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Zig-a-Zag, a story for Thimbleful Thursday and #FridayFlash

Feb27

The fighter pilot with the callsign Spice was new to the team and, although all her credentials assured that she was not, indeed, new to space fighting as a concept or a skill, still the team had to be reassured.

The ‘old men’ – venerable veterans at twenty, twenty-two – watched from a safe distance on the carrier as Spice went through her first series of maneuvers. The training run wasn’t their hardest – nobody thought she could do that one, half the old men couldn’t pull it off flawlessly – but it was not easy, either, with a 1% fatality rate.

Spice zipped around the first obstacles – not too fast, not too slow. “Those are easy,” one Old Man scoffed. “Just wait till-“

But she made the trick shot as easily as any of them had.

“Too slow,” the doubter chided. And then he was laughing, as she bopped the wrong way around one of the hardest targets. “Looks like she zigged when she should have zagged!” His cronies laughed, some uneasily. That was the most deadly part of the run, the part they’d lost friends on.

The speakers blared to life. “All right!” Spice taunted, as she popped out on the other side of the target, the “flag” in her jet-ship’s catch-claw. “Zig-a-zig-ah!”

Thimbleful Thursday: https://thimblefulthursday.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/thimbleful-writing-prompt-10/

And Zig-a-zig…. ah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_Girls

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/903662.html. You can comment here or there.

Poll Still Open! And tied for second place!

Feb25

I have a poll here – pick three stories that I will continue.

Right now “A Rescue of Sorts” is winning with four votes, but

Rock & A Hard Place/2 Rocks & all the Pebbles
Prince Rodegard
&
Captive of the Night Witch

are tied for second place with two votes each, and, well, they’re my favorite three, too, so *I* can’t pick.

Go vote?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/902667.html. You can comment here or there.

Other People’s Patreons!

Feb25

I’m sure I’ve told you about [personal profile] clare_dragonfly‘s Patreon already.

But now, two more of my friends have Patreons as well!

Check out [personal profile] inventrix‘s here: Inspector Caracal Makes Awesome Things (and they’re awesome, indeed).

And Lucy Weaver has Patreon here – read her lovely fiction!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/902559.html. You can comment here or there.

Second Patreon Milestone reached!

Feb25

My Patreon has reached its second milestone!

Everyone who pledges at least $1 will have access to both a microfiction (<300 words) and a flash fiction (300-1000 words, or, in Lyn terms, a pretty long story <.<) every month.

Pledge $5 or more, and you’ll be included in a monthly prompt call and, if the funding reached $40/month, you’ll have input into a Patrons-only serial.

whee!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/902191.html. You can comment here or there.

Check out K Orion Fray’s Etsy Shop!

Feb23

K Orion Fray, formerly the writer in my attic, has opened an Etsy shop!

Check it out: Azazel and Penemue. The product descriptions alone are worth a visit:

I’ve always found a certain solace in the evening, and you’ve always loved the forest on the edge of my mother’s old farmstead’s property. So I wanted to find a way to bring them together for you….

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/902131.html. You can comment here or there.

Poll! A Sponsored Continuation or three

Feb22

Sooo, I found in my archives that I had forgotten a donation <.< Specifically, one to do whatever I want or needs continuing.

But I like making you guys happy, so I’m going to open a poll now and leave it open until the end of February or until something is a clear clear clear winner. What stories should I continue?

I’ll write approx. 1250 words to the first-place winner, 850 to the second-place, and 400 to the third.

If you don’t have a DW account, leave your vote in the comments.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/901529.html. You can comment here or there.

Another Book Review Of Sorts: Red Iron Nights, by Glen Cook

Feb21

The second book in my series of Lyn-learns-to-Review-Books is Red Iron Nights, by Glen Cook.

This book is part of the “From the Files of Garrett P.I.” series, which I tend to think of as the “Adjective-Metal-Noun” (Sweet Silver Blues, Bitter Gold Hearts…) series. I started reading these back in high school, another product of my used-book-store and library habit.

