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How We Write – Life Like the Movies

We had two sets of prompts for this story, the ones we normally get from Orion’s Writer’s Kickstart group (If you want time, The end of the bridge, Jinxed) and the ones from the writing group she started in her apartment building (Historian, Identifiable face in the clouds). While we don’t usually have this abundance of prompts, the combination dovetailed into a story quite nicely.

We also employed the stricture of making the story exactly 500 words. Many of our stories fall pretty close to that, though few come in exactly at 500 words. These days, it seems hard to get them under a thousand! Editing short stories to 500 words proved to be an excellent way to learn to edit your own writing and to learn to see what is and isn’t necessary for a good short story. It also teaches you to cheat on the total! For example, you can use contractions to take the word count down.

We set this story in Peru because Kyros has always had a love for the Incan culture and knows a bit of their history. That country provided lots of chasms, bridges, and mist-shrouded valleys to play with.

LIFE LIKE THE MOVIES

“C’mon, Carlton. I just need a couple of weeks off. My sources say that last earthquake in Peru uncovered new Inca ruins. If I leave right away, I can be the first person on site. Think of the prestige Stockwell College gets if I discovered something new.”

Dean Carlton Whitmore looked down his long aquiline nose at me. “Wash, finals are in three weeks. There’s no way you could get there, find anything interesting, and get back here before that. I’d have to find someone to sub for you for the rest of the term. Do you know how expensive that would be?” (more…)

How We Write – All Wet

The prompt for this piece was just the word Rain.

Orion tried to think of something funny to depict on this topic. Someone getting splashed by a passing car? Too easy! The end of the world in flood? It’s been done dozens of times. Hard rain? Perpetual rain? Well, Orion does live in the Pacific Northwest, so that’s a given, during the winter anyway. (It’s currently raining, in fact.)

Read on to see what direction Orion took.

This is one of the shortest short stories we’ve ever written!

ALL WET

I HATE getting wet!

Remember that snappy pop song, I Love A Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbitt? He didn’t know what the hell that guy was talking about. Rainy nights were the worst!

I swear, he thought, this rain is trying to smash me into the pavement. My hair’s plastered to me like a second skin. It’s coming down so hard I can barely see my path. (more…)

How We Write – Holmes At The Ready

The prompt for this story was to take a literary character and put them into a new situation. Orion immediately thought of Sherlock Holmes. He’s one of her favorite characters, whether on TV or in the movies.

When Orion sat down to write this story, she saw an ad for a speed dating event at her favorite local hangout. So, she put all those things in a blender and out popped this little story.

It’s quite nice to see someone get the better of Holmes for a change.

When Orion asked Kyros to help polish this story for the blog, he didn’t think Orion had made the female character enough of a match for Holmes, so he put his particular spin on her words to make her a better foil for Holmes.

HOLMES AT THE READY

Sherlock Holmes entered Tipsy’s Coffee Palace, lips in a wry twist as a bouncy teenager leaned forward, giving him a clear view of her ample cleavage. “Please sign in here.”

He wrote HOLMES in square black letters and slapped the nametag on. The atmosphere pressed in on him, equal parts tension and hormones, with a dollop of fear. (more…)

How We Write – Founding Father

The prompts for this story came from the writing group that Orion started in her building. They had the word bounty. Since Kyros hates just having one prompt, they grabbed, extra prompts from a cool little thing he found on Amazon called Storymatic. The prompts that came from there were: shouldn’t have touched it, nobody is watching, trespasser.

The way we got into this story was that we wondered “what was it that the person shouldn’t the person have touched.” Orion suggested a dragon egg. Kyros liked that idea and thought it would be funny to steal it from a museum. That’s why she hides out in a museum in the middle of the story. That’s where she stole it from in the first draft of the story. It wasn’t until we were writing the very end of the story that Kyros got the humorous idea about who the father of the baby dragon should be. That caused us to go back and re-write our protagonist stealing it from the White House instead of a museum.

Orion used to sell stone eggs as dragon eggs at medieval fairs. When children asked if they would really hatch a dragon, she told them, “Of course, in two hundred years or so. If the egg doesn’t hatch, they should bring it back to her for a refund.” Behind the children, their parents were usually trying not to laugh and spoil the fun.

Now she collects stone eggs for herself. They live in a woven basket on her countertop where visitors can handle them while she regales them with the origin story of each one. She hopes they don’t hatch anytime soon. Though maybe the cat would like a new playmate.

When she went looking on Google Images for a picture of a stone egg for this story, she found herself drooling over pix of eggs she didn’t have…yet! The picture she settled on is a dragon septarian stone egg from Madagascar and she wants one!

FOUNDING FATHER

“Excuse me, miss,” the man in the ebony suit called to her. “We need to check your bag before you can leave the White House.”

Icy panic raced through her veins. Did they see me take it? I thought nobody was watching. Did they catch me on a camera? I shouldn’t have touched it, let alone taken it. But I had to have it. (more…)

How We Write – A Ridge and a Rug

Orion doesn’t think there even were any prompts for this story. She says it just came to her after she tripped over a perpetual bump in the area rug in her living room. The story evolved from there. And yes, before you ask, she does indeed talk to and command obedience from inanimate objects. While they usually obey her, they don’t ordinarily talk back. Except for her cat, who isn’t an inanimate object, but has opinions about everything, and, of course, insists on sharing them with her.

A RIDGE AND A RUG

I was tired and my feet were dragging when I got home tonight. Even with the streetlights filtering through the living room curtains, I could barely see my way. Feeling about for the light switch, I tripped, sprawling spread- eagle across the large Oriental rug.

Shaking my head, I climbed to my knees. I’d tripped, yet again, over the damned two-inch permanent wrinkle in the rug. A long day, combined with work problems and lack of supper overwhelmed me. Irritated, I ground out, “Now look, rug. I’ve had it with your constant ridge, right where I’m trying to walk.”

