Archive | October 2012

Addergoole Year Nine: a 1/8-year Status Update, slightly belated

Oct23

Addergole: Year 9 is a 52-week project, and I am just about to hit week 8, so I am a little past the half-a-quarter mark for this update.

I have posted:
7 chapters (one a week, approx. 4500 words apiece)
6 bonus stories (these are a donation-level incentive, approx. 1500 words apiece)
&
12 Outtakes (these are commissioned short stories on a character of the commissioner’s choice)

This is actually a bit higher than I expected, in re. bonus stories – I had prepped one for every two weeks.

Donations in general have been coming in far more regularly than in the previous web-serial.
I attribute this to three things:
* A concrete reward for donations.
* A custom donation button at the bottom of every post
* A better product.

In total, I have received $145 in Addergoole donations and paid $50 for advertising

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/412078.html. You can comment here or there.

Family Matters, a story of Fae Apoc for the Giraffe Call

Oct22

To Tix_Scaedu‘s prompt.

Fae Apoc has a landing page here

The city’s counter-culture had never been so counter.

Unfortunately for Gillian, what it was being counter to, this month, was her wishes.

All right, large portions of the social circle she called home were often counter to her wishes, but she’d never had trouble before bulling her way through, reshaping things (and people) to what she needed.

Until this. Reegan was a good kid, and it wasn’t a bad Change, such as things went. Toothy, but then, the person Gillian had always assumed was Reegan’s father had been pretty toothy.

So what if she’d given another man Naming rights? The creep who’d probably fathered Reegan was, well, a real creep, and Matt had as much of a statistical chance of being the dad as Mr. All Mouth.

That had been fifteen – nearly sixteen – years ago. Now Reegan had Changed, and was looking, as was proper, for a Mentor.

Matt turned him down first. “Sorry, kid. But it’s just…” He wouldn’t explain more than that, although Reegan seemed to understand something Gillian didn’t out of this.

Then Connell, Sharp-Hands-Flying, who also had had some time with Gillian back around then. He could have taught Reegan combat as well as the Law – but he wouldn’t even answer Gillian’s calls.

Then Kit, Maria, The Doomchaser, Abbot and the Monk, Red Rhoda and Blue Betty all turned Reegan down. Lame excuses or no excuse at all, and no amount of haranguing on Gillian’s part would sway them.

“It’s ridiculous. I’ve been part of this group for years. Decades.” Gillian paced back and forth, muttering and swearing. “It’s a disgrace, an outrage. Horrible.”

“Mom. Mom. Mom!” She didn’t know how long Reegan had been trying to get her attention. “Look, I’ll handle it.”

“I’m your Mother. This is my last duty as your Mother.”

“Well… as my Mother, maybe you ought to trust me. I can handle this better on my own, okay?”

Gillian didn’t know what he meant, but she was willing to let him screw up on his own if it would make him listen. “Fine, go ahead and try. Then I’ll move on to plan B.”

He didn’t need her approval or sign-off to choose a Mentor, not by the Law. She should have remembered that before she sent him out the door.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/411653.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call Closed!

Oct22

My Giraffe Call is closed!

If you want me to write to a second prompt of yours, want more words on a current prompt, or want to sneak a prompt in after the deadline – Donate below.

If you donated, I will be writing to a second of your prompts this week. As always, I will also write an additional 100 words for every $1 you donated; if you haven’t let me know where you want your continuation, please let me know here.


Donate below

I also take payment by Dwolla

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/411452.html. You can comment here or there.

Linkback Story Updated

Oct19

The linkback story has been updated here with 250 words, or 5 linkbacks:

2 @lilfluff
1 Ysabet
1 Kelkyag
1 Rix

If I missed or mis-counted you, please let me know!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/410769.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder by Post Issue 9 is done and will be mailed today!

Oct19

Alder by Post 9 will go in the mail between today and tomorrow, along with Alder by Post 8-and-a-half for subscribers.

I have issues available back through Issue Three, if you want to catch up, or start a new subscription now!

Get your own now!

