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The Year Cya Didn’t Keep anyone – reposted on Patreon
I have cleaned up and reposted “The Year Cya Didn’t Keep Anyone” here on Patreon for all & sundry to read.
This story began the Cloverleaf saga. It was originally posted on Dec. 5, 2012.
In the aftermath, it was called The Year Cya Didn’t Keep Anyone.
She freed the lost boy named after a destroyed city — a boy her grandson had found forher, the way his father had brought her home boy after boy when he was in school — dropped her grands off at school, and walked out into the wilderness.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1075841.html. You can comment here or there.
Patreon Reward Tier Profile!
I am holding a Patreon Pledge Drive in hopes of filling a slight income hole with my chosen income-garnering path… dragons and dungeons!
Ah, speculative fiction.
With a few dragons here and there and, ahem, quite a few dungeons. 😉
So if I’m going to ask you to patronize me, I ought to tell you what you’re getting, oughtn’t I?
By now, everyone probably knows that a $1 pledge gives you access to all the patron-only stories.
And I’ve already told you about the $5-pledge level
So now we’re into uncharted territory! Reward tiers nobody has tried for yet!
Pledge $7/month, and as long as pledges stay over the $30/month milestone, you get a super-secret private story.
That’s right, another story on top of the others in the Patreon, just for $7 and up donors, and you get to prompt it!
Of course, you still get all the $1 and $5 perks – prompting on everything, reading everything, picking serial ideas and characters. And you get your own secret story for just $2 more a month.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1075582.html. You can comment here or there.
Sting Marydel and the Cliffs of Anterior, Part 8
| Part one: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1049125.html Part two: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1049392.html Part three: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1051270.html Part four: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1054666.html |
Part five: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1057725.html Part six: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1064287.html Part seven: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1067774.html |
Sting shifted from foot to foot. He didn’t want to admit he was freaked out, but on the other hand, this was pretty weird.
Dr. Anjou – well, he assumed it was Dr. Anjou – was smiling brightly at him, as if she hadn’t just offered to laugh evilly for him, to set the mood.. Sting cleared his throat. “I don’t think I need the mood to be any weirder,” he admitted. “This is already way beyond normal.”
“Well, from the paperwork I’ve seen, so are you. Come, Mr. Marydel, let’s see exactly how unusual you are.”
“I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life being some sort of lab rat.”
“The rest of your life? How about the next two hours? It that acceptable?”
“You’re not very good at being reassuring, are you?”
“I’m not supposed to be.” She flashed him a much more natural smile. “I’m supposed to be the evil doctor here to experiment on you. And when I’m done with that, well…”
Sting swallowed at the pregnant pause.
“…well, then, we’ll let you see our toys, and decide for yourself if you mind being a lab rat once in a while, in return for playing with our best equipment.”
“You are seriously strange. You do know that, right?”
“Like I said, it’s in the job description. This way please, Mr. Marydel. We’ve got quite a bit of experimenting to get done and only a few hours to do it in.”
He followed her. He hadn’t come all this way just to back out at the last minute. Even if it did mean they were going to poke and prod at him, or stick needles into him, or…
Sting stopped dead on the far side of a door straight out of Star Trek. Laid out on a table, on a very long, big table, was something like a gingerbread-man cookie cutter…
…if the gingerbread man was the size of the world’s largest human.
I’ve just renewed all my domain names AND my paid Dreamwidth account… so here’s a cliffhanger and a tip jar. 😉
$5/300 words, and for every $15 I get I’ll throw in another 300 words!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1075022.html. You can comment here or there.
Patreon Reward Tier Profile!
I am holding a Patreon Pledge Drive in hopes of filling a slight income hole with my chosen income-garnering path, more apocalypses!
Err, I mean “more speculative fiction writing.”
Probably with some apocalypses.
So if I’m going to ask you to patronize me, I ought to tell you what you’re getting, oughtn’t I?
By now, everyone probably knows that a $1 pledge gives you access to all the patron-only stories.
But what about the higher rewards? What else can you get from me?
Pledge $5/month, and you get to tell me what to write, broadly:
Each month, I hold a theme poll here on DreamWidth, open to everyone. That determines the monthly theme, out of ten options.
Then I open a prompt call to my $5+ patrons! From those prompts, I write the month’s flash fictions and microfictions! Sometimes I’ll combine ’em, sometimes I’ll go off in a strange direction, but I’ll always use those prompts first.
In addition, when taking a new direction on a serial, starting a new serial, or making up a character for a serial, I will poll the $5+ patrons for feedback.