(more…)

How We Write – Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus!

When these prompts, Cavemen with computers; A dynasty of dinosaurs; Pools of light, rivulets of shadow, deserts of dark, came up, we struggled to figure out how to have cavemen with computers. Outside of some very weird Geico commercials, that’s not something you encounter every day. But drawing on our shared history of working for large companies in so-called cubicle farms, we hit upon the idea that morphed into the story you are about to read. Kyros had way too much fun crafting the spell they used. Orion wishes there was a video of him reading it. You would probably all laugh just as loud as she did. Maybe next time she’ll sneak a recording and share it with all of you.

SIC SEMPER TYRANNOSAURUS!

 

A fierce roar rattled the office windows.

“Arroh, get in here!”

Oh, crap, what did I do now? I mentally went over the checklist of my duties. I already filed the meeting reports, contacted the affiliates, and ordered his lunch. The budget isn’t due until next week. What could he want? Another roar jostled me out of my thoughts. I tiptoed into my boss’s office.

Behind the vast expanse of desk, Mr. Rex Saurus sprawled on his office couch, an ever-present snarl contorting his long face. I used to envy all those sharp teeth, that is, until I caught a glimpse of his dental bill.

“Y…yes, sir?” Dammit, why did I stutter? Not a good way to impress the boss.

His short arms jerkily waved a sheet of paper at me.

“This report on the Stegosaurus Housing Project is incomplete and the numbers don’t add up!” He frowned down at me. “Do I need to replace you with someone more…precise?”

“No, no, sir. I’ll…I’ll fix it, sir. Right away. Sir.” (more…)

How We Write – Alphabet Murder: One Prompt, Two Results

The Alphabet Murder poem was a challenge to write a poem where each line begins with the next consecutive letter of the alphabet. That’s way harder than it sounds, especially, of course, for the letters Q, X, and Z! In Orion’s, the first stanza was the crime itself and was relatively easy, with multiple words per line. The second stanza, about the aftermath of the murder, trying to use shorter lines, was way more difficult!

When Orion asked Kyros to help edit the Alphabet Murder poems, he couldn’t resist trying his hand at the same challenge, so now there are two sets of poems instead of just the original one. He set his first poem where Orion did, a boathouse, but the second poems go in very different directions. Oddly enough, the poems turned out relatively the same length, too.

See what you think.

ALPHABET MURDER,

BY THE LETTERS

by Orion T. Hunter 

 

As everyone knows,

Benny was no good.

Come morning’s light

Down at the dock,

(more…)

How We Write – Carta Mundi

Our prompt was: Here Be Dragons. To Orion, who loves maps, especially old ones and fantasy ones, the subject was obvious. She was also influenced by the poetry of Dave the Poet. A fellow member of the Kickstart Writers group, his poetry is often literate and humorous. Carta Mundi was the result.

CARTA MUNDI

 

When cartographers of old unfurled

Their atlases, charts, and maps

They had only parts of the world

Told them by sailors, and other chaps.

(more…)

How We Write – Life Savings

Our prompts were: A new kind of murder, Wells Fargo, That’s it then.

No, don’t ask me where our collective writers’ minds go when making up these prompts! Sometimes, we just look around the food court where we meet for the Kickstart Writers bi-weekly meetups. Sometimes the prompts come from our own writing. I think that’s what happened here. Kyros connected the concept of a bank with a new kind of murder and immediately thought of a killer bank vault. The question was, how was it killing people? Rogue AI, of course. It’s always a rogue AI. Ever since the HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The rest of the story followed quickly from there. But, because of what happens in the story, we thought we’d best alter the name of the bank. Don’t want any lawyers to send us unhappy letters, after all.

LIFE SAVINGS

The archeologist carefully brushed away the last of the dust and dirt covering the monolith. He sat back with a gasp.

“Look! That logo! I remember it from several other digs. It’s…uh,” The man pondered for a moment. “Bells Wargo, that was the name. It represented a…a currency place of some kind. They didn’t have universal credit implants like we do.”

His partner leaned closer, a frown of distaste on her face as she looked at the mummified body half in and half out of the closed door.

“Well, I think it’s my turn to ‘dig’ into this mystery.” She pulled off the heavy gloves she always wore and extended one bare finger to touch the huge square shape. “As the team psychometrist, it’s time I earned my pay.”

The world dissolved around her.

(more…)

How We Write – Tea With Mary Jane

It’s said that you should never piss off a writer, or they will kill you off in their next book. But writing can be a good way to express other feelings too. In this story, I thinly disguise real people in my life and put them in a humorous situation.

The prompts we had to work with were: tea bag, blue moon, leap year, and pot. The connection between the tea bag and the pot was too obvious, so of course, Kyros had to put a spin on the word pot and interpret it as marijuana.

Orion based the characters, very thinly disguised, mind you, on her friends, who spend most afternoons huddled around the puzzle table. Without the pot, of course! After we had the characters and the marijuana, the story just fell into place. Let us know what you think in the comments. Enjoy!

Tea With Mary Jane

“You okay, June?” Karla asked as the white-haired woman came into the commons and approached their table. “You look a little green around the gills.”

Three sets of eyes swung up from the thousand piece puzzle in front of them. Even Karla’s cocker spaniel, Lady, raised her head, hoping no doubt for either food or a man’s attention. Food disappeared as if by magic, while any man would set her golden coat aquiver until she had been thoroughly petted.

June giggled. “Oh, yes. Perfectly fine.”

Olive gave her a concerned look before placing a seemingly random piece into the puzzle. Selma, sitting in a comfy chair observing the action, clapped her hands quietly, a smile on her face.

(more…)