Indefinite Hiatus

I’ve been considering this for a while, and the fact that I still haven’t gotten the most recent prompt done has made my decision clear. The blog was helpful at first, but it’s difficult to find enough time to write these days, and it’s becoming more of a destraction than anything else. So I’m putting the blog on hiatus. When I have time between projects, I might dust it off, but for now, it’s time to move on. It’s been fun.

Good luck and good writing!

Delay of Post

Just haven’t been in the right mood this week. The sample will be up next Friday.

Prompt: Heat Wave

Since even San Diegans like myself can legitimately complain about the weather, this week’s prompt is Heat Wave.

Good luck and good writing!

Temptation

Levastiel picked up his book and tried to find his place. He wasn’t sure why it took him so long, it was the exact place he found five minutes ago, and ten minutes before that. He finally had to admit the truth: he wasn’t in the mood to read.

It’s not that the book was bad. Indeed, the author probably would have won awards for it if he had lived long enough to finish it. But after almost three days of nothing but reading, he was getting a little tired of it. He usually worked Mondays, which was enough to get him in a reading mood for Tuesday. Veriel had taken his shift that Monday, though, in exchange for him taking Veriel’s Tuesday shift the week before, and now Levastiel had no idea what to do with himself.

“Laundriel,” a voice called out. He turned to see what was likely one of the oddest sights in all of creation, but it had become so routine to him, he scarcely noticed. She-Who-Slips-Between-The-Shadows-At-Midnight was still a demon. She still had horns, and goat legs, and skin the color of blood. But she wore the shimmering white robes of the cherubim wore, even if she somehow managed to show significantly more skin than any other angel, and if you squinted just right, you could see a faint glow framing her head.

“Your halo is coming along nicely, Midnight,” Levastiel told her with a smile.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said, non-chalantly, but a smile touched the ends of her mouth. Levastiel would have been willing to bet (if angels weren’t above such things) that she was blushing, but it was impossible to tell with her skin.

“How’s the book?” she asked.

“It’s all right, I suppose,” he said. “I mean, it’s great, really, I just haven’t really…” He trailed off.

Midnight laughed. “You actually miss working, don’t you?”

He felt oddly insulted by that. “Service to heaven is the greatest reward.”

“No, fabric softener is the greatest reward.” She grinned, fingering the edge of one sleevebetween two black nails. He noticed she had filed away the sharp claws. That must have taken some effort.

“Are you getting along with the Cherubim?” he asked.

The smile became a little strained. “I’m doing all right. Everyone looks at me weird, but… they’re nice about it. They look embarassed if they notice me noticing, and a lot of them have even apologized.”

“It’ll all seem normal soon enough.” He thought of his own reaction to her, or lack thereof.

“A demon working for heaven? Or people being nice?”

Levastiel shrugged. “Both, I guess.” She let out a sigh. “I do miss tempting people, though. I’m not made for all this filing crap. No offense, Levastiel.”

“None taken.”

“Do you think when my halo’s fully formed, I could trasferred to Temptations?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “We don’t have a Temptations office.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t just tempt somebody to be good. If you’re good for the wrong reasons, it doesn’t really count.”

She gave him a devilish¹ grin. “That’s the challenge part. Getting someone to do something good because it’s in their best interests is easy. The trick is slowly manipulating them so they start doing something good because it’s good. Let me show you. Then you can tell the boss-abim how clever and forward-thinking I am.”

^{1 A devilish grin is distinct from a demonic grin in that while a demonic grin indicate that the grinner is plotting terrible things for you, a devilish grin suggests you’ll at least enjoy it.}

Levastiel frowned. “I can’t. You’re still on probation. You’re not allowed to influence people.”

“I didn’t have a person in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of the Ravager.”

Levastiel shuddered at the memories of the demon’s horrible voice, but he had to admit that after a few beers, the demon wasn’t bad company. “You’re going to Save the Ravager?”

Midnight’s grin grew even wider. “I’m not. You are.”

Levastiel laughed at that, although it came out a little strained. “I think you’ve got the wrong angel for that.”

“No, you’re just the angel to do it. Come on, ever since you told him about days off, he skips work to go drinking every Tuesday. Let’s see how he reacts to you having too much free time.

Prompt: Three Day Weekend

This was supposed to be last week’s prompt, but things got in the way, so I’m using it now. The prompt is a three day weekend.

Good luck and good writing!

Cassandra’s Return

Chen was getting out of his car when heard someone call his name. He turned to see Melissa Dawn waving at him from a few spaces over.

“I can’t believe I’m back here.” He grinned at her. It hadn’t been that long since he’d last seen Melissa. He kept in touch with all the old crew, whenever they both had a spare minute. It was just a month or so since he grabbed a cup of coffee with Melissa. She’d finished shooting The Mission, and was excited to talk about the relaunch with someone.

But it was never quite the same since Cassandra was canceled.

“Well,” she smirked, walking up to him. “We can’t do the voyages of the Cassandra without Captain Kei, now can we?”

“Heh, Kei would argue with that.”

Melissa playfully punched him in the arm. “And Paige would tell him that he was being too hard on himself.”

