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30 Days Second Semester: 16, Coming Home

Aug22

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip.”

John Stollich never knew, when he got home from a tour, what would greet him. Sometimes he thought that was why he stayed on the road as long as he did, coming home only, really, to cut another CD. He’d come home one time, and Onyx would be wrapped around his leg, best-daughter-ever, happy to see him, chattering about what she was learning in school, don’t-ever-leave-again-Dad. The next time, she’d be distant and chill, or flat-out nasty.

The nannies weren’t any better. At best, they lasted a year, year and a half. It was either John that turned them off, or Onyx, or the sometimes-strange things that happened around her, or her insatiable and incorrigible curiosity.

Bringing her on the bus had, because of that curiosity, never been a good option. He did so for very short periods of time, when the bus had been well-scrubbed and censored. The last thing he wanted to do was explain to a prepubescent kid what condoms were for.

He braced himself, getting rid of all thoughts of condoms, groupies, and drugs, and opened his front door. Was this going to be good visit, or a bad one?

She wasn’t in the living room waiting, which was new – generally the nanny brought her down. Instead, his manager, Ray, sat there, frowning.

“What is it this time?” John dropped his duffle bag and waited.

“She ran off again.”

“Damnit, Ray, what is this, seven times?”

“Fourteen.” He paused, then added, reluctantly, “Her aunt called again.”

I present another reboot, for a setting written so long ago I can’t find the original (which itself was a reboot). Onyx-Black and the fanfic of doom.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/116122.html. You can comment here or there.

Hour 11 of my abduction [call for prompts]

Aug20

My captors continue to pepper me with suggestions, although their feedback on these writings has tapered off. I do hope they like what they are getting.

Since my last report, I have been offered a bad Dr. Who special and some delicious nachos. Also, a marshmallow the size of my cat’s head.

I have written about a clever idea gone wrong, an Addergoole student who didn’t want to go home, a road tripgone awry, a captive who didn’t give in to Stockholm, and a captive being rescued.

The money in the pot has reached $40. Perhaps I will only be writing one fic for each of my captors.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/113837.html. You can comment here or there.

Hour 7 of my [call for prompts on] abduction

Aug20

The hours tick by on my [call for prompts about] abduction.

My captors have promised rescue when the writing is done, but the prompts keep on coming. I am allowed frequent breaks for sleep and, in one case, a creekwalk, but every pause only lengthens my captivity.

I write for them as they call out suggestions. I have written about a captor caught in her own trap, a crack kidnapping team beating the BAU to the punch, a puppy rescued from an untenable situation, and a college boy with ropeburn. And still I write.

The money in the jar has reached $30, so I will, I’m told, write another story, once my captors have decided on what it will be (what will it be, oh my captors? 2000 words, on your choice of story).

And still I write. After these tasty nachos I have been given

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/113441.html. You can comment here or there.

Back from hiking!

Aug20

Back from hiking and ready to start writing!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/113172.html. You can comment here or there.

Call for Prompts: Abduction and Rescue! Go!

Aug20

The call for prompts is now open! For the next 24 hours, I will taking your prompts on the theme of Abduction and Rescue.

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 300 additional words for each $5 you donate, to the prompt of your choice.

If I reach $30 in donations today, I will post an additional 2000-word fic on the subject of the audience’s choice. This has been reached!

If I reach $60, I will write at least 2 microfics for everyone, whether or not they donated.

If I reach $90, 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. At this point, please allow up to 2 weeks for the writing to be completed.

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 24 weeks for the writing to be completed.


This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/112923.html. You can comment here or there.

Story beginning?

Aug19

Originally posted May 4, 2006

The landscape was grey, dusty, blasted, and uneven, juts of broken concrete block impeding her
passage, but still Lydia ran, her feet barely touching the ground. Someone ran with her, someone
else just behind her, and something full of malice was chasing them, never getting any further
away, gaining a little bit of ground every time the landscape jumped up to meet them.