Alder by Post
1 Issue, US $2.00 USD
I Issue, non-US $2.50 USD
1 year, US $20.00 USD
1 year, non-US $25.00 USD
2 Issues, US $3.50 USD
2 Issues, Non-US $4.50 USD
3 Issues, US $5.00 USD
3 issues, Non-US $6.00 USD
4 Issues, US $6.50 USD
4 Issues, Non-US $7.50 USD

New Button! If you want to order a new subscription AND back issues.

Alder by Post
1 year, US $20.00 USD
1 year, non-US $25.00 USD
1 year & 6 back-issues, US $28.00 USD
1 year & 6 back-issues, non-US $34.00 USD
1 year and 4 back-issues, US $25.00 USD
1 year and 4 back-issues, non-US $30.00 USD
1 year and 1 back-issue, US $21.50 USD
1 year and 1 back-issue, non-US $27.00 USD

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/410469.html. You can comment here or there.

Catch

Oct19

To jeriendhal‘s prompt.

Not long at all after Etchings.

Addergoole has a landing page here

Gregori and Speed regarded each other across the room.

“Kid,” Gregori asked carefully, “are you sure?”

That wasn’t the question you were supposed to ask on Hell Night. You were supposed to ask “Are you mine?” as he’d done with Damaris, and when they said yes, then you moved on to the part where they yelled and hit you for a little while and you explained how things were going to go.

But the prey wasn’t supposed to proposition you. At least not so directly.

The kid rolled his eyes at Gregori. “This place is magic, yeah? There’s demons and fairies and werewolves, et cetera.”

He would have to do something about that attitude. Quash it, or nurture it, or bonsai it. “More or less. Fae of all sorts, yeah.”

“And there’s collars. Collars and BDSM, bondage toys and pain toys. I found that part of the Store. “

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.” He was a bit overwhelmed, but not surprised. “Yes. There’s d/s here.”

“Maybe magical d/s?”

“Maybe magical d/s,” he allowed. “For someone asking to wear my collar, kid, you’re not very submissive.”

“I’m not yours yet. I don’t bend my head to just anybody.”

“But you’re offering to bend it to me.”

“And you’re turning me down?”

“I’m trying to make sure you understand.”

“Sir, I understand that this is going to be d/s. I understand it’s maybe magical. I understand you’re more experienced than I am. That you will take me in hand and direct me, educate me.”

“Control you.”

“Control me. Completely?” He didn’t look terrified. He looked turned on.

“Utterly. From now until the end of this school year, if you’ll be mine.”

The prey wasn’t supposed to smile as they walked into the trap. Gregori wasn’t entirely sure this was the catch it looked like. “Then I’m yours, master.”

Next:
Formality (LJ)
Bound (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/410286.html. You can comment here or there.

Normalizing, the linkback incentive story for the October Giraffe Call

Oct19

This is the linkback incentive story for October Giraffe Call (and on LJ). Please leave a comment here if you have boosted my signal.

“Spring is a very bright young lady.”

By the time Eugenia RoundTree was staring down her youngest daughter’s second-grade teacher over stale, burnt coffee and surprisingly good cookies, she had learned to dread parent-teacher conferences.

Winter had been so self-contained his teachers had worried about him. After that, his sisters…

Winter was such a calm young man. Autumn can’t seem to sit still for more than a minute.

Winter was always so put-together. I wasn’t expecting the mess that seems to follow Summer everywhere.

And now… “Spring seems to be so wild. After her sisters, I was expecting this, but…”

Mrs. Hamilton was the worst of them. Eugenia had tried to get Spring transferred into the other second-grade classroom, but had no success. Mrs. Hamilton has the most experience with your… unique… family.

“She is a wild child.” She’d been born under the sign of Chaos, but try explaining that.

“An immensely wild child. And that sort of behavior is disruptive, Ms. RoundTree.”

“Missus.” She’d been correcting her on that one since Winter entered school. “Some things need to be disrupted, Mrs. Hamilton.”

“Miz. Not my classroom.”

Eugenia smiled in that way that said: are you so sure it doesn’t?

