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Well. Drabble. Moonlight Outing

May2

From [community profile] dailyprompt: “not quite like that”

and

“wearing someone else’s clothes”

and

“together, they fight crime!” It all fell together from those three, but Ascha still managed to surprise me. Might be fae apoc.

“So when do we get to meet this mystery woman?” Kendall teased.

“It’s not quite like that,” Ascha protested weakly.

“I suppose it has to be different,” he conceded. For a moment, she thought she’d somehow dodged the bullet (why were metaphorical bullets so much harder than the real sort?) but he persisted, “I mean, you’ve brought every other boy, girl, and alien you’ve dated home for dinner at least once. Sometimes more than once, when Javari was living with us. But that’s ‘dinner,’ I guess.”

“There was only the one alien,” she complained weakly. “And, really, you make it sound like I have a revolving door on my bedroom. I’ve lived with you for five years, Ken.”

“I know, I know,” he said, rushing to placate her, and, for a second time, she thought she’d derailed him. “Five years, six months, and three weeks. And in all that time, there’s been six people, including the alien. So, no. Next to me, you’re a nun. Next to Corinne, you’re… well, not a nun. But that’s because she is.” He flapped a hand impatiently, clearing out that conversation. “The point is, have you ever not brought one home before?”

“I have still brought home every being I’ve dated, and even the stray cat I picked up that turned out to be sentient.” And maybe that would distract him? Please?

“Aah, Tabby. What happened to her?”

“She got her own talk show, eventually. Now she’s writing self-help books and owns her own house.”

“That’s gratitude for you.”

“Yeah. Teach me to pick up strays.” Not that Tabby hadn’t sent her a couple fat checks, but she’d long since learned to keep money away from her roommates; they had a habit of devouring it.

“Ascha, you’re never going to stop picking up strays. Like your mystery girl. Come on, A, after the alien, is there really anyone you couldn’t bring home?”

“Damnit, Ken-doll…”

“You know, you’re not making it any easier on yourself, stalling like this. Dish, A.”

She sighed , turning her back to him and packing up her bag for work. “She’s not a lover. She’s a friend, mostly. I’m not even sure she likes girls.”

“I’ve never known you to spend this much time alone with a ‘friend’ who wasn’t someone you could bring home for beers,” he complained.

“Yeah, well…” She sighed. “We’ve got a thing, but it’s kind of fragile. I tell you what, I promise I’ll bring her home as soon as I think it won’t blow up in my face, okay?”

“I’ll take what I can get, I guess. Go on, you’ll be late for your date.”

“It’s not…” but he was already out the door. “…quite like that,” she told his departing back.”

“I was beginning to worry,” Heather commented.

“Sorry, my roommates were getting on my case. They want to meet you.”

“Your roommates?” Heather shrugged into her vest and straightened her sleeves. “Is that the incubus you were telling me about?”

“Nah, Javari moved out. So mostly just garden-variety freaks.” She grabbed her uniform from the shelf. “They think we’re dating.”

“You don’t want to tell them the truth?”

Putting on the leather pants and tight-fitting armored shirt still felt like wearing someone else’s clothes. In a sense, she was, she mused, as she pinned her short hair up under the hood that masked her features, leaving only her eyes visible. Ascha stayed at home. The Bronze Sword went out – and the Midnight Maiden.

“Do you think they’d believe the truth?”

Heather – no, the Maiden – settled her weapons into their sheathes and checked her veil. “I don’t know. Some people would probably rather we were risking our lives fighting crime together than snogging in the back seat.”

“Some people, probably,” the Sword agreed. “Mine flip out about a paper cut.” She stepped into the elevator with her partner. Someday soon, maybe, they’d have a proper fortress, but this did for the time being.

“My family would flip more about the snogging,” the Maiden admitted, so quietly that she was nearly drowned out by the creaking of the ancient lift.

“Well,” the Sword offered, before Ascha could shut her mouth, “perhaps there’s more than crime to fight tonight, then.”

