Archive | September 9, 2011

30 Days Second Semester: 29, Wild Horses, Cya/Boom/Addergoole post-apoc

Sep9

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “29) (from Lilifluff) Randomly pick a number between 1 and 28 (Random.Org) . Re-write that prompt as a Spaghetti Western or Melodrama.”

I got 19, and am writing a continuation to #19, though it seems I can’t write either Spaghetti Western or Melodrama.

She rode into town like a whirlwind, a mad mink of a girl with fire in her eyes and capture on her mind. She had a tongue smooth as silk and her lies were like a lasso, ropin’ me in.

I shoulda seen her coming, I suppose, but what can a man do when she blinks at him like that with big doe eyes and whispers her magic sweet as honey? No spider ever wove a web so neatly as she did, there in that parking lot. And I, damn fool I am, walked right into it.

So there I was, sitting in her trap, in her car, staring at the cowgirl who’d done me in. Trussed up with her magic as surely as if she’d tied me to the back of her horse. And getting carried off, too, abducted. Damn. And here I’d thought I was done with Hell.

“It could be a lot worse,” she told me, cool as a cucumber. I found I had a voice again.

“It could?” Hell could always be hotter, I suppose. But she was a pretty hot shade of damnation already.

“I could be a sadistic predator who’d just gotten you in my clutches.”

“You’re not?” She sure as hell had me in her clutches, after all, and wasn’t doing anything not to gloat about it.

“I’m not sadistic, at least,” she admitted, smiling so sweetly at me. I wondered about diving out of the car. It couldn’t hurt that bad, could it? Going ninety miles an hour on paved roads – Ellehemaei could survive anything. I reached for the door handle, slow and subtle like. “And I’m not out to hurt you, which is more than I can say for the road.”

“People who kidnap you aren’t generally out to give you a nice night on the town.” The road did look awfully hard.

“One year.” Chill and calm, like she wasn’t asking me to walk on hot coals. “Be mine for one year.”

Boom. And that was the trap slamming shut.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
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 (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)
21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers. (LJ)
22) Prompt: White Knight (LJ)
23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn (LJ)
24) prompt: founding fathers (LJ)
25) write a story set in a library LJ
26) Prompt: Elemental LJ
27) write a story using only one period. (LJ)
28) write a story set in a laundromat (LJ)
29)…Re-write that prompt as a Spaghetti Western or Melodrama

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/127331.html. You can comment here or there.

A Fixer-Upper

Sep9

[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith recently posted her poem “Picket Fence Committee” about the Monster House, my favorite of her settings and a house that is itself a fixer-upper. This topic is near and dear to my heart right now, for probably obvious reasons.

The House we bought is, by all definitions of the word, a fixer-upper. The bones are solid – foundation, walls, roof – but the inside is quirky, uneven, and rather ugly.

This means two things to us: first, we got the house for less than the appraised value, at an amount that makes the mortgage plus all associated fees (taxes, insurance) no more than our current rent. That gives us a lot of financial wiggle room.

Second, and perhaps more importantly: when we are done, this house will have our stamp on it, un-debatably. We will have ripped out the floors, the walls, the ceilings, some of the fixtures if not all of them, some of the windows and most of the trim, and replaced them – mostly by ourselves; we’re handy people and like doing things like this – with things that suit us.

The bedroom will be painted, a closet added, giraffe carpet. The back room will be turned into a gallery with black walls above the chair rail for the high-contrast art we both like. Most of the paneling will go. Ceilings up, floors down, attic space pushed out. We’ll put in new light fixtures (albeit short ones), and possibly knock out some walls.

It’s like building a house, only very slowly, and getting to live in it while we do it.

And it is a giant craft project – sanding, staining, painting, reflooring, nailing, screwing (hee). And that makes it 100 times more exciting – and sometimes a bit more frustrating – than moving into a new home someone else did all the work on.

Our House has quirks. When we’re not swearing over them, we love laughing over them – much like with our friends. It’s what makes it ours.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/127137.html. You can comment here or there.