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Giraffe Call Update! Wow!

Oct17

Good morning!

This weekend’s Giraffe Call was very busy (If you missed it, you have until I get to the bottom of both lists to add a prompt – here or here). I’ve written 12 responses so far, over Stranded, Unicorn/Factory, Addergoole, Tir na Cali, and another new ‘verse, and I still have quite a few to go before I even get to the sponsored continuations.

Speaking of sponsoring: I’m $20 from the point where everyone gets a second microfic (if we get it within $5, I’ll fudge it 😉

Off to work-and-writing! You can read all the giraffe call stories on this tag (or this one)


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This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/150198.html. You can comment here or there.

Creep – Giraffe Call

Oct16

For [personal profile] bubbleblower‘s prompt, after In the Shadows (LJ) and directly after Shadow of a Doubt (LJ).

Commenters:6

It wasn’t until a week later – when I was certain I wasn’t the only one seeing the shadows and ghosts, and when we’d determined that they were all over the City but, so far, nowhere else in America and, as far as we could tell, nowhere else in the world, either – that we really started noticing the other things.

Shadows, okay, it’s pretty obvious when a shadow points back at you. Ghosts, same thing. When they’re stealing the laundry off the line and the hot dogs out of the street vendors’ hands, obviously there’s something there doing something.

The old lights made them go away, but the old fluorescents were making people call-it-sick-we-can’t-say-crazy, and those of us who got paid to do those things made a unilateral decision that shadows pointing at people weren’t as bad as shooting sprees, and left the daylight bulbs in. We were starting to get used to the shadows and ghosts – except when they were stealing our lunch – by the time we noticed the statue.

The street-vendors were really corridor-vendors (but that sounded stupid), gathered in courtyards in the ‘plexes. Eight of us electricians met for our lunch-meetings in the same courtyard, hanging around the base of some famous chick. It wasn’t me, this time, thank god; it was Andy who noticed that the chick, who had been standing reading a book, was now writing in the same book.

Once we noticed that, well, we started looking at other statues. The ‘plexes were dotted with the things like sprinkles on cookies, and when we started asking the locals, it turned out, yeah. No-one had noticed, but they’d all started creeping, changing position. Must have taken weeks – in the week while we were asking around, the famous chick’s finger moved an inch.

They moved so damn slowly, it took us another month to realize they were trying to tell us something.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/149962.html. You can comment here or there.

Shadow of a Doubt – Giraffe Call

Oct16

For [personal profile] jjhunter‘s image prompt, directly after In the Shadows (LJ).

Commenters: 4

I gotta tell you, I got out of the city as soon as I could. No overtime for me; it was time for me to go where the sun shone and the people knew my name.

But driving out of the city nearly killed me. I don’t like the drive-by-wire roads, so I take the back streets when I can, the ghettos, the old high-rises where people who can’t afford the ‘plexes or just don’t want to move still live. The roads there are still plain asphalt; too expensive to wire for too little payback.

And there I was, driving through a once-proud neighborhood, looking up at the shoes on the line. Old shoes, shoes with holes in the soles. Shoes made out of canvas and rubber, saying “we’re still here. We’re still living here in the shadow of the ‘plexes.”

And shadows. I didn’t want to think about shadows, but there in the wires, there was a flash of white. A shimmering shape against the sun. I blinked, and it was still there – a silhouette, a human shape, a shadows done in white instead of grey. Walking on the shoes. Walking down the wire, with nothing to cast the shadow, nothing to project some sort of holograph. Not here in the neighborhood, where they didn’t need daylight bulbs because they could still see the real sun.

I stopped the car – and a good thing, too; I wasn’t the only one staring. The shadow, the apparition, I guess, walked over the shoes until it found a pair it wanted – the holiest pair, the oldest pair. The ones that were barely held together by the stitching.

And that ghost slipped right into those shoes and walked off in them, not seeming to care the laces were still tied together.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/149172.html. You can comment here or there.

In the Shadows – for Giraffe Call

Oct16

For ZiaNuray‘s prompt.

Commenters: 3

The shadows were the first thing to go weird.

I was working on one of the new mega-complexes when I first noticed it, installing the daylight bulbs those things needed on the inner corridors, to keep people from going nuts and killing everyone (I kid you not. It had happened three time. THREE TIMES! before they figured out it was the light that was doing it, people who lived and worked and shopped all deep in the ‘plex and never got out into the real sun), when the shadows started going funny.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it had been almost a week since I’d seen the sun myself – I rented a capsule deep in a ‘plex, worked in the city all week and drove home to Fredonia on the weekends to see the wife and kids – but I wasn’t feeling like killing anyone except the manufacturer of the damn fixtures. And then shadows, well, the first thing I noticed was that there was a shadow coming towards me with no person attached.

