Archive | August 2011

Stories for Sponsorship!

Aug12

These stories have been written from prompts and are available for sponsorship.

Any piece can be microfunded in increments as small as $1:

Bridged, the “sequel” to Relics, 1100 words, sponsor for $18

It Always Hurts, 1400 words from the lyrics of “the Holly and the Ivy,” sponsor for $23

Holding the Ways, a microfiction of an unconventional funeral, 350 words. Sponsor for $6

The Old Path, from [profile] ellenmillion‘s prompt “the Old Ways” and [personal profile] eseme‘s prompt “…discovering old overgrown [ways].” 4100 words, sponsor for $70

Labyrinth, still in progress, from [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt “the path the the labyrinth” & [personal profile] eseme‘s prompt of “bartering.”

The Trouble With Bongong Island, from Inventrix’s prompt “Bananas, Bifurcation, Belittling Bohemian butterflies.” 2111 words gentlemen adventurer tale, sponsor for $35
Keeping the Gods, a story of the fae apoc, from Shutsumon’s prompt “bacchanal, barbarocracy,bathykolpian.” 1500 words of cautionary fantasy, Sponsor for $25

Avarice – From [personal profile] haikujaguar‘s prompt “Avarice. Anemia. And maybe… appetite.” 1038 words, a story of mixed appetites and dovetailing greed. Sponsor for $20

Afghans for Aliens, a flash fiction sci-fi

Sunday at the Grove – From [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s prompt, this is a tender story of mourning and passing on. 900 words. Sponsor for $15

Revived, a story of the Stranded World, 2556 words. Sponsor for $42

How does Sponsoring work?
You can:

  • Throw money in the general pool. When there’s enough to sponsor a story, I’ll put it up for a general vote.
  • Micro-fund a specific story: donate any amount of money towards a specific story. I’ll post that it’s $Xx towards being completely funded.
  • Sponsor a whole story. If you sponsor a story, I will immediately post it on my blog for everyone to see, with your name or that of a dedicatee if you wish; plus you get a nonexclusive publication right, so you can post it on your own blog or elsewhere as long as you keep the credits intact. (Some phrasing from YsabetWordsmith’s Poetry Fishbowl).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/84549.html. You can comment here or there.

State of the Lyn!

Aug12

Whee.

First, a passing musing: I am often fascinated by the new meanings typos give things, or, if not typos, my own misreading of things. Sometimes it seems I am alone in this; am I?

The HouseBuying continues to move at a pace but not apace. The USDA going on sudden retreat (not running away, the other sort) has delayed us an indefinite time around but not certainly 2 weeks.

This past Saturday, T. and I went to the Cortland Arts and Wine Festival (and got an estimate on the giraffe carpet, also in Cortland(*))… loads of fun, as it always is. Drank lots and lots of wine, bought a little, giggled a lot(**).

I don’t actually know what we’re doing this weekend. Perhaps garage/freesale-ing. Writing, I’m sure. Rest. Rest would be nice.

(*) About an hour north and east of our apartment.
(**) I giggled. T. does not giggle.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/106203.html. You can comment here or there.

Playing, Dragons Next Door, for morrigans_eve

Aug11

To [personal profile] morrigans_eve‘s prompt “More of Juniper and Baby Smith’s games?” in this flash-fiction meme (LJ).

Dragons Next Door has a landing page (LJ Link)

Juniper rolled her eyes at her parents and headed out the side door to go to the Smith’s place. She knew Baby was still little and pre-lingual. She knew dragons were helpless and nearly mindless until they reached about grown-up-high in length. Cthaiden had explained all of this to her – and, considering some of the stuff her parents had been saying, she’d been listening better than they had.

But they still wanted to explain, when she said “I want to go play with Baby,” either that Baby was a live being and not a pet or a toy, which she knew, or that Baby didn’t really understand the playing yet, yes, she also knew. Baby was a baby. It was fragile and you had to be careful, even if it could poop fire on you, and it really didn’t understand words. Juniper had been there when it had hatched. She knew this all.