“It’s going to be weird playing Kei again. I mean, he’s got ten years of experience now. I can’t play him the same way I used to. Erica tells me to shoot for ‘worried, but confident.’ Because that’s helpful.” He’d done a couple of projects for Erica over the last ten years. She somehow managed to get everything to work out perfectly, despite her maddeningly vague directions.

“She knows you’ll figure out how to…” She trailed off as the two of them entered the sound set. The Cassandra was there—its cockpit, the common room, the cargo bay, all exactly the way he remembered it from ten years ago.

“Captain on deck!” Jane shouted, snapping a salute at Chen. Robert looked around until he saw them, then grinned like a child.

“Chen, you old dog!” He grabbed Chen in a rib-breaking hug. “How you been?”

“Ugh,” Chen said when Robert released him. “I’m alright. Did your hugs always hurt that much, or have you been working out more?”

Robert laughed. “No more than usual. Erica asked me if I’d need to tone up to play Ryans again. I told her I’d been waiting for her to call me ever since they canceled us.”

Chen nodded, walking down the stairs to the set. He hadn’t realized just how much he had missed working on this show.

“How is the book coming?” Melissa asked Jane.

“Dark Hunter hits the shelves in a few months,” Jane said. “The forums are already on fire wondering if Cassandra will delay the next one.”

“Can’t be worse than when you two got married,” Melissa grinned. “I swear, the entire internet was geeking out over the idea of Kain and Ryans actually hooking up.”

“That reminds me,” Jane said. “Have you met our daughter yet?”

Chen missed a step and had to grab the handrail to stay upright. “Wait, when did you two have a kid?” he asked, turning to stare at the couple.

That got another laugh out of Robert. “Not us, us. Kain and Ryans. You read the script, didn’t you? Ryans knocked Kain up shortly after the crew disbanded.”

“We’re going to have to do some flashbacks to show you two actually getting together,” Melissa said, “or the fans will turn violent.”

“True enough,” Robert said, then he turned to Jane. “My niece, Jenny, is playing her. Ain’t nepotism grand? Carrie’s flying in with her tonight. I’ve told you guys that story, right? How my sister was such a big fan of Mina-”

“That she asked Carrie to be her Godmother,” Melissa interrupted. “Yes, only a dozen times in the last eight years.”

“We need to go somewhere tonight,” Jane said. “The entire gang’s back together. We need to celebrate.”

Chen sighed, thoughts of his old friend surfacing. Li had helped him out a lot when he was first struggling as an actor, helping him nail down Kei’s strengths and weaknesses. It was an amusing echo of the guidance Kenji’s gave Kei. Even three years later, it was hard to think that Li was gone.

Jane went pale. “I’m sorry, Chen. I shouldn’t have… that was thoughtless of me. I know you and Li were close.”

He swallowed. “It’s all right. He’d be happy that the rest of us are here.”

“We should still do something,” Melissa said. “We can toast Li’s memory and welcome Jenny to the family.”

Chen smiled at her. “That sounds nice.”

Prompt: Series Revival

Okay, it’s been two months since my last update. All I can say is that life got really busy for a while. I should hopefully be back to regular updates now.

With Doctor Who’s new season (and new Doctor) just starting up, this week’s prompt is Series Revival. Write about some show (real or fictional) making a comeback.

Good luck and good writing!

Campfire Stories

The other kids grew quiet as Johnny returned from the forest. He was getting tired of that. He got along with them all right most of the time, at least as well as he ever did with kids his own age. But every time Miss Tokar’s name even came up, they all started staring like he’d grown a second head.

He sat down near the fire like nothing had happened. “You should have come, Kim,” he said to the girl across from him. “Miss Tokar showed me all kinds of interesting plants. You would have liked it.”

Kim stared at the fire and muttered something about maybe next time.

One of the other volunteers, Mr. Stevens, came by with marshmallows and s’more fixings. As kids argued over the best spots near the fire, burned marshmallows, and generally acted like kids, they forgot all about Miss Tokar’s herb-finding trip and how they should be afraid of Johnny.

“Let’s tell scary stories!” Ryan said.

“Don’t!” Cindy protested. She was easy to frighten. But everyone else agreed it was a great idea.

“I’ll go first,” Ryan announced. “This story happened in this very forest.”

Johnny thought that seemed a bit silly. These stories were all made-up. Some kids made up stories on the spot, and other kids repeated ones they’d heard before, but some kid had made those up, too; none of them were really real. If there’d really been an axe murderer who’s ghost cut the heads off of any kid who got lost, as Ryan insisted, there’d be investigations and stuff. Certainly their parents wouldn’t be letting them on this camping trip if headless bodies kept showing up.

The rest of the kids squealed in delighted terror, though. Well, except for Cindy, who was covering her ears.

Then Eric told his story. It, too, allegedly happened here. Really, Johnny thought, if all these ghosts were all in the same forest, they’d be too busy bickering to actually kill any children. Eric’s story involved a prospector, which was dumb, since they were in Michigan, which never had any gold rush or anything. But Johnny didn’t bother telling Eric that.