For instance:
Fill in the blanks:
Once, there was a [person or group of people(Family of Hikers)] who lived in a [setting descriptor] [place].
[Pronoun] discovered that [ITEM] was [adjective], and that it was up to them to fix it!
But first, [Proper Noun] had to [verb] [GROUP or ITEM].
And, if I reach the $245 milestone – “Spreading the Love Around” – I’ll ask the $5+ patrons’ input as I commission a crowdfunded artist to create a portrait of one character/month.
All that for just $5/month!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1073948.html. You can comment here or there.
Patreon Pledge Drive
All right, I’m not going to bore you with a day-long telethon with people interrupting all your favorite programs to tell you about how if you donate just $5 you can get a WXXI tote bag…
(Non-USians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_drive)
But I’m looking at a possible income shortfall that I could make up with just the right amount of Patreon, so I am doing a pledge drive for more Patrons!
https://www.patreon.com/aldersprig
Pledge now!
Just $1/month gets you access to all my Patreon stories.
$5/month will let you vote in my new ad-libs serial creation (and the monthly prompt calls and all other votes).
And it keeps going up from there.
What’s more, during this week-long pledge drive, for every milestone goal we reach, I’ll write one extra story for every patron to read! If we get all the way to $220/month, I’ll hold an extra Patron-only prompt call.
Check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/aldersprig
Signal boosts are appreciated.
Want to know more about the rewards?
Reward Tier Profile: $5
Reward Tier Profile: $7
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1072972.html. You can comment here or there.
International Women’s Day: taking short prompts about any woman character of mine
Or any woman in a historical position in any setting of mine.
Go!
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1072784.html. You can comment here or there.
The Doomsday Room of the Cloverleaf Museum
The Cloverleaf Museum of History had dedicated half a floor of their four-story building to the history of Cloverleaf and the pre-Disaster city it had replaced, Helena. And in that area, they’d dedicated one room to the city’s builder and founder, Cya Red Doomsday.
Tarben had stared at the official portrait for perhaps a little too long. She didn’t look all that different than he remembered her. She’d let her hair go back to brown, except one streak in the distinctive “Cya Red.” She was smiling, the sort of exasperated little smile he remembered well. And she was wearing academic robes, which made her look a little bit distinctive and maybe a few years older.
Few years. Tarben snorted, glad there was nobody else but an aging docent in the room – an aging docent that, if human, was young enough to be his daughter if not his granddaughter. Cya’s kids had been almost ready for Addergoole when she’d Kept Tarben, and that had been quite a long time ago.
He recognized the wooden chest to one side of the portrait; the one she’d built for him had lasted over fifty years, but he’d lost it when he’d had to flee a town a little too quickly. He recognized the replica self-storage unit, too, and had to stifle a laugh. What a way to show Cya’s history!
His eyes stopped on a rack of collars, and his smile vanished. Slowly, Tarben crossed the room, counting rows. Ten rows of ten. She’d gotten a bigger rack somewhere along the way. And…
“Excuse me?” He flagged down the docent. “There’s some collars missing.” His collar was missing.
“Oh, yes.” The docent beamed at him. “When she donated the rack to the museum, Mayor Doomsday held on to some of her favorites.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1072046.html. You can comment here or there.
A different sort of hunt, a sequel short fiction
after: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1050738.html
Snorri knocked on Felicite’s door, feeling more nervous than he had since his first year of Addergoole. Since his first week of Addergoole.
This had to be done right, or someone else might do something stupid. It had to be don absolutely right, because Snorri did not want The Lightning Blade coming down on Addergoole because the girl that called him Uncle Professor Leo Inazuma had gotten stuck in a bad Keeping.
She answered the door. Snorri tried to ignore the howls and yowls, the flashing lights and the creeping shadows of Hell Night. He bowed shallowly to Felicite.
“I was wondering,” he said, dry and sarcastic, “if you might want to go somewhere quieter for the day.”
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1070253.html. You can comment here or there.
GoFundme Signal Boost: Emergency Moving Fund
My friend’s sister/my friend Alice just lost her job unexpectedly, and she could use a little help to get a new place: https://www.gofundme.com/7eqtfg2s
Just today, my sister Alice was abruptly laid off from her job with no warning, leaving her with no income, no insurance, and an apartment she can’t pay rent on without that last paycheck.
Plus, without that job, she’s rushing to find someplace that she can not only afford, but can also find a new job from.
Please help Alice out if you can!
https://www.gofundme.com/7eqtfg2s
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1068971.html. You can comment here or there.