She just liked playing with Baby anyway. Baby was small, smaller than Juniper (there weren’t many people she could say that about), and it needed her help to do anything. It was a neat feeling, having another being relying on her.

And, when she wanted to play, Baby didn’t argue or tell her it was a stupid game (although once it had belched on a board game and ruined it). It just crawled over the floor with her, or hit the ball, or slept, and she could tell it all the stories she wanted.

Maybe if she told it enough stories about the princess and the dragon being best friends, when it grew up, it would remember.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/105764.html. You can comment here or there.

Slave School: Equal Rights? For lilfluff

Aug11

From my call for gender prompts and [personal profile] lilfluff‘s commission comes a discussion at the Cali Slave School on the Rights of Man. Err, Males.

“Aren’t you going to hold the door for me?” Steve teased. Jill wrinkled her nose at him, and did not hold the door. Pointedly.

“You know very well that’s not what that was about. It’s not like everything just turned one-eighty from home.”

“Well, no,” Seth argued, pointedly holding the door for the rest of them. “I mean, back in the States, women and men have equal rights.”

“Under the law,” Jill couldn’t help but point out.

“Well, what other kind of rights are there?”

“Social rights,” Debbie offered. She flopped in her accustomed place in Jakub’s chair; normally he didn’t mind, but today he glared at her.

“Like having your own goddamned chair when you want it?”

“Woah.” She slipped out of the chair to the floor. “Sorry.” Her tone said she was anything but.

“Cut him some slack,” Jill advised gently. “They’ve just found out they’re 1890’s women.”

“Yeah,” Seth pointed out, “but it’s not the eighteen-hundreds anymore. Women don’t get treated like that back home.”

“Depends on the woman, and the man,” Debbie argued, trying to get comfortable on the floor. With a glance to be sure it was all right, Jill settled onto Seth’s bed, watching the guys process that.

“I never treated anyone like that,” Steve asserted angrily. “Second-class citizen.” He tugged on his collar roughly, the steel cutting into his bullish neck. “Fucking second-class second-class citizen.”

“Wouldn’t that make you a fourth-class citizen?” Carl, who had been quiet through the whole thing, offered this bit with a small smirk. Jill wondered what he thought of the whole mess; of all of them, he’d been the quietest all along.

“Not. Helping. Man.” Steve yanked hard on the collar again. “That’s shit. And not only is it shit, they have to explain it all, like it’s right or something.”

“‘A woman’s place is in the home,’” Debbie countered.

“Again,” Seth argued, “eighteen-ninety, not the two thousands.”

“Dude, my grandmother thought I should go into nursing. Or maybe teaching. Good, womanly jobs.” Debbie’s voice rose louder and louder. “So don’t tell me that shit ended in the eighteen hundreds.”

“Legally, though, women got the right to vote at the beginning of the twentieth century in the ‘States,” Seth soothed.

“Well,” Jill interjected, before this could get further out of hand, “neither of us have that now. As far as rights go, Debbie and I have about one more right than you guys, and I hope to God we don’t have to use it anytime soon.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/105682.html. You can comment here or there.

*falls down and has dreams about writing to prompts*

Aug11

Sunday, I put out a call for prompts (LJ post) on the theme of Gender, Sexuality, and how they can go funky (short title: Genderfunky Giraffes).

25 short and medium pieces later…

I have only [personal profile] lilfluff‘s second commissioned piece to write.

Monday’s summary is here (or here)

Yesterday’s summary is here (or here)

Switcheroo (LJ), for DaHob‘s prompt

Buuut… (LJ), for kelkyag‘s prompt: “Dealing with the lack of reassurance on the acceptance of a newly asserted gender identity…”

On Top (LJ), for [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s prompt: “Not every pack Alpha has a bitch. Sometimes it is the bitch.”

(LJ, for @skysailor99’s prompt: Make up a gender and have a character’s partner learn to understand it.

ankewehner is doing a flash fiction fishbowl, if you’re still feeling prompty.

