Katherine Marie: An Acrostic Poem
The Special People IndieGoGo fundraiser campaign has reached $650, on its way to the $1,000 goal!
One of the perks you can receive for donating is that I'll write an acrostic poem based on your name. Here’s the acrostic poem I wrote for Katherine Marie:
***
King-killer Katherine
Announced, "I’m now Queen! I’m
“Terrific, fantastic,
“Heroic, and keen!
“Evict all your monarchs, your
“Royals; they’re pointless.
“I’m taking things over
“Name me your new
“Empress!”
Millions of people, the whole wide world over,
Announced their allegiance, and how they adored her. But
Ruling them turned out to be rather
Irksome, so Katherine
Erased their minds and released them
***
You, too, could have an acrostic poem written about you, if you back the project to the tune of $35 or more!
Creative Writing: “Put Your Feet Up”
Here's a creative writing piece I wrote over at TypeTrigger last week. I'm not sure how to classify it, exactly. It's somewhere in between fiction and nonfiction. I just took the prompt, which was "put your feet up", let my mind wander, and waited to see what would come out.
Enjoy!
Put Your Feet Up
Whenever I need to have a good think I lie down backwards on my bed, with my feet propped up against the wall, let the blood pour down into my brain, close my eyes, and just wander around for a while inside my head.
It's tough slogging, I find, navigating my neuron clusters with all that blood flowing, but it's far more interesting than going in when it's dry, when my brain's like a desert, with just a couple of lonely cactus-like ideas growing here and there. When my feet are up and the rivers are flowing the vegetation gets much more lively.
The first few exploring sessions I embarked on while the blood was in my head, I went in barefoot and was forced to stick to the shoreline, wondering what those big ideas were that I could see off in the distance. Lately, though, I've been bringing a good pair of boots along, so I'm able to go inland, where a lot of the grey matter is. Ideas grow like weeds in the grey matter, if they're being watered well.
One time I tried building a raft and floating down one of my arterial channels. I thought it might bring me somewhere important, where I was storing a really great, unique idea, but I must've gotten caught in a current of some sort, because I eventually found myself floating around near the tip of my tongue. It took me hours to find my way back out.
One day I'm going to find that big idea, and then I'll cultivate it, fertilizing and pruning and taking cuttings so I can plant more big ideas just like it in my back garden.
Until then, I'll lie here with my feet up, and off I'll go, exploring.
Flash Fiction: Beach Decency
Today I found this little flash fiction piece lying around in one of my writing folders. I wrote this as a contest entry for a local newspaper, but I never heard back, so I assume it didn't make the cut! I might as well get some use out of it, though, so here it is.
The guidelines for the contest were that the story had to be under 500 words and had to include the words whale, impress, and cosmos.
Enjoy!
Beach Decency
"Pardon me, miss; you aren't allowed in here." The declaration came from a furtive, bespectacled man with a thinning patch of salt-and-pepper hair. He was peering around a sheet of plywood that was acting as the door to a makeshift beach hut constructed out of stacks of driftwood and covered over with a few patchy tarps.
Heather Normandy flashed her press badge. "I'm not just another gawker, sir. I'm with the newspaper." A gust of wind kicked up some sand from the beach, and she turned to shield her camera.
"I'm sorry, but you can't come in," replied the gatekeeper.
A rough hand tapped Heather on the shoulder. "Excuse me, miss," said a gruff gentleman holding a large bucket of seawater. Heather stepped aside, and the gatekeeper let the man through.
Heather craned her neck to see through the gap as the man passed inside. "I know you have a beached orca in there. You have no right to hide this from the public!"
"Is your bravado supposed to impress me?"
"Oh, I have to impress you?" said Heather sarcastically. "What if I told you I was the second runner-up of the 2004 Miss Cosmos Pageant?"
The gatekeeper gave her a funny look.
Heather heard the sloshing of water and a low moan of distress. Several voices muttered inside the hut. The man who had just entered stepped back outside with an empty bucket.
A tall man wearing a toque and carrying a large bundle of old bed sheets walked up next. The gatekeeper said, "Excellent, Jason!" and let him in. Returning his attention to Heather, he said, "I'm afraid I simply can't let you in at the moment. You're a woman; it wouldn't be decent."