She resisted the urge to slap her hand over her mouth as Heather turned slowly to look at her. It would only make it worse.

“Perhaps,” the Maiden murmured, in her moonlight and whisky voice.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/38979.html. You can comment here or there.

Designing a towel shawl @inventrix

Apr29

Okay!

So, from what I recall from my Douglass Adams, the nice thing about a towel isn’t just that you look like a respectable creature, but that it serves as:
* clothing
* blanket
* and, of course, a towel.

So a towel shawl should be of appropriate dimensions to be minimal clothing and blanket. On me, that’s about 5 foot by 25″ (chin-to-floor by half shoulder circumference). It needs to be towel-absorbant, and not a lacy pattern, or at least not primarily lacy, although one could probably get away with a pattern down the center.

This looks like a good base to work from
(pdf)
http://media.wiley.com/assets/1320/76/TYV_Knitdesignp17.pdf
52×18

I’m picturing a wide seed stitch border around all 4 sides, fringe on the narrow ends, and possibly a lace or texture pattern down the long center for knitting and visual interest.

Now! Rainbow. The easy way I can see to do this nicely is wide stripes of color transitioning in Fibonacci narrow stripes to the next color.

Yarns, quick options:
http://www.elann.com/Commerce.Web/product.aspx?catID=30&id=126172&tid=7
http://www.elann.com/Commerce.Web/product.aspx?catID=30&id=118533&tid=7
http://www.elann.com/Commerce.Web/product.aspx?catID=30&id=126501&tid=7
http://www.knitpicks.com/cfyarns/yarn_display.cfm?ID=5420162
http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/Simply_Cotton_Worsted_Yarn__D5420199.html
http://www.yarnmarket.com/yarn/Tahki_Yarn-Cotton_Classic_Yarn-2489.html

3 Weeks for Dreamwidth, aka “where’s the stuff?”

Apr29

Dreamwidth is doing a three-weeks-for-Dreamwidth thing, so there are a few posts that will appear only on Dreamwidth, on purpose, rather than being xposted, as I normally do.

Those posts can be found here:

http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/3+weeks+for+dreamwidth

Now, mind you, I’m also just having a slow week, so there’s not a lot there, either; there’s just not a lot of stuff in general coming out of me this week. Not *writing* stuff, at least.

10-minute fiction: Holiday – Rin & Girey

Apr26

From [community profile] dailyprompt: “Mandatory Holiday.”

Rin & Girey/Reiassan, to [personal profile] inventrix‘s request 2. Written in 10 minutes on Write-or-Die, with distractions.

After Heroics and before View-Point.

“This really is gorgeous.” They sat overlooking a long valley as the sun rose orange-and-pink, the clouds tiny fluffy things stained as pink as the sky. Breakfast was sweetened with a recent purchase of honey, and their tea was hot and fresh. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I went on vacation with my parents, when I was a boy.”

“There haven’t been any holidays since then?” Rin sipped her tea and watched her prisoner thoughtfully. He was loosening up; she wondered how long that would last.

“Nothing like that. State trips. Visits to other cities. And then war came again, and that was everything. And then you.” Girey looked at her sidelong, smiling.

“And then me,” she agreed, but she couldn’t help but return his smile. His face looked better that way, younger, and she was surprised to find that he had dimples. “It’s been a while for me, too.”

“The war?” he asked sympathetically. “Your people grow really good tea.”

“The war, among other things. But now…”

“Now we have tea and honey,” he teased, “and beautiful sunrises.”

“I guess we can think of it as a mandatory holiday,” she joked.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/37622.html. You can comment here or there.

15-minutes of Fiction: Fertility (trigger warnings)

Apr24

From [community profile] dailyprompt: “ancient fertility rite.”

Warning: implied sexual violence. Also? Weird. Written in 15 minutes on Write-or-Die, with distractions.