And I’ve still got 3 slots left in this prompt-me meme (2 on LJ)

Any piece I’ve written can be sponsored for continuation.

For more information, my Donor landing page is here (and on LJ)


This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/105351.html. You can comment here or there.

Bringing it home

Aug10

This is for @skysailor99’s prompt in my call for prompts: Make up a gender and have a character’s partner learn to understand it.

I’ve never made up a gender before, so I mad-libbed from friends on Twitter nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and, thank you barbary, a gender name:

sloppily
hagadab
Morosely
alpine
geode
yoink

This is in the Dragons Next Door setting, but NOT the narrator family or the smiths. Elkin were going to be elf-kin, but I liked the typo better.

I think it’s fair that I thought Farnah was male.

He was – pardon, zad was – the first elkin I’d had any real experience with, and he – zad – had, when naked, something that really looked like a penis. And functioned like one, as well, or at least close enough. Elkin are far enough from human that I didn’t worry about babies (it takes magic, a stork, and the remnants of a dragon egg to make an elkin-human cross), so I didn’t think, all that much, about the fact that zad didn’t have testes. I aways thought they looked silly on human males, anyway.

We had been together for several months when zad finally explained to me – after the age-old argument about toilet seats, no less, that zad was not male. Zad was hagadab, and, it turned out, the elkin have seven genders.

I, personally, sometimes thought two was more than enough, but I really, really liked Farnah, still do, and so I tried to learn more about my lover and zas gender.

They tend to be sloppy, I learned that first, but only in the nest. In the field, they are meticulous (I already knew this about Farnah. We worked, often, side-by-side, and spent most of our time in my apartment.) They like high spaces (the elkin are, after all, naturally alpine), and, it turns out, are the reason for the kendar myth. Already things I already knew about Farnah; shorter than me by half a foot, zad had picked the tallest chair in my apartment as zas and stacked pillows on it to make it taller.

The hardest part, as we adjusted to our cross-species romance, turned out in the end to be the easiest. The hagadab are the providers of the elkin family group; they hunt, they gather, they bring home Things. Zad didn’t mind that I earned money, but me bringing home things made my poor Farnah bristle every time.

I never liked grocery shopping that much, anyway.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/104980.html. You can comment here or there.

On Top.

Aug10

For [personal profile] kc_obrien‘s prompt: “Not every pack Alpha has a bitch. Sometimes it is the bitch.”

If this is anything, it is very very loosely Anita-verse OC

I went home with the new alpha. Jordan was dead, after all, and Chris had won me when he won the pack. I wanted to have a conversation with him, before he had too much time listening to others.

I could see it in his eyes, that he knew something was up, but I waited until we were in the bedroom, until he started going about things in a typical werewolf fashion, to bring it up. He had me pinned to the bed when I said, conversationally, “you know what I did?”

He froze. “What,” he admitted. “Not how. Or, for that matter, why.” He looked down at me, and, as if abashed, let go of my wrists. I scooted until I was sitting up, while his face went through a few odd contortions.

“You don’t need to know how.” I had cheated like hell, that’s how, to make sure he won. “Why… I should think that would be obvious.”

A heartbeat passed. Another. “You want me to be the alpha.”

“I do.” I let him keep the suspicions he was having to himself. For now. “I am not going to be raped or beaten again.”

“I’m the alpha,” he protested. “You’re my bitch.”

“Half right.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/104928.html. You can comment here or there.

“Buut…”

Aug10

This is for kelkyag‘s prompt in my call for prompts: “Dealing with the lack of reassurance on the acceptance of a newly asserted gender identity…”

Unknown ‘verse. And I hope I did okay.

I pressed myself against Caden, in the middle of our bed. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you.”

It seemed unlikely; the book’s pages were still turning. The broad, lovely, scarred back was still to me.

“I’ve meditated on it. I’ve thought about it. I’ve been talking to my therapist about it. I’m a girl.”