Heather was outraged. "What is this, some kind of sexist publicity stunt?"
"No, no, of course not! How could I expect to maintain my membership in the Oak Bay Society of Moral Living if I were a sexist?"
Someone else on the inside whispered into the gatekeeper's ear. "Excuse me, miss," he said, pulling the plywood shut behind him.
Heather heard some whispered conversation. Then the gatekeeper popped his head back out.
"Good news!" he said. "You can come in now. But please keep your photography, um, tasteful." He politely held the door open.
Heather strode into the gloomy hut and pulled out her camera. The beached orca was lying on its side, feebly opening and closing its massive jaws. A dozen men were stationed around it, rubbing it with wet cloths and dousing it with buckets of seawater. Heather began snapping photos.
Then she saw what had been done with the bed sheets: they had been crudely pinned together and wrapped around the orca about two-thirds of the way down its body.
"What's with the whale diaper?" asked Heather.
"Far be it from the Society of Moral Living to expose a living creature's nakedness to a member of the opposite sex," said the gatekeeper. "It simply wouldn't be decent."
The Fuzzy Bear and the Buzzy Bee
I wrote Larissa a story over Facebook chat. Naturally, I wanted to share it with the rest of the world. It is such a happy little tale!
The Fuzzy Bear and the Buzzy Bee
Once upon a time a fuzzy bear was balancing on a tight rope, and a buzzy bee was watching him.
The buzzy bee said, "That is so silly, you silly bear! What good is it to balance when you can fly?"
"But I can't fly," said the fuzzy bear. "I don't have wings, like you. I only have fuzzy hair, so balancing on this tight rope is the best I can do."
"Well I feel very sorry for you," said the buzzy bee, and he flew in a triple upside-down loop-around pattern to show that he meant it.
The fuzzy bear was so impressed with how good the buzzy bee was at flying that he clapped his hands in delight, but the movement made him lose his balance and he tumbled to the ground, PLOMP!
"Oh no!" said the buzzy bee. "That was all my fault. Now I am even more extra sorry!"
"It's okay," said the fuzzy bear. "I am so fuzzy and so roly-poly that I hardly felt it all."
"That must be nice," said the buzzy bee. "When I fall down it always hurts a lot! That's why I fly all the time. I'm scared of the ground!"
"You must get very tired if you have to fly so much and never touch the ground."
"Yes, I do, but I would rather be tired from flying than be sore from landing on the hard ground and hurting myself."
"I know!" said the fuzzy bear. "If you need a rest, why don't you land on top of my fuzzy head? I am very soft, and it won't hurt you at all."
"Okay!" agreed the buzzy bee. It carefully, gently, slowly buzzed down to where the fuzzy bear was sitting and landed on the bear's head. "Aaaahh... It is so nice to have a rest," it said.
The fuzzy bear was so soft that the buzzy bee fell right to sleep. Not wanting to disturb the bee, the fuzzy bear decided to have a nap, too. After all, he could practice on his tight rope any time he wanted, but it wasn't every day that he got a chance to make a new friend.
Flash Fiction: “What Happened”
Here's a strange little thing I wrote over at TypeTrigger the other day, based on the prompt "what happened."
What Happened
"I came as soon as I heard what happened."
"I'm so glad you're here."
"Has there been any change?"
"No; things seem to have stabilized, more or less."
"Well thank goodness for that. How did this start?"
"I don't know... I just woke up this morning and rolled over to see if he was awake, and there they were!"
"How many, at that point?"
"Just the three, this morning. Since then, another nine. It's slowed down a bit now, to about one every half hour."
There was a soft squelching pop from behind the curtain, and a male voice said, "Whoop!"
"There's another. You'd almost think he was enjoying it!"
"Well... I mean, really, why shouldn't he?"
"I... The man has something like a dozen eyeballs growing all over his body! It's MONSTROUS! One of them is in his belly button, for heaven's sake!"
"It doesn't hurt to be open-minded about these things, though. Let's just try to see the situation from his perspective."
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