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Archive for the ‘Short Fiction’ Category

How We Write – Weather The Storm

Our prompts for this story were persuasion, it was a close thing, Chinese food, and suddenly sunshine. We thought about a couple arguing about whether or not to have Chinese food. We both drew upon our early dating history to flesh out the disagreements between them. Then we wondered, what if one of them was a weather witch? This is the story that unspooled from there. 

WEATHER THE STORM

“I’ve always wanted to see Celtic Thunder in concert. How did you manage to get tickets, Andrea?”

“My aunt dates one of the guys in the group.”

“Really? That’s cool.”

They heard a rumble reminiscent of the sound effects from the concert.

Andrea giggled and nudged him with her elbow. “Sounds like someone’s hungry.” (more…)

How We Write – Hog Wild

This story was written several years ago for the prompts: Barn, Bossy Team Leader, One More. When we edited the story before posting it, we found that our voice and timing had grown substantially. The changes in word count moved the story from flash fiction to short story in length (over 1000 words). Also, I think we made it funnier!

Hog Wild!

Jackson Stevens sidled into the conference room, juggling his laptop and morning espresso. He shoved the door with his elbow and headed for the only vacant chair at the table: right next to his bossy team leader.

Killian Porter, Director of Programming for their all-reality cable network, glared at him, pointing to the still half-open door.

“I know your show’s about farm animals, but were you born in a barn?”

“Oh, sorry, sir,” he said, hastily using his shoulder to close the door.

His boss was a large man who seemed to be stuffed into his suit. The man positively fumed while watching Jackson boot up his laptop. The rest of the room waited silently.

Once he’d finished fussing with the machine, Killian stabbed a finger at him. “That’s one more strike against you, Jackson.”

“Since you finally decided to join us,” he said with an exaggerated tone of politeness, “would you care to update us on the overnight figures for your show?”

“W…w…well, sir, the overnights are great for Hog Wild. Our new show seems to have hit the key demographics hard.” Jackson smiled at his boss. “Apparently, people love watching the crazy antics of people who race hogs professionally.”

Killian chuckled as he tilted back in his chair. (more…)

Where do we get ideas for our stories?

We’d like to give you a peek into how we create our short stories. Technically, most of our stories are flash fiction, loosely defined as 1000 words or less. Short stories usually run 1000 to 7500 words.

Orion belongs to a writing group that meets every two weeks and conspires to come up with three prompts to use in a piece for the next meeting.

Once we get the prompts, we spend a day or two mulling them over. Usually, we come up with a few ideas for stories that could include all of the prompts. After a bit of discussion, we sketch out a rough outline, mostly detailing the dialogue, with a few character actions. Once that is done, we dig into whatever research is needed.

Sigh! I should tell you that research is often a black hole from which most writers have great difficulty escaping. One topic leads to another, one website to twelve others, and on and on, falling down the internet rabbit hole!

The funny thing is, much of what we find isn’t even included in our story. This research helps us to understand the character or the setting or some other aspect of the story. For example, for the short story ARROWHEAD, we did extensive research on adopting a child from China. Our research resulted in maybe eight lines in the finished story. However, the knowledge we gained about the subject influenced how we wrote the entire story and the way the characters felt and acted.

Unidentified Love is Here!

Yay! Unidentified Love is finally available in paperback!

It took Kyros several months of hard work and caused him to pull out chunks of (blue at the moment) hair to kick the original ebook through Scrivener and into a form acceptable to CreateSpace, Amazon’s print-on-demand arm.

But that means you can now hold Unidentified Love in your hot little hands! And Orion and Kyros can add the physical book to their growing shelf of published books.

So, rush to your computer, pull up Amazon, and get your very own copy of Unidentified Love today.

Yay!

The wraparound cover art for the paperback.

Postcard

Oh, we’re so excited!

We just ordered our first promotional postcard, featuring UNIDENTIFIED LOVE, our next release in paperback, and listing our upcoming releases.

Postcard front     postcard back

 

New Projects In The Works

It’s been awhile since we posted here, but we’ve been busy!

Kyros has been out of the country a lot in the past few months and with the time differences and the vagaries of internet connection, it’s been hard for us to write. Orion has been struggling with some health issues, so that’s slowed us down a bit too.

But in better news, we are happy to announce that we have two projected anthologies in the works: The Other Realms Brewpub and Damned If You Do.

(more…)

The Fabric of Lifetimes

Sometimes, even the villains get to tell a story.

The light in the viewing room was subdued today. On display behind and under glass were examples of some of the oldest surviving textiles and tapestries in the world.

Renata Abeille leaned over one special display case, absently stroking one perfectly manicured finger along its edge. My beauty! It’s been so long. Soon, soon, she promised.

(more…)

We entered a writing contest!

Orion found a writing contest where you could get your story critiqued, then published. The theme for the contest was creatives. The story had to center around someone being creative: writing, singing, painting, etc. We spent a couple hours brainstorming about what we could write that would fit that theme and still tie into The Third War series.

Our idea involved a singing duo who wrote a song and were trying to get a record deal. We made them Xerians who were just waking up and realizing that something was missing in their life. Their third partner. In writing the story, we began by writing their song and then wrote the story around it.

Now that the contest is in the judging phase, we can proudly share this story with you. Head on over to Our World Fell Apart, read the story and then come back here and let us know what you think.  
Enjoy!