The dream came often, and she knew how it went. There would come a point where she – they –
could escape through a door, around a corner, something, and rest, but until that brief interlude,
she would have to run. The consequences of not running were… unthinkable.

They came abruptly to that corner, turned it, as she knew they would, and found themselves
suddenly falling, falling through a forest that ran up both sides of the hole – canyon, it was a canyon,
lined trees, and they were falling that abyss, the sides rushing past them with a terrifying
realness.

Suddenly, a voice in her head, a patient voice with no apparent gender (or maybe it was simply
letters written on the air) told her “It is time to Change, child.”

“Just like that?” she wanted to demand, but she found that she was already changing, and the
canyon floor slowed its rapid rise toward her.
The trees below were no longer threatening, but simply a comfortable place to land from her little
flight.

She twisted, catlike, in the air, to be sure of her companions, and found that they were already
Changed, already waiting for her.

A noise awoke her, or the sensation of a noise, pulling her out of the dream. She opened her
eyes, despite every desire to roll over and go back to sleep, blinking in the pre-dawn darkness of
the room.

Someone was sitting on her bed, crouching, their back against the wooden footboard, looming over
her. One of Nora’s friends? She glanced over at her roommate’s bed, to find it not only empty,
but missing, as if it had never been there. “What…?” A wave of terror pushed at her, screaming
to be let out – to flee! – but something kept it down, locked inside her, and the breaths she drew
were even and slow.

The man – it was a man, it had to be a man – at the foot of her bed tilted his head, looking for a
moment like nothing but a giant crow sizing up something bright. His voice, though, banished
that image. It was low and rumbly, gravel and ancient places. “Time to wake up,” he told her.
“This place isn’t ready for you yet.” He made a sweeping gesture with his right hand, and she felt a
sudden shift in air pressure.

She awoke with her ears popping, swallowing hard even before she remembered why she was doing so,
and found her self suddenly, entirely, awake. She was normally a slow waker, preferring to take
an hour or more to luxuriate in the warm softness of bed before letting her eyes open. Today,
she blinked herself into consciousness in a matter of seconds, staring in slight disbelief at the
foot of her bed.

Nothing. No possibly-human man crouched there, no suggestion that he’d ever been there, not even
a slightly indented place in her blankets. So it had been a dream after all. She sighed –

– and quickly glanced to see if Nora’s bed was where it belonged. It was, with all its mess, one
long arm of Nora’s hanging outside the sheets. What’s more, Nora was alone in bed this morning.

30 Days Second Semester: 15, Climbing.

Aug19

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “15) prompt: ascension.”

The stairs twisting up the side of the mountain are a metaphor for the way my people came to their feet from the water below, climbing to ascendance. They are a defense against intruders, who must fight their way up the stairs against massed defenders. They are a meditation and a history book, our stories carved into their walls, an allegorical journey as well as a physical one.

To my “guests,” however, they were a very long set of stairs, over a mile of ascent and half again that much for the way they twist and turn, an exhausting climb after their ordeal. I wondered when they had last eaten, and how well; I wondered, with more concern, how physically unfit they were. Their ordeal here would tax them, and they would need all of their strength. If they weren’t up to it, it would, in the end, come down on me. I’d picked them.

That would come later. For now, I guided them into a landing, where a fountain bubbled fresh water. “We can rest here for a while.”

I was not, myself, feeling the climb; nor were the guards, who walk these stairs every day. The stairs from the great dining hall to my tower bedroom were nearly half the height of the great stairs, after all, my people are built for endurance. You can not swim the flood if you can’t manage stairs.

I sipped the sweet water and watched them pant, worrying for their future.

As I chewed over this story, I had setting after setting going through my head. Then I said, “hey, I have a setting involving a giant stairway already!”

This is a reboot, not a new scene, for the Flood setting I used to write

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
15) prompt: ascension

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/112418.html. You can comment here or there.