Instead he stared into the fire, trying to think of what to do when it was his turn. He’d never heard a scary story worth remembering, so he’d have to make one up. Obviously, he couldn’t claim that it happened “in this very forest”, since he was still the new kid. He could always say it happened where he used to live in Pittsburgh, but what would happen there? Would a ghost haunt a steel mill? Johnny didn’t see why not. It seemed like there was plenty mischief a ghost could cause in a place like that, but he didn’t think that’d go over well. It felt like it didn’t count as a scary story if it didn’t happen in a forest.

He started to see shapes in the fire. A branch on one of the logs stuck up, and it almost looked like there was a woman tied to it, burning. No, he thought, a moment later, she wasn’t tied to it, she was dancing around it. Smaller flames joined in, dancing in a circle around her, almost, but never quite, taking shape.

The woman grew taller and taller, and the crackling wood almost sounded like laughter for a moment. Then the fire leapt up, burning so bright, it hurt Johnny’s eyes.

He blinked the spots from his eyes, and the campfire was just a campfire again.

All the kids were staring at him, their faces pale. He could vaguely hear Mr. Stevens trying to calm down a crying Cindy at the volunteers’ table.

“What?” he asked. “Is it my turn?”

“No!” Eric said, quickly. “I mean, that was… where did you hear that? It didn’t really happen, did it?” He looked around at the dark woods surrounding them nervously.

Johnny frowned. He hadn’t said anything. Were they playing a joke on him? It seemed unlikely. Ryan honestly looked terrified, and Johnny didn’t think he would be willing to swallow his pride like that for a joke, or that he was a good enough actor to pull it off, for that matter.

“All right,” Mr. Stevens said, as the volunteers all swept down on them, “time for bed. Everyone to your tents.”

Johnny was grateful for the distraction and quickly headed towards the tent he was sharing with Eric. As he passed Miss Tokar, she met his eyes with a curious expression, then smiled, her teeth gleaming in the firelight.

“Did that really happen?” Kim asked, falling in beside him.

He shrugged, not wanting to admit he had no idea what was going on. “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.” And without giving her a chance to reply, he turned down the path to the boys’ tents.

Prompt: Camping

Hey, I actually did it on time this week!

I’m starting Camp NaNoWriMo next week, so this probably be the last prompt until August. Also, this week’s prompt is camping!

Good luck and good writing!

Solution Race

The timer rang, and Eileen turned the box on its side. An eclectic arrange of toys and small devices spilled out. She paused, processing them.

The parameters for this contest were vague. The items needed to be “solved,” but it was up to the robots to determine what that meant. Luke had said that was the real test here. Her ability to put those solutions into effect was just a metric.

She identified one item as a Rubik’s Cube. Six sides, nine squares to a side. Nine squares of six different colors. It would be trivial to figure out even if it wasn’t already in her database.

The sub-process only took a few milliseconds to calculate. She committed each side to memory. She let the process take over her hands as she looked at the other objects.

A chime went off and people cheered. Eileen looked up at the scoreboard. A white dot had appeared next to Atlas’s name. She turned to face the partition that separated her from him.

It was a waste of processing. The purpose of the partitions was to prevent robots from imitating the progress of others.

She had finished the cube, so she put it aside. None of the other items were in her database, so she grabbed the nearest one to study.

Four buttons in the standard four colors made a circle around the middle. Green meant go. She pressed that one, but nothing happened. She worked in a clockwise circle. The small device made no response.

There was another chime. Pandora had a dot next to her name now. It took Eileen a moment to process that she didn’t have a dot. She dropped the device and picked up the Rubik’s cube again.

Her sub-process had been sloppy, and stopped one step short. Some people laughed as she made the last rotation to complete the puzzle. This time, there was a chime, and she looked up again. Now she had a dot, but so did most of the other robots, and both Atlas and Pandora had two dots now.

She examined the device again. There was a switch on the bottom. She flipped that, and the buttons lit up. She pressed the green one again, and the yellow button across from it lit up with a beep. She ran through several dozen meanings for green and yellow before settling on traffic lights. Next came red.

She pressed the button, and it made a harsh buzz and all the lights flickered. Eileen recognized that meant she had made a mistake.

She pressed the green button again. This time the blue button lit up. That was to the right of the green button, and the yellow button was to the right of that.

Wrong again.

More chimes came. She should move on to a different object. She wasn’t certain why she didn’t.

This time, when she hit the green button, it lit up again. She pressed it one more time, and the green button followed by the blue button lit up. Pressing those two buttons got the sequence to repeat itself with a third button added on—green again.

She smiled, understanding now. Each of the buttons had a different tone, too, so she sub-processed this to her left hand. She took a few extra milliseconds to double-check it. Then she reached for the next object: a box filled with plastic polygons.

“And Buzz has completed the challenge!” Jordan Day announced. Eileen looked up at the scoreboard. Buzz’s name had changed to a gold color with sparkles rendered across it. Six dots were next to it. Atlas and Pandora were both at four. Six robots had three dots and two robots were still at two. Only Eileen was at one.

She confirmed that her sub-process hadn’t made any errors, then dumped the box out in front of her. Getting higher than eight place at this point was statistically unlikely, but she wouldn’t let herself come in last.