Caden turned to look at me, the hot, hungry look so at odds with the heavy physics book still on the bed. “You’re Jay, my JJ.” The kiss, too, matched the look, hungry, hot, urgent. My body did uncomfortable things against Cade’s hip, and a gentle laugh echoed across the studio.

“Don’t you care?” This was easily the most important decision I had ever made. Easily the thing that would put my life where I wanted it. And I was getting kissed. And laughed at.

Cade trailed a hand down my arm. “Jay… you are my JJ. Whatever body you wear. Whatever pronouns you use. You are my JJ.” And kissed me again.

I stifled a sob into the kiss, and tried to figure out what I’d done wrong.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/104665.html. You can comment here or there.

Vocabulary – New Word of the Day (for the 7th) – Pastiche

Aug10

I took this vocabulary test, and was, being me, a bit miffed at the words I didn’t know. But I wrote them down, so I have a new word-a-day for the next month! (I’m not sure how I didn’t know this one, honestly)

Today’s word is Pastiche

1: a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work; also : such stylistic imitation
2 a : a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works : potpourri
b : hodgepodge
— pas·ti·cheur noun

Origin of PASTICHE
French, from Italian pasticcio

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pastiche?show=0&t=1312997828

This one was actually hard to find a setting to use it in.

Dinner was, because we were feeling artistic, a pastiche: Indian spice mixes, Polish sausage, Japanese rice. American-grown wine of German grapes topped it off.

Not quite… Hrmm..

“Your work seems to be a pastiche, an imitation of several famous styles…” The customer, probably a college kid and his eyes trailing over Autumn’s tattoos rather than the art on the table, kept going, but Autumn had stopped paying attention. When he stopped talking, she asked, as gently as she had patience for (not much; it had been a long day and her feet hurt),

“So, you like it?”

He coughed, and blushed crimson. “…yeah.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/104427.html. You can comment here or there.

Switcheroo… Tír na Cali, for @DaHob

Aug10

This is for DaHob‘s prompt in my call for prompts.

Tír na Cali, not in a household currently used in other stories.

Content Warning: dubious consent leaning towards non-con. Bondage. Slavery. Spoiled-rotten royal kids.

Baroness Moira’s son was eager to play with his new slave. The pretty Americana, his bribe to, as his mother said, “settle down and behave,” had been wild and feisty for the first week, but now she was letting him near her without biting, and had actually seemed to warm up to the idea of playing with him.

He wasn’t stupid, whatever his mother might think, so, however willing the girl seemed, he cuffed her to the headboard and tied her legs apart. She could still bite, though, as she reminded him, snapping her teeth, so he gagged her.

The noises she made through the red latex ball were delicious; he barely had the patience to pull off his pants and grab her hips, making a cursory attempt at foreplay (she might belong to him, but he was still a Californian male), licking and nosing at her. She was already wet, writhing and moaning, so he took that for assent and took her.

He had one blinding, blissful moment inside her, before she closed her eyes, and…

…Fionn found himself looking up at himself. The gag stretched his mouth painfully, the cuffs cut into his wrists and ankles, and there was… something… stretching him. Him. Her. Stretching her uncomfortably. She yelled out, terrified, but the gag muffled the sound, made it an unclear groan.

Above her, still inside of her, Fionn-body smiled unkindly. “Shh.” He held up a hand, letting sparks dance across his fingers. “You have a lovely power. Would you like to know what it feels like?”

The Americana was in his body. Fionn whimpered, terrified, and shook her head. No. Please no. “‘eeze…”

Fionn-body, damnit, what was her name? His name… Tacey. Tacey laughed. “Then stay quiet and be a good girl. I’m going to take the gag out now.” Tacey punctuated the comment with another thrust, and Fionn swallowed a pleasure/pain grunt. She didn’t want to get zapped.

Tacey removed the gag. “Now,” he grinned, the leer Fionn was so proud of, “you and I are going to have some fun.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/104167.html. You can comment here or there.