The series are set in a noir fantasy city (TunFaire) in the heart of a nation that has been gripped by war for, the impression is given, generations. There’s a distinctly ‘Nam feeling to the veterans, when they come up – which they do in Red Iron Nights more than I recall them doing in earlier books. Garret is a veteran of the war; every adult human male (and there are elves and gnolls and rat-men and pixies and, and, and…) is a veteran of the war.

And in Red Iron Nights, he is hunting down a serial killer who has a specific type.

Despite the gritty tone of the description, the stories manage to be a nice, relatively light-hearted read. Garrett, who narrates in what I believe is classic noir fashion, has a sense of humor and a way of brushing off both his own failings and his misfortunes. He is never going to be The Guy; this isn’t, say, Anita Blake, where he gets exponentially more powerful as the novels go on, but he’s also not Good Old Gil, always down on his luck.

If you can’t tell, I really enjoy this book, and this series. I keep going back to them over and over again – they’re not deep, they’re not thought-provoking, but they’re well written and immersive. And, like a crime show, at the end, there’s a happy ending (if not for everyone).

As a matter of fact, I’m already in the middle of Angry Lead Skies.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/900839.html. You can comment here or there.

On Mobbing Midnight and Exciting Stretch Goals / Donation Levels

Feb19

Guys I’m a stretch goal!

Here on Mobbing Midnight, if we reach $12,000, I get to write another story! (all the crows, crows everywhere, so many crows).

Annnnnd

If you donate at the $100 level, you get to be in my story (or someone else’s. I mean, that’s cool, too).

But, seriously. Come to school on a nethergate, where the crows might be demons and people really do exorcisms in their dorm rooms. Where magic might not be part of the curriculum, but it’s definitely in the Library. Where your every-day walk across campus might just be ruined by a malignant spell and nobody really knows if the Dean exists.

…sounds just like your kind of University, right?

And you could be there… fictionally, at least. Or, you know, send someone you don’t like there, or name the Uni itself after a close friend/family member/enemy.

It’ll be fun! Magical, even. 😉

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/900447.html. You can comment here or there.

Three-Word Wednesday and Foedus Planatarum: Evolving

Feb18

This piece is a prelude to my Foedus Planetarum setting, set many decades before the other stories. It is written for the Three-Word Wednesday prompt: content, evolve, sober.

“Humankind did not evolve.”

It was not the sort of thing you wanted to tackle sober, but Imri was the Space Department’s Chief of Science, and she could not be seen to be drunk on the job.

“That is,” she looked over her notes again. “Humanity did evolve, quite a bit. But humanity, on earth… well, it’s complex.”

There were three other people in the room with her. Two of them had white-iridescent hair and slit-pupiled iris like a cat. The other one was the Space Department’s Chief of Security, and he was waiting impatiently for her to work through this.

She looked at the man? who was her counterpart for the Jocet. “All right. So humanity originally evolved… somewhere. And then was seeded, colonized out to various planets in… slightly modified forms?”

The Jocet’s language was alien, but, at the same time, it was not alien. Their translators had been able to comprehend it, and, conversely, the Jocet’s translators could handle English. Her counterpart nodded. “It is simplified, of course. But you are content with your understanding?”

“Content? Content?” Imri shook her head. “No, no, I could spent a lifetime studying this and not be content. But do I have enough to brief my peers? Yes.” She slumped back into her chair. “And then, then I have enough understanding to request a sabbatical to further research this.”

The Chief of Security – the Terran-human, North-Atlantic-Nations Chief of Security – shook his head. He’d followed just enough to know he was lost. “I think if you can explain this to the rest of the Chiefs, I’ll put in my rec that you get that research as a fully-funded work project.”

Imri couldn’t argue. Looking across the table at the Jocet, she had a feeling Earth was going to be playing knowledge-catch-up for quite a while.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/899857.html. You can comment here or there.