smirk; both he and Mindy knew they were good looking, after all, “but because the touch of bare skin sends something like electricity through them. They get carried away by the feedback from her power.”

She looked up at him through long eyelashes; they’d even gotten the height right in their casting. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

He pressed his hand against her. “I like to know where I stand.”

Yeah, he thought, grinning to himself, they’d cast Emrys right, too.

My current fund-raising goals:
art for the Rin & Girey Ebook
and bedroom carpet for our new-house-to-be.

Donating gets you access to special donor-only posts! Every $4 gets you one month of access.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/66939.html. You can comment here or there.

30Days: Falling Falling Falling Down

Jun29

Day 21 of 30 days of Fiction:”23) Prompt: falling”

Another snippet of Facets of Dusk. 🙂

It was Xenia’s turn to hold Alexa’s hand, although they arranged such things without ever speaking about it. The world they were leaving was too unpleasant, too cold, for Josie to be any use at all, so she came in near the end, buffering Aerich and Alexa, focusing on his turmoil to avoid thinking too hard about her own.

Cole stepped through the mist, so comforting and incongruous inside the steel doorway, vanished into its embrace one limb at a time, until his hand jerked out of her grasp. Unbalanced (some would say she always was, but what did they know?), Josie tumbled after him, Aerich nearly atop her.

And they fell, nothing around them but grey storm clouds and one perplexed bird. There had to be a door; that was how the whole system worked. A door in the middle of thin air? She twisted to look up, trusting her teammates to manage the problem of landing.

Through the clouds, she could barely make out the darker grey of stone. A balcony? She moved the wind, carefully, not wanting to impact the climate more than she had to.

Next to her, still holding her wrist in his dry, firm grip, Aerich chanted, drawing glyphs in the air with his free hand. Below her, Cole swore, the sort of calm, rhythmic swearing that meant he had a plan and was working on it.

And stretching up above them all, taller, it seemed, than the skyscraper they’d stepped out of, was the ruin of an ancient tower, grey stone spiraling into the clouds.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/66437.html. You can comment here or there.