Tag Archive | 30days

30daysmeme, Diapering Dragons

Jun7

Day 3 of 30 days of Fiction: “3) Write a query letter for a fantasy (any kind) novel” (one day late)

Dear Prospective Agent,

The ogres next door have moved out, but the new neighbors have a joyriding teen and a new infant whose cries can wake up the neighborhood. Sure, the wee little thing is adorable, but he belches fire when he’s colicky and needs asbestos diapers.

Audrey and her husband try to be neighborly, but what can they do when their ten-year-old daughter agrees to take on the task of babysitting the Smith’s difficult new baby? Diapering Dragons and Burping Banshees is a cheerful exploration of a strange suburban neighborhood, where you never know if the folks next door are going to turn out to be monsters, or just four-legged people with scales.

At 50,000 words, Diapering Dragons takes on the issues and problems of being a tween through the kaleidoscope lens of a fantasy world, lending perspective and the distance of allegory to issue like peer acceptance and untrustworthy adults.

Thank you for your consideration,

Aldersprig

The List

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15-minute-ficlet, 30daysmeme, “Damn dragons, get off my lawn!”

Jun5

Day 2 of 30 days of Fiction: “2) Write a scene with a drunken mythological creature.”
15 minute fiction prompt: “Obnoxious Dragons.”

There was a drunk dragon on my front lawn again.

The new neighbors had moved in six months ago, at the beginning of winter, into the cavern-and-castle system the ogres had vacated, mom, dad, two kids and an egg, with a pet that they called a dog, I think out of a sense of misplaced irony. And, for a while, everything had been fine. I mean, we’d been living next door to ogres. We were just glad to have the carrion smell gone (fumigated, even. Dragons make good fumigators.)

But once the weather had warmed up, their oldest kid (again with the misplaced irony; they called him Jimmy) had started joyriding and taken up drinking in a big way. Everything they did was big, of course; now take that and multiply it by teenage hormones and rebellion.

My oldest had already gone through the worst of it, and our younger two weren’t there yet; I could spare some sympathy for the Smiths (yes, really. And they were. Smiths, that is, and quite good ones at that). Their fights weren’t any louder than the harpies three doors down, after all, and everyone had had a kid slam the castle gate in the middle of a fight.

But it was a lot easier to spare sympathy when their kid wasn’t snoring a scorch-hole in my lawn. I pulled out the broom and the leather apron I used for cleaning out the incinerator, and headed out to do battle.

“Jimmy.” I poked him below the last ribs with the broom, mindful of the flame-gouts. “Jimmy, you’ve got to go home.”

He blinked at me blearily. “Oh, come on, Mrs. S., can’t I stay here?” Ever hear a dragon whine? Dogs in the next county covered their ears.

“Afraid not, James. You’re welcome to come over for biscuits and gravy when you’re sober, but drunken dragons belong in their own beds. Or down by the waterfall.” This time of year, it could handle him.

He sighed, and he couldn’t have been that far gone, because it didn’t light my lawn on fire. “All right, Mrs. S. Biscuits, really? With the brown gravy?”

“I promise, James. If you’re off my lawn before you set the gnome on fire.”

My brown gravy is the talk of the neighborhood; Jimmy was flying woozily for the waterfall before I’d finished, calling back over his scaly shoulder, “Sorry about the table, Mrs. S., I swear I’ll pay for it.”

I poked the remains of the lawn table my husband had made, and thought wistfully of ogres.

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30DaysMeme – Hello.

Jun4

Okay, this setting officially needs a landing page and an icon now. via [personal profile] kc_obrien, via [personal profile] ravenswept, the first of the 30 days of fiction meme. It’s in the same setting as the Library/Academy/Foundation. Which also needs a NAME

1) Write a scene saying “hello”

He came to the school in autumn, once the crops were in. They’d gone back to old habits and old practices in the Academy as in so much else of the world, knowing that the old existed and had survived for so long for a reason.

He was young enough, fifteen, the youngest they accepted students full-time, that this was the only world he remembered. That he had likely never seen a building still standing as large as the Academy, or as many books in one place as the Library. But he didn’t stare like a hick, the way some of them did. He didn’t gape, or gawk. He looked around, calmly, taking it all in. She got the feeling he was looking for escape routes, although he didn’t have the fight-or-flee set to his shoulders, either.

She hadn’t planned on coming down until the rest of the students arrived, probably within the week. She had under-Deans to handle admissions. But something about the way he looked around made her descend the stairs from what she thought of, somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, as her ivory tower.

“Hello,” she said, trying not to smirk when he finally deigned to notice her. “I’m Dean Theresa.”

His slow smile in return was everything she had been expecting. “Hello. I’m Thomas.”

The 30 in KC’s Journal, and the original post

Forbidden
A Kiss Under Duck & Cover
Beginning With a Kiss

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