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Be Careful What… a story for Patreon

Oct30
Okay, this didn’t turn out very HAPPY, but I like it. 

📚

“The strands don’t work by logic, Edwin.”  His mother gave him that slightly exasperated smile that she had given him so many times it must be automatic, like saying “bless you” when someone sneezed or “you too” when they wished you a good day.  “They work by feelings and by intuition, and if you attempt to apply too much logic to them, like any emotion, they’re going to slide away from you.”

“There have to be rules,” he protested, although he knew it was a waste of time.  “There has to be some pattern, some way that explains how things work.”

“They work by connections.  How does your connection to your aunt work, or to you best buddy?  They just work, Edwin.  I’m sorry, but it’s the way it is.”

The way it is.  He made his escape when she was done lecturing him and hid in his room.  There had to be a way.  He’d found a book buried in the back of the family library, the sort of thing that nobody ever read, and inside a very boring cover had found descriptions of magic. Continue reading →

ATMN-1985, a Stranded story for Patreon

Oct17
Okay, I guess the theme is really talking to me this month. 

Here’s another bonus, spurred on but not really related to a line from a Popular Mechanics article I read last night: (paraphrase) “AI is going to make the Industrial Revolution look small.”

🤖

Autumn knew better than to grab the strands of the world too much around HAllowe’en.

Everything was thinner at that time, more responsive, more willing to bend and twist and open.

But the Strand looked so tempting.  It was this line of connection, this connection that went — nowhere?  It trailed off into a space in mid-air, looking as if it turned into wires at the end.

So she followed it, drawing the look of the wires on to her arm in watercolor, little circuit-board designs that appeared to  her mind’s’ eye.

She stepped through a thin space in the air and found herself on a silvery road, the buildings rising up around her on left and right, stretching above her, making it a tunnel of mirrors and glass.

Oops.  She tied off a marker so she could find her way home and followed the wires of the Strand, trailing along through wires upon wires upon wires.

She turned a corner into another tunnel and found herself face to face with someone doing the same thing as she was.

Someone?  Not quite.  But not quite something, either, a metallic-and-plastic figure wearing a knit hat of red-orange-and-green and a swirling dress that matched.

The Strand from Autumn went straight to this figure.  She stopped.  She stared.  The figure stopped and stared.

There were a few other people on the road — mostly human-seeming, some only humanoid-seeming.  From the corner of her eye, Autumn could see all of them connected by tenuous strands.

“You are—”  The figure frowned.  The expression was cartoony, plastic eyebrows moving and lips turning downward.

“You’re…”  Autumn shook her head and bowed.  “I’m Autumn Roundtree.”

“I am ATMN-1985.  I am called Autumn.”  The figure raised an eyebrow at AUtumn.   “You do not belong here.  Your only connection here is me.”

Autumn took a moment to study ATMN.  “You’re —”

She was connected all over the place, as much as Autumn was, back home, as much as her mother was.

“An autonomous Intelligence designed to understand connections between beings.”  The smile was broad and surprisingly genuine-seeming.  “Your counterpart.”

“Amazing.”

Autumn felt a tug on her, and ATMN made a noise of concern.

“Your connection is thinning.  You cannot stay, you need to go where you came from.  Or—”

“Or,” Autumn agrees solemnly.  “It was nice to meet you, ATMN.  Perhaps I will see you again.”

ATMN curtseyed.  “I would like that.  I would like this new connection to last.”

Autumn hurried back as her connection to her own world tugged and throbbed by turns.  She followed the thinning line back to where she’d started and pushed through the thin space in the world.  Her ears popped, her head rushed, and, for a moment, she lost consciousness.

She came to leaning against the old maple tree in her mother’s back yard, leaves crunching as they fell down upon her.

“Nothing but a pack of cards,” she muttered.  She knew better than to reach for Strands around Hallowe’en.  It always left you with too many questions.

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Technically, [this meets the] Qualifications, a Facets of Dusk story for Patreon

Oct13
Okay, so I’m working on my outlines for Finish It nanowrimo coming up in, well, November.  And I got to the one for Facets of Dusk and I started thinking about – well, the doors they might open.

