Archive | October 2020

The Helpers

The Helpers

Fae Apoc, early on in the apoc. 

If you’d like a good sense of the Fae Apoc, check out faeapoclive.tumblr.com –  a site on which I posted news articles of the beginning of the Faerie Apocalypse. 

To know enough to read this story: there are godlike creatures attacking the cities, and there are fae – including young fae, 20-somethings – who were born on earth and lived like humans until their teens.  

🦋

This was written just because of that idea, that might-or-not-be-a-Mr. Rogers-quote, the one that is the end of the Look for the Helpers quote – if you’re an adult, Be the Helpers. 

I started this June 12 this year.  It’s taken me a while to finish!

🦋

“-and down on Court Street, you can see that the Banner Building has collapsed.  We don’t know how many people are still alive on the other side of the devastation; all communication seems to be down.”

The local reporter looked tired; more than tired, she looked desperate.  The first building going down could’ve been coincidence, but now a four-block area of downtown was completely blocked off, and at least some of it had to have been deliberate.  Continue reading

The Pencatte Catacombs, a Fediverse CYOA

Pencatte-acombsI am doing a Halloween Choose Your Own Adventure one post/day from now through the end of the story/Halloween/as I feel it!

I am only doing this on the Fediverse – Mastodon, etc. – but it’s easy to get an account.

My suggestions:

wandering.shop/ – If you want an invite code, ask me; I have lots.  This is the instance I’m posting this story from.

mas.to – an open-registration site that seems pretty friendly.  I have an account there as my backup. 

If you want the lowest-effort account just to take part in this Choose The Adventure, I suggest mas.to.

I don’t suggest the “flagship” mastodon.social; they’re having issues lately.

mastodon.art is very nice; I can get you in touch with their mod.

Ditto elekk.xyz – it’s got a lot of really nice people!

I’ve heard good things about scholar.social.

A longer thread on good instances – https://ping.the-planet.space/notes/8d1tusnstl

Growing Home

Growing home

This story is the Seventh one to my Squish-Squash, Pumpkins and Gourds Prompt Call

This story is Fae Apoc, but nothing is needed to be known about the setting to read it except there is an apoc and magic exists. 

🎃

 Winter was fast approaching – well, it was September, but that was close enough to start worrying – and, as Grishma looked around her little clearing, she realized she had no more shelter than she’d had last year.

Last winter had been brutal. There were things Grishma was good at and things she wasn’t, and one of the things she really wasn’t all that good at was, well, surviving in the wilderness. Continue reading

The Silent Planet

Warning: Horror. 

This story came out of nowhere, honestly.  I just started typing and this is what I got. 


The water slipped through the canal, snuck along the rocks, and whispered along the muddy bank. There wasn’t a burble to be heard, not a whisper, not a splash.

In this place, even the water was silent. In this place, there was no sound at all louder than a breath, and even the breaths were held when they could be.

In this place, those that walked did so on muffled feet and every wall was as thick as it could be. In this place, even a whisper could be too loud. Continue reading

Saving the Cult (if not the World), Chapter Thirty

Saving the Cult (If not the World) "It's time." Manfield Lee knew he was good at sounding authoritative even when he didn't know what he was talking about - he'd turned a fortune into a megafortune doing just that, after all, not to mention running the Organization - but right now, he DID know what he was talking about. After all, it was just a date, wasn't it? And if the date turned out to be wrong, well, then he knew exactly what to blame it on, and that blame would fall on the scholars and the psychics, not on him. The other thing Manfield Lee knew how to do was to place the blame in very specific ways that were not him.

They walked away from Mr. Lee, from the remaining people that seemed more confused than anything else. She didn’t know if it was a victory, but it was – well, it was a clear path at the moment.

“So.” Jackson cleared his throat. “So, something of an adviser role puts us in a position where we aren’t immediately submissive to Lina – sorry, guys-”

“She saved our lives.” Dylan shrugged jerkily. “It’s a price to pay, that’s all.”

She noticed he didn’t say small price but then again, it wasn’t. Continue reading

Squashed

Squashed

This story is the sixth one to my Squish-Squash, Pumpkins and Gourds Prompt Call

This story is Fae Apoc, BeeKeeper – it is set before the Beekeeper series. Sorry Momerath, I was being a bit of a brat (I prefer not to write continuations of extant long series as part of a prompt call. 🙂 )

What you need to know about the setting/story: Mieve is a hermit who can talk to/control insects; the apocalypse is rather recent; most trade right now is in barter.

🎃

She hadn’t left the clearing in almost six months and, as she walked around the market, Mieve remembered why.  Continue reading

Awakening

This story comes from (checking the prompt link twice) this Reddit r/writingprompts prompt and was posted there first. 

Content warnings for surgery, bionic parts, and um, non-consensual body modifications?

***

Waking felt strange. There’d been times when Jo had woken up quickly, woken up scared, woken up slowly in a warm sunbeam, woken warm and comfortable – although the last had been rare, in the last few years. Continue reading

Orange

Orange

This story is the fifth one to my Squish-Squash, Pumpkins and Gourds Prompt Call

Stranded ‘Verse, after Family Distancing

🎃

“There’s way too much orange around here.”   

The woman was probably five years too old to be a Karen. 

(Autumn was dreading the first time that someone called HER Karen.)

What she was, other than just past Karen-hood, other than wearing her cheap paper mask poorly  (her nose was showing) and wielding her overpriced designer purse like a weapon, was obnoxious. 

“It’s Autumn,” Autumn explained, from behind the protection of her very nice tie-dyed (orange and yellow) mask.  “It’s a harvest display.” Continue reading

Meta

… starting to think that “Talking about Writing” needs its own category, since I don’t have any place to put that.

NOR do I have a category for “prompt calls,” just a tag.