His guitar was magic. He always found the melodies when he played for someone who was sick. The iceberg was magic. Penguins who leapt to the safety of the floating frozen mesa found themselves in possession of plentiful fish and predator-free seas. Their entryway rug was magic. For decades it kept out his professional enemies and her family. Her bookcase was magic. Every book she placed on it was richer the next time she read…
Inspired by a coworker’s wonderful Halloween costume this year… I must kill Snow. For me, and for the child growing inside me. The huntsman will regret his betrayal. He will never know his baby, his daughter or his son, and he will soon understand why I am believed to be a witch, though I have never pretended to understand how such power flows through me nor claimed to have mastered it as an art. It…
A conversation that came to me as I sat on the couch the other night… “What do you know, teacher?” “Too much.” “A given.” “Too much sadness.” “Whose?” “Everyone’s. I move through a crowd and it sloughs onto me.” “What do you know about the woman?” “She is.” Curious silence. “A woman.” “She is.” “She is, and she will be.” “While we are still watching, teacher?” “Yes. I believe so. She is coming quickly to the turning point. Not long now.” “When she is… will the sadness change?”…
Preston’s eyes remained closed, though he could feel the lightening of morning outside his window. These moments were precious: self-reflection, brilliant ideas, anything that required a still mind and a complete focus on nothing else, these were the commodities he crafted in the wee hours. Then the first electric shock hit his toe and travelled all the way up through his veins. Preston used to scream when the alarm clock went off, but after five…
Inspired by a strange road near my house. Content warning: suicidal actions. The man waited, fidgeting with the frayed edge of his Northface jacket. Whenever a car hissed wetly by, he looked up, gauging its speed and trajectory. None of them had satisfied his sense of perfection. He had waited too long to do this wrong. Then he saw it: a Lincoln, one of the big ones, with grill enough to do the job. The man…
I flicker the weak beam against the cornto find the moons, floating together.I call, and the twin moons come. The moons sail in to the ring of lightfrom the porch, a dock on a rustling sea.When I see rolling tongue and happy smileI call, “Good boy.”
Gary wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation. I could hear him shrugging over the phone. “I mean…I guess we just wore out our welcome with each other. Y’know?” I didn’t know. But I said I did. Gary waited a few seconds, said he hoped I got some sun this summer, and hung up. I went outside and laid in the pile of potting soil on the front lawn, a seed waiting to sprout into something beautiful.…
Amy and I flipped through Black Cats & Evil Eyes to find headers that inspired us, along with my Story Cubes. This came out of a 5-minute sprint that combined the prompt, “When a dog howls, death is near,” and the image I rolled, “speech.” Teddy is the worst. I actually have the statistics to prove it. In the last year, I’ve dog-sat every canine within four blocks of my parents’ house, and I’ve kept…
I challenged Amy to some really goofy writing prompts the other night, and this came out of the prompt, “Write a snooty, nonsensical wine description.” Step into the tantalizing, arid desert with this titillating blend of tart chords and chevron harmonies. Catch a note of aged wild rebellion, twined perfectly with daring hints of mammoth proportions – all complimented by a variable symphony of brown.
Today on Twitter, I posted this “Promptly”: Since I’m trying to provide examples in the same breath, I wrote a brief response about my miiquil species (from the world of Portent)… and ended up thinking about it all day. (I blame one of my art & writing inspirations, whom I’ll call TVWT, for inspiring me to expand on this kind of public worldbuilding as a way of motivating myself to explore my world further!) Leisure…
