Archive | January 2020

The Milk

“There’s a problem with the milk.”

Cara raised an eyebrow at intern in her well-practiced “do tell?” expression. She’d brought double PhDs to their knees with that eyebrow.

The intern was uncowed. Cara didn’t know whether to write the skinny grad student off as an idiot or be impressed by the stainless steel guts that demonstrated. “The whole milk, to be exact. Not ours, that is, we didn’t develop it; it’s in the dining hall.”

The intern hesitated. “That is, as far as I know, it’s a dining hall product and not one of our developments; if the Facility is using its dining hall for non -consensual, uninformed testing, I quit.”

“Not the staff dining hall.” It was not the most robust denial, but Cara wanted to see what this one would do.

The intern relaxed minutely. “Then there is a serious problem with the whole milk.” Continue reading

Spoils of War 28: Rules

First: Spoils of War I: Surrender

PLEASE NOTE: I WENT BACK TO THE END OF CHAPTER 21 AND AM REWRITING FROM THAT POINT. 

Nikol was making a mess of this suggestion, as much of a suggestion as it was.  She glanced at Aran as she trailed off. He was… smiling. 

No.  Laughing.

He actually laughed.  She paused, thinking about punching him, but he ended with a little snort that didn’t sound mean.  “Hey, hey, I’m just amused because you’re as bad at this as anyone else and it’s kind of a relief. I mean, how did you do it with your mercenaries?” Continue reading

Patreon this Month: Finish It

My friends!

The theme this month for my Patreon is “Finish It!”

Which means, if you have wanted me to finish something, if you want me to write more about things, if you think I have too many cliffhangers, if you’ve been thinking about sending me a couple bucks in my tip jar,

now is a great month to join my Patreon at the $5 (prompt-me, “To-Do List”) level.

Yes, even if you only want to join for a month.  I won’t tell anyone 😉 That’s still $5 (less fees) for me!

Bonus:  If you join and prompt, I will write to one of your prompts, even if I’ve already written the 4 stories for that month.

Yes, it’s a loophole to get me to write even more finishes (or semi-finishes, let’s be honest).  But to do that – you gotta Patronize (the capital P is important in this case; if you lower-case patronize me I don’t write nothing) me and you have to prompt (on the “Prompt Call” post, please).

Check it out: https://www.patreon.com/aldersprig.

 

 

A Landing Page of Micro- and Tootfic

I love posting tiny fics on Mastodon on occasion (see the tootplanets for one series there), but Mastodon, like Twitter, is inherently a bit ephemeral.

I’m going to begin with an archive of all the tootfics I’ve posted that I can find (mostly from the Read Me Elsewhere posts) and attempt to update this as I go.

Microfiction is very small fiction, designed to be a whole tale (hopefully), in a small package.  50-word fics, drabbles (100-word fics), 6-word fics (See the Hemmingway example) – these are subsets of microfiction.  So are tootfiction – fics designed to fit in a toot (The Mastodon version of a tweet) or, in common usage, several toots.  Tweetfic is harder (less characters, although 280 is better than 140 for this) but is the same concept.

Here’s someone else’s definition:

As Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Which translated into modern language means, “Everyone should write and read microfiction.”

What is Microfiction?

It’s a subset of flash fiction—those super short stories typically told in 1,000 words or less. Definitions vary, but for the most part, microfiction is any story told in 300 words or less, and could even be as short as a few words. (At Microfiction Monday Magazine, I use the limit of 100 words.)

Mastodon is free to join, by the way, and ad-free; you can read any of the below fic, however, just by clicking through – you don’t need to have an account!


Here’s My Microfiction

Fantasy (including Urban Fantasy)

By A Nose
Souls and Hearts
A Wish
Side Effects (warning: creepy)
The Come and Gone King (a reply)
The Hall of the Lost (a reply)
Because Of…
Prophecy
Cat Song

Natha/en (fae apoc)
Bi Kisses (more Natha/en)
Rooftop – Jasper and the House converse. (Haunted House)
Once Upon a Time comes to Fae Apoc – darkfic crossover Fanfiction
Cats who Saw – Aunt Family
100 Years – Fairy City, CrossRoads Park
Test Subjects – (Bear Empire, Cyber Era) the Potioneer is working on it

Ficlet with a portion of a map sketch, Autumn, Stranded

note: this section is currently broken links. I need to repost all of these.  Sorry for the inconvenience

Stranded Caturdays

Untitled Cat Game – cats can’t see Strands….
Neighborhood Cat

The Pirates and Podka

Orange Sunset Parlay – The Imperial Captain wants to talk to Yonpler.
Silver Rain – on Podka, it was said to rain silver.
Blue Foraging – the Captain and Yonpler are going to have to work together.
Teal Calculations – Sometimes you have to take a leap. Sometimes you can calculate the risks.