Mrs. Hamilton was un-swayed. “Spring needs to normalize her behavior. If she continues to be all over the place, I am going to have to recommend therapy and corrective medication.”

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with my daughter!” Eugenia had a temper, one she never let loose. The windows rattled.

Mrs. Hamilton leaned back in her chair. “If she can learn to behave properly for my classroom…”

Learning to behave properly in toxic environments was something they’d all have to learn eventually. Eugenia nodded. “She will learn. But there is absolutely. Nothing. Wrong. With. Her.”

“Of course, Mrs. Roundtree. Nothing.”

“You need to come down to a balance of some sort, Spring.”

Mrs. Schneider was, as fifth-grade teachers went, not a bad sort. She was probably better than Mrs. Logan, who had taught Winter, Autumn, and Summer and then retired, the family joked, in defeat. Rountrees were not easy students.

Good as she was, though, Mrs. Schneider had the same problem with Spring that every teacher so far had complained about.

Consistency.

Spring sighed at her teacher, and tried not to roll her eyes. Today was an angry day. “I have a balance. Some days I’m up. Some I’m down.”

She’d thought of that line the night before, and was particularly proud of it. It was accurate, after all. And it got to the heart of the problem – Spring wasn’t normal, and she was perfectly content that way.

It was just the rest of the world that had problems.

“Spring, it’s not enough to average calm. You have to learn how to actually be calm. Your mood swings and attitude shifts are upsetting the rest of your classmates.”

She had an answer to that, too, but that one never worked.

“Maybe they need to be upset a little bit.”

She’d known it would work, of course. Mrs. Schneider’s frown got really deep. “That, miss, is not your call. I’ll make this simple for you, since you enjoy being difficult. If you cannot learn to act like a normal child, you will spend your class time sitting in the corner.”

names in the second half from this generator

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/407068.html. You can comment here or there.

Strange, a story of the Unicorn/Factory for the Giraffe Call

Oct18

This is to rhodielady_47‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here

“What do we do with this?”

The villagers of Lastowe surrounded the newly-minted unicorn foal. The foal that was supposed to be a unicorn.

“I heard over in Cardenborn…”

“Cardenborn is different. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here.”

“What about that thing in Shepachdar?”

“You know about those sheep-herding towns. Lawstowe is a holy hill.”

Aaron might have sounded more firm about it if he hadn’t been connected to the unicorn-not-a-unicorn, if his daughter wasn’t leaning over the thing, protecting it and sobbing.

It was easy to say there was an abomination in another village. It had been easy, Aaron remembered hearing, for his ancestor to say not us. We won’t give our virgins to the unicorn, no matter what the other towns do. It was always easy to condemn other people’s problems.

Aaron looked around at the women, who were, to a one, watching Aaron’s daughter Susanna. At the men, watching the women. At the children, hiding and pretending they weren’t watching what was going on. He looked at the thing on the ground, and coughed.

There was a lot of coughing. Lawstowe was a very tall hill, the reason for some of its holiness. And the factory smokestacks, whose clouds of black smoke rolled over the valley towns and brushed lightly by the lowlands, tainted the air in Lawstowe more and more in recent years. Even Susanna was coughing…

…and then the thing that wasn’t quite a unicorn nosed her, and the coughing stopped. The circle of villagers fell silent. Susanna sat up, and breathed. Once, twice, her lungs sounding clear and healthy.

“Lawstowe is a holy hill.” Aaron stood up taller. This thing had come of his family’s blood. He would make it be all right. “A holy hill touched by the blemish of the Factories for too long. And this wingéd creature, this is the blessing given to us, to protect us from the pollution of the air.”

The creature on the ground spread one feathered wing carefully, and then the other, as it tottered to its feet. As one, the villagers breathed out. “Awwww.”

“Of course.” The murmurs started again, but now they were proud. “We’re a holy place.”

“This sort of thing blesses us. We are honored.”

“Let’s see Shepachdar try to beat this.”

“Let’s see the Factories do something now..”

“We’ve got ourselves something special.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/410096.html. You can comment here or there.