Robynettely

I might have taken this challenge too literally. The story is based on Grace Sherwood's, in Virginia in 1702. You stood and looked from woman’s face to woman’s face. Though I was beside you, I could track your gaze by watching their flinching and downcast eyes. “Sarah,” you said at last to a comely woman who stood at the back with two small children. “You know the trial will not harm the accused. If she be innocent, she will bear no grudge against you, because you let her go. If she is guilty, she will be hanged, and no harm will come to you.” Reluctantly, your wife left your children in the care of a neighbour and stepped between the rows of spectators in the courtroom to stand below you, looking out as if she was accused herself. Next you implored your sister, who instead took your children from your neighbour. So you looked to that neighbor. Perhaps because she was your wife’s friend, she came to the front of the court to glance back at me as if I was bestowing ...

For this challenge, once again I tapped into my twin personal themes of squirrels and taxidermy. Also, I'd had a dream with a girl named Ginevra in it, then I'd read this story, so the name was popping in and out of my consciousness. “How can you say you don’t like Billy Joel?” Carl said, for about the thirtieth time. Really, he’d said it about that many times. This morning, at the Fryeburg Flea market, he had found a Billy Joel retrospective four-CD set in mint condition. They were on the third disk now, and he’d said it after every song. “I just don’t,” Ginevra shouted. She was driving, and she’d always heard the rule was, the driver chose the tunes. Except maybe not so much in this case, since she had to drive the whole way from Maine back to Montreal, because Carl had no driver’s license. “But he’s so talented,” Carl said. “Not my thing, I guess,” Ginevra said. Carl had already accused her of having no taste, of being jealous of Billy Joel’s success, and of lying and actual...

Just one thing, "Bezoar", at its second market.

First Draft “Fairfax”. Started month with about 5000 words I think (12 pages plus the two flash fics). Each of those flashes is probably a chapter needing to be fleshed out (maybe 50% more? There’s no description of anyone, really). Now I have around 14,000, and I'm almost at the end of Chapter 7. I want to shout out a little where the ideas are coming from, because by the time I have a draft, I will have forgotten. My sister asked what was going to happen next after Dollheads. ChiaLynn I think first used the term (in my hearing) on twitter. I read http://truepenny.livejournal.com/ , where Sarah Monette reads a lot of histories, and commented once on the presentism (I think it would have been an example of that) in a book about the Salem Witch Trials, and how to the people living back then, maybe witchcraft was real and a real threat, so we shouldn’t assume they were all faking it or making it up. I’m paraphrasing here, and doing a poor job. Back in the late 80’s I shared a kitch...

OWW: 5 “Feed” by Mira Grant. Library book about zombies. I’m not sure what I was expecting; maybe less explain-y-ness. Quick read. The zombie science was great. Less developed, in my opinion, was the conspiracy. I guess that’s why there’s going to be a sequel. When I finished it, the boy wandered off with it. Mira Grant sure isn’t afraid to kill off characters! “Puritans at Play”. Bought this as research for Fairfax. It had one of the most awesome one-star reviews ever on Amazon, that ran something like this: “My teacher wrote this book. He made us read it for his class.” The horror! It was a pretty entertaining read, actually. There was a lot I didn’t know, and lots of names that I will probably remember when I read further. I found myself referring to it, for example, when we bought Sam Adams beer yesterday. Hmmm, not a very reading-ful month.