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“Get us someplace with medical care!” Simon shouted.

“Someplace with advanced technomagical medical care.”  Aerich’s aristocratic snarl sounded panicked.

“Someplace they’re not going to shoot at us.”  Cole’s voice was calm.  But Cole, who had Josie in his arms, also sounded serious.

Alexa was trying not to panic.  She waited until there were hands on her shoulders and she grabbed the door handle.  Medical care.  Medical care.  Not going to shoot us.  Medical care.

She yanked the door open.

Claxons sounded. Continue reading →

Between the Worlds: A Fae Apoc/Sandman Crossover for Patreon

Oct12
I blame this on my current marathon re-read of the Sandman comics.  Sheba and Magnolia are characters in Addergoole: The Original Seriesand Addergoole: A Ghost Story.  Destruction is from the Sandman comics etc. 

No idea about this image but I liked it.  

Oh, and this is set during the Faerie Apocalypse that gives this setting its name. 

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On Halloween, 2011, when the walls between worlds were thinner than they had ever been, the woman called The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (because her Mentor had been fond of Robert Heinlein, in his day and in her day) left her kids with her sister, as per their arrangement, and slipped out between those world-barriers.

SHe was gone for hours; to her senses, it was days — and maybe years.  It was hard to tell, in some of the blank places she found herself.

When she returned to her sister’s home, she had with her a very tall, broad man with red hair, wearing a collar made of plaques of enameled wood.

Her sister, who had spent a few bored days — in that time when the world was falling apart but there was nothing to do but plant, and build walls, and wait, and pray — reading all of The Cat’s Sandman collection — stared in horror.  “Is that—”

“He is.”  She had a look best described, unfortunately, as cat-who-ate-the-canary. Continue reading →

Tiny fictional play castle blueprints of a sort – for Patreon

Oct10

Okay, so I was playing around with a roleplay with Cal and Cynara decided to build herself a castle. Well, a play castle, this is ~8×8 with a tower; it’s a shed-sized castle. But once I’d been thinking about it, I decided I wanted to map it.  Well, chart it. 

Stained glass would be prettier than that, but Excel has its limits. 

And yes, that says “Secret Exit #1,” because Cynara always puts in back doors.  Even when you can jump off the roof into the moat if you have to.

The tower would probably be rounded, now that I think of it. 

Anyway!  Floor plans. And then I fixed the first floor – well, the throne. 

And then I did the back

And then check out this:

https://tootplanet.space/@InspectorCaracal/908740

and especially this:

https://tootplanet.space/@InspectorCaracal/909088

Cal made the castle in Minecraft!!!

…Now I need to write some stories of characters in and around this little castle.

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Bring Down the Walls – a bonus story for Patreon

Oct9

I mentioned a story about renovations…

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The renovations started in June.

They closed on the house in October — Judy had a feeling about the place; Steve thought it had good bones — and lived with the ugly panelling, the wonky ceilings, the strange toilet all winter long.

As soon as the weather was consistently warm, down came the hideous panelling.

And behind the panelling, they found a note, written in sharpie across the drywall.

September 20, 1970:  I hung this panelling with my own two hands. -K. Thomas Continue reading →

The Great Pumpkins- a bonus story of Fae Apoc for Patreon

Sep29
This is Viddie (Viðrou, but his mother didn’t want to call him Vitthie.), the son of Cynara and Leofric from, among other things, Addergoole: a Ghost Story.

 🎃

In theory, it should have been easy.

Viddie knew pumpkins.  He’d grown up eating pumpkin pie from scratch, and he knew all of the ins and outs of what made a pumpkin a pumpkin.

He had a book with diagrams and a list of the appropriate – or close enough to appropriate – Greek and Old Tongue Words.

And he was in the grotto, kneeling in front of a little patch of dirt, alternately muttering words and spitting out curses his mother probably didn’t know he knew.

The vines were growing, sure.  They were even putting out little flowers.  But there wasn’t – right.  He needed to pollinate them.  He couldn’t remember if this sort of plant was self-pollinating, so he started another one. Continue reading →