Potions and the Apocalypse

Substitutions – Needs must, after all

Nananana – Magical creatures…
Patience – Waiting for the Magic

Caturday – during the apoc, magic cats
A New Way – Just at the beginning of the apoc, potions
Walking – same world, different feel, characters, good cat
The Wilds – they weren’t safe…
Witch’s Cottage – filled with critters

Reinventing the Wheel – not sure if this is Fantasy or Sci-Fi so it’s Fantify?

Sci-fi

many of these are now broken links. It is on my list to move all possible to this blog eventually. 

Cure the Cure
Tootplanet Resumes 
Bird Brains
Relax
Time Travel is Impossible

Horror

Don’t Approach

Misc

Cake Walk, weird.
Push the Button (if there’s an image on these, read the image alt)
Ass Hat

Tootfiction Already Posted on this Blog


Various Blog-posted Microfiction

100-Word Fics

I went through a phase where I was on 100- and 50-word fic community on Livejournal, back when that was a thing. 

50-word Fics

Try the password “suddenly!” for pre-2007 posts.  

General Microfiction

    Kink Bingo prompts 

    a story over many micro-intervals,to a kink-bingo prompt set

       

      Purchase Negotiation 29: Survival

      First: Purchased: Negotiation

      💰

      Sylviane patted Leander’s shoulder and smiled brightly at him.  He hoped he didn’t look as nervous as she was acting like he did.  “We’re going. I’m driving, if that’s fine with you.”

      “Yeah, that’s fine.  I’m gonna need practice to be back into driving again – I mean.”  He blinked and shut up, staring at her, waiting for the anger. 

      She snaked an arm around his waist and hip-bumped him.  “Hey. I asked if you minded. If it was fine with you.”

      “I -”  He looked down at her.  “Yeah. Yes, you did, ma’am.” Continue reading

      Sleddddddd (a blog post)

      Hello all!  It’s wintertime!

      And I have a SLED!

      Have I mentioned this sled before?

      I mean, it’s nothing exciting; it’s a plastic molded sled of the sort you buy your kid so they can go down the hill, or at least it’s really similar to the one I had to go sledding downhill at the nearby park (Rochester is on the plain that used to be in Lake Ontario, so the option is the park with a hill (which may have been manufactured, I never asked) or… well, that’s about it.  In Ithaca, I could sled half my commute, if I was feeling daring.)

      What it is, for me, is just about the size of the totes we use to haul firewood.  Continue reading

      Livewriting Recap and More

      Happy New Year!

      Yesterday, I spent from about 8 to about 10 writing, adding in a little more after that and wrapping up just in time to kiss my husband, feed the cats, and go to sleep in 2020.

      I wrote a total of 14,026 words yesterday.  Not only did I beat my 2018 Livewriting total (10,000) (in 2017: 7519), I blew it out of the water.

      I’m pretty happy with that! I got prompts from new prompters, which makes me even happier (I love getting prompts from my constant people and I love getting prompts from new people, too), prompts from some long-term readers and Patrons, and may have started a new serial.

      All in all, in 2019 I wrote 810,016 words, 8% more than in 2018. I finished (yes, some debate on one of those) three blog serials and Edally and… I’m not sure if I started any new settings!

      In 2020, I want to focus on the following, in re. writing:

      • Submit at least 1 story every 2 months
      • Get caught up and stay caught up with Patreon (this is mostly non-writing; i.e., maps and chapbooks, right now)
      • Find one more way to promote my writing and keep up with it at least monthly (suggestions?)
      • Clean up and self-pub one novel, pref. 2
      • Finish 1 novel (pref 2), edit, submit for publication
      • Work on improving my Weak Spots of Writing
      • Fun Goal: Beat 2019’s monthly, weekly, daily, and yearly wordcounts.
      • I want to say “get more Patrons” but that’s not in my hands. I can write and talk about my writing and promote it but I can’t manufacture Patrons.

      I will try to keep something similar to my recent publishing schedule: stories on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and/or Saturday, one-shots or blog posts slipping in on Tues and/or Thursday.

      I have several new series or mini-series either in the works or in consideration right now, so there may be a few weird weeks while I get caught up.

      But all in all, I think it will be a good year!

      Cheers, and thanks for all your reading and comments in 2019!

      Since I like playing on 4thewords, this little bug monster says I need to add a little bit more to this blog post. 

      Webpage goals for 2020 include:

      • *find an effective plug-in which lets me:
        •  Automagically crosspost to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and maybe Mastodon
        • Automagically crosspost to Dreamwidth and NOT continue to re-crosspost every time I change anything in the post.
      • Finish my Settings Page and my Fae Apoc landing page
      • Start a New Readers Page of some sort which suggests places for, well, new readers to begin
      • Complete the Great Patreon Crossposting and the Tag and Category Clean-up