Okay, that was a bit weird, so I hurried up and got that bank of lights installed, flipped the breaker, checked them out. The shadow was gone, but, for a moment, ALL the shadows were gone. Even mine. I flipped the switch again, and looked at my shadow.

It was looking at me. Well, not “looking,” I guess, but it was reaching towards me. Sort of like it was pleading, I guess. And the longer those daylight bulbs glowed on it, the darker it got.

And like I said… that was the FIRST thing that went weird.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/148766.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call: Spooks, Creeps, Ghosts, and Ghouls

Oct15

The call for prompts is now Closed!!

open! For the next 24 hours Until I write all the current prompts, I will taking your prompts on the theme of Spooks and Creeps, Ghosts and Ghouls.

I will write (over the next week) at least one microfic (150-300 words) to each prompter. If you donate, I will write to all of your prompts, and write at last 500 additional words for each $5 you donate, to the prompt(s) of your choice.

In addition to the donation incentives below, I have two new incentives:

For every linkback I receive, I will post another 50 words on a story (See the poll for setting here.

I will write, for the story with the most commenters by Friday morning, a piece about that setting.

And, of course, donations are always well-received:

If I reach $35 in donations, I will post an additional 1000-2000-word fic on the subject of the audience’s choice. Reached!

If I reach $65, I will write at least 2 microfics for everyone, whether or not they donated. Reached! Add a second prompt if you haven’t already!!

If I reach $95, I will write to every prompt I get in the next 24 hours – if something truly bugs me, I’ll ask you to re-prompt (or a third prompt to each prompter). At this point, please allow up to 2 weeks for the writing to be completed. REACHED!!!

If I reach $120, I will record a podcast of an audience-choice story and post it for everyone to read. Also, everyone who tipped will get double wordcount.

If I reach $150, I will release an e-book of all of the fiction written to this call and the last one. At this point, please allow up to 4 weeks for the writing to be completed.

I’m still saving up for the giraffe carpet, which will be installed the first week of October November (still can’t find a plumber)!


This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/146380.html. You can comment here or there.

Poll: Linkback Incentive

Oct14

During tomorrow’s Giraffe Call, I will post one segment of a new story for every linkback received. Which setting should the story be from?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/145759.html. You can comment here or there.

Fill my momentary lack of inspiration

Oct12

I’m having a moment with 212 words left to fill wordcount for the day and nothing is thrilling.

First person to suggest something – a pairing, a scene, a flavour – will get that 212 words on that topic.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/144296.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call coming this Saturday – and a question

Oct11

This Saturday will be the October Giraffe Call for prompts, the theme sponsored by this icon from [personal profile] dhampir – “Spooks and Creeps, Ghosts and Ghouls.”

After a discussion in Clare_Dragonfly’s journal after her Garden of Prose, I’ve been contemplating donor/comment perks. What sort of thing motivates you to comment/linkback/donate?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/142190.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: Bed-Warmer (Rin & Girey)

Oct10

New flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

Today’s icon:

Girey

Icon & Art by Djinni

Reiassan has a Landing Page (LJ Link).

Rin was whistling as they left Ossulund, clean, well-fed, and clothed in things that fit, or at least mostly fit. She’d forgotten how fun it was to spend time with her friends, how relaxing it was to be on common ground with the people she was talking to.

Girey was, she noticed, in a better mood, too, although in his case, she had a feeling it had more to do with leaving Ossulund than being there. The crowds of Callanthe had made him tense enough that he’d barely enjoyed the luxuries of civilization he’d been missing so much, although he’d probably be back to missing them soon enough.

She turned to look at him in his custom-tailored Callanthe qitari, sitting comfortably, finally, in the wider saddle. The left-buttoning on the tunic had been her own petty joke, since all he seemed to do was whine, and whining counted as unskilled labor. But talking with Noni during their stay in Ossulund had gotten her thinking.

“He’s pretty enough,” her old friend had agreed, “especially when you clean him up. Dress him up in silks and he’d make you a fine bed-warmer, Rinny. No shame and no harm in that – until you want to get married. Then what are you going to do with your grumpy Bitrani pet prisoner?”

“Plenty of people have both a bed-warmer and a spouse,” she’d argued. She’d already seen the point, but she let Noni say it; she needed to hear it.

“Their bed-warmers aren’t foreign nobility. Yours is.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/141598.html. You can comment here or there.