“Come on, Jen,” Isaiah coaxed, tugging her hand, trying to urge her up the strangely symmetrical hill. “It’s an ancient fertility rite.”

“Do you really think we need fertility?” she complained, even as she gave in to his tugging. The path seemed to spiral the hill, though it looked, upon closer inspection, to be circular paths joined by short stairways. Everything looked ancient, like Isaiah’s mythical fertility rite, and yet nothing was falling down, the stairs were level, the paths smooth.

“Well, we’ve been trying,” he pointed out, “and trying, and trying…”

It had only been three months, but, instead of getting into it (again), she put on her best teasing expression. “I thought you were having fun with the ‘trying, and trying, and trying?'” And, just in case he thought she was complaining, she added, “I know I was. Am… are we going to try again here?”

“Something like that.”

She eyed him thoughtfully; over the last four weeks, he had been getting increasingly weird, squirrely, hiding things from her. At first, she’d thought it was another woman, or that, since he’d been complaining so much, the “pressure” of having a baby. Not that there ought to be pressure; she was only twenty-four. Time was not exactly running out.

“Ise, let’s just go home, please?” she tried. “It looks like it’s going to storm any moment now.” The stairs were getting steeper, and this was a lot more real exercise than the treadmill at the complex’s gym.

“If we do it right, it will do more than storm,” he murmured. Really frightened now, Jen tried to pull away, but his grip was implacable, and he’d gotten to full-out yanking when she dug her feet in. “Come on, Jen, don’t get stupid now, of all times.”

“Of all times? Ise, what are you talking about?” She let him yank her to the top of the hill, where the conical shape leveled into a slight depression, with a smaller cone of stone protruding from the top. That obelisk was maybe six feet tall, if one could gauge from the height of the frightened girls tied to either side of it. “Isaiah!”

But he was throwing her down on the ground, on a spot where, from the way the ground was indented, others had done the same, and the storm was beginning to open up as he pushed her legs open. “I’m sorry, Jen,” he muttered, “but I really, really, need that baby now.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/36499.html. You can comment here or there.

My dreams are awfully derivative…

Apr22

So that was a strange dream-fragment. Not a story option as presented, because it stole heavily from other things, including my own settings, Star Wars, Wen Spencer, and a Sherri Tepper book, but interesting.

Just a vignette. A tall white-skinned woman with a physical resemblance to Ventress,but with hair (more on that later) was walking with another person, mentioning that “I think, when I head home, we’ll just raid some men from another colony who might have some spine…”

Background “known” by the viewer:
* As in the Wen Spencer’s A Brother’s Price, there was a very high woman-to-man ratio; the dream said 12:1, and the “men” were, as in my Tir Na Cali and to paraphrase a David Brin novel pallid sires who father a pallid race. Pampered, spoiled pets.

I think that, as in Sherri Tepper’s Sideshow, the white-skinned women with their pampered bois lived in one settlement on a planet that had several different subspecies of humanity, and that they were going to raid men from one of those… not certain, though.

The hair thing was neat: the women had black head hair which grew in essentially giraffe spots; some women in their clan-sister arrangements shaved it short, to show the white lines between the black fuzz, while others grew it long and braided each spot individually in long thick braids. I don’t know if the men had spots.

Links, and then a few more links: E-books & Business

Apr21

IdeaTrash: the Business of Writing – a good all-purpose article on said topic.

HaikuJaugar on E-book Stats
And Killer Chicks on E-book stats (via R.S. Bohn)
And more, from Jim Hines, via Eseme

HaikuJaguar’s open letter to Smashwords, a must-read
Cory Doctorow on CreateSpace, again via Eseme

John Scalzi on revenue streams, also via Eseme

HaikuJaguar again, a page of writing links.

This is a fraction of my e-publishing links, but they seem to go together well. Thanks, [personal profile] eseme, et al!

Crossposted to [community profile] ebooks

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/35557.html. You can comment here or there.