Robynettely

The challenge is here . This is not the story I thought I was writing; I thought I was writing about an eating disorder. Gerard was taking a shortcut home from school when the unicorn found him. When he saw it off in the distance, he thought it was a white rock, and threw a stone at it. He missed, and the white thing kept moving towards him. He thought then that it was an awfully clean albino deer. As the creature got closer, Gerard could see it was mighty small for a deer. Instead of antlers it had a horn. Its tail was long and skinny, with a brush on the end. Gerard picked up another stone and bounced it in his hand, but the unicorn looked at him with its outsized black eyes. "Go away," he said, and raised his arm. It blinked at him, eyelashes as long as fingers. "No, get," Gerard said. It lowered its horn as if to run him through, or maybe pay homage. Gerard threw the rock, and the little unicorn, not even billy goat size, jumped in the air like a startled cartoo...

The challenge is here . The title comes from a heading in a book that's open at the top of my staircase. Sorry about the appalling science. It was a beautiful June day. The walk up from Pinkham notch was easier than it should have been. Chuck kept looking up. If India or China had found a way to stop the end times ahead, he wouldn't know; news wasn't getting through. "Big change coming," said the man he'd caught up to on the hill. The man's pack looked nearly empty. Might as well eat beef jerky sticks and Mars bars when the end is a few hours away. "Going up for a better view?" said Chuck. He'd abandoned not just pots and pans, but the concept of eating. He'd fasted before for longer than humanity had left. He'd trained at the same time, even. He wore everything he had: swords, knives, armour. "Just thought I'd climb up." The man was far too old to be hiking. But if his knees gave out, he wouldn't be going down the m...

The challenge is here (it's to write a 1000-word story about the picture you can see -- do click). The title is from the socks I'm knitting -- pattern is Naiad, colourway is Slayer. I was leaving the theatre by the back door after the show when a man loomed out of the shadows. It was late, it was dark, and no one else was around. Any normal person would have been startled. But this man didn't expect any of that. "There's a breach in the sewer that used to be Taddle Creek." He was huge and yet hunched, with a voice like walking on gravel. "Where?" I said, grabbing the door so it wouldn't lock shut behind me. My weapons were still inside. "Annex," said the man. He smelled like road salt, even though it was July. "Bathurst, near Dupont." "Right," I said. Those streams want to be free. "I'll find it." I don't know who these people are, or how they know where to find me. My theory is they're bridge t...

Sunday evening we were sitting on our patio having a beer because we’d been rollerblading and it was brutally hot. I was seaming a sock when a robin came hopping across the lawn. “Cheep, cheep, cheep,” he said. I figured he was a teenaged male, because he still had some speckles on his chest. I said hello. “Cheep, cheep, cheep,” he said, and hopped closer – close enough that I could have reached out and touched him. “You’re too close,” I said. “You should be afraid of me.” He hopped under my chair to the other side, where my beer was. He pecked at my beer bottle. He hopped over in front of my feet and looked at me. “Cheep, cheep, cheep.” “Maybe he’s hungry,” Ed said. I don’t approve of feeding the wildlife. Perhaps a concession to that, when Ed went inside, he got a slice of 12-grain bread, rather than the wonder bread we feed the boy. He broke a few pieces off and dropped them on the ground. The robin ate one and lost interest. He cheeped at me. Across the lawn came another robin, als...

I had to wait a few days until I managed to get my sh*t together, but: “Bezoar”. Rejected (pleasantly) from market #1, is now in the queue at market #2. I can see why Uncle Jim at VP had the "no sleepovers" rule. All the spreadsheeting in the world can't help me if I just let things languish when they come back.

The challenge is here : 1000 word limit, has to take place on the 4th of July. Chuck said it was probably not suited to FSF, so of course I had to prove him wrong. Dina had plugged X-15 in overnight, so he wasn't there to help her get out of bed. She had to rely on her replacement hips and knees, for a change. As she washed up, she asked herself how she would ever get her full mobility back if she didn't have to use it occasionally. You'd think a physiotherapy program would be applied to the X-15 so he'd gradually hold back the help until she asked. Or something. Maybe that's what the Anti-Robot League were talking about, when they had their radical meetings and went on the radio and the like, talking about humanity's over-reliance on robots. "We're not against help," they would say. "We just want to keep our ability to think and act for ourselves." Dina wouldn't have minded doing that some other day. It had been mildly liberating to ...

If my dreams are any indication, the thing I'm most afraid of in the world is losing my purse. And I've survived that, once.

OWW: 3 “Brown Girl in the Ring” by Nalo Hopkinson. For some reason I discovered she’d done the MFA program at Seton Hill, so I got this out of the library. She certainly presents a grim view of the future of Toronto, but it was an entertaining read, and not just because I could visualize so many of the locations. The style, especially the dialog, was challenging at the start, but it was really well plotted. “Behemoth” by Scott Westerfield. The boy got this from my mom for his birthday, and he read like 75 pages while still at her house. Win! Ed read it next (having finally been shamed into reading Leviathan). Finally I got my hands on it. Really good. Totally want the sequel. (September...) “Aerotropolis: the way we’ll live next” by John Kasarda and Greg Lindsay. Recommended on Nicola Griffith’s blog. Got it out of the library. I found the introduction quite a slog, but by Chapter 2 I wasn’t having any trouble getting through it. I guess I’d gotten used to the style – I haven’t bee...

First Draft “Quinn”. Page-a-day, started June 1. On the 13th, I woke up and realized how the story was actually supposed to go, so I had 12 pages of rambling fishhead. I finished with 19 pages. “Doll Heads”. One of them there flash fiction challenges, wrote 1700 words June 5 (Sunday). “Axilism”. 1300 words, another flash fiction challenge. I wanted to write about 800 words this time, first draft, because I always wind up with 70% extra on these challenges. I didn’t meet my target, though the challenge didn’t actually have a word limit this time. I wrote it Wednesday morning at work. “Familiar”. Weekly flash fiction challenge. Wrote about 2600 words on Monday. Why is it these 1000-word things always come out so long? Steampunk Superhero. Weekly flash fiction challenge based on a true story, came in at 950 words! Wrote it on Saturday, typed it on Sunday. “Fairfax”. Page-a-day, I might have just accidentally started a novel. I have at least 10,000 words plotted out, anyway. I’ll pro...