Flash Fiction Friday - 3/30/12

Shh, it's still Friday for many people. Why should I be penalized just because I live on the east coast?

Anyway, I had a critique session with K.S. Lewis tonight that last until after midnight, so I didn't get to put this up earlier. I'm feeling kind of punchy this week, so I decided to use a snippet from a previous finished work, Peter James, aka The-Novel-We-Speak-Not-Of. I've been toying with the idea of rewriting it lately. That project is pretty far down my list of priorities, but you never know (that, and I didn't want to put up anything that I might actually try to get published).

Peter James is about five kids (and their babysitter) who discover a tunnel to a secret land in their basement. Kind of like Narnia meets Peter Pan. This conversation happens just after they get back the first time.

“We need to talk about rules,” he declared.

“There are rules?” Nicky whined.

“Of course,” Peter replied. “All the best games have rules.”

That was true enough, so nobody bothered to argue with him. “What are the rules?” Ed asked.

Peter looked like he was thinking really hard for a minute. “Rule number one: no one but the six of us can know about Eversea.”

“What about Mommy and Daddy?” Charlie asked.

Pete bit his lip before he answered. “We can tell Mom and Dad. But they can't come in. It's for kids only.”

“Yay!” Nicky cheered, clapping.

“Sadie's not a kid,” Edwin argued.

“Sadie doesn't count.”

“Thanks, Pete,” Sadie said, setting the oven timer for 25 minutes and walking back to the table.

“You know what I mean,” he huffed.

“Why no adults?” Ed asked.

Peter looked like he wanted to hit him, but he didn't. “Because,” he said like he was speaking to a two-year-old, “it's our place. Only we're allowed there. It's where you go when you're really sad or really happy or really angry, and there's no one there who'll tell you to clean your room or eat your broccoli. In fact, there's no broccoli there at all. It's just kid stuff, all the time.”

So Much to Blog About, So Little Time

I'm going to put today's flash fiction in its own post because I have a lot to talk about (because I'm a lazy blogger who didn't want to take the time to write any posts this week). So, first, an update on Rosetta. Well, to start, it's not called Rosetta anymore. It's now the untitled first book of the Capitoline Hill Chronicles. Which means I'm going to have to go back and change all my blogpost labels to match. x_x

Why the name change? Well, "rosetta" is a word with a lot of meaning and some symbolism... none of which related in any way to the book I wrote. Capitoline Hill is one of the seven hills of Rome (and if someone who knows Italian could tell me how to correctly pronounce that), and the myth is that Romulus built a fortress on it that would serve as a sanctuary for the Romans if the city was ever attacked. This seems much more like something that werewolves would name their compound.

Also, I'm done with my second draft! I'm not sure exactly what happened last Friday, but once I finally committed to working on it, I edited ~260 pages from Friday to Wednesday. I didn't do any of the nitty-gritty edits so there's still a lot left to do, but I think the book's actually in the order I want now, and I hopefully fixed most--if not all--of my continuity issues. I'm getting to the point where I'm almost ready to possibly be proud of certain part of it. I actually made myself cry a little while I was working on it... and it wasn't because the chapter sucked!

Next bit of awesome news: I'm being featured on a blog today! I was one of the winners for this month's Knights of Microfiction (along with Stephanie at Word by Word), so Kathy at Imagine Today interviewed me and featured me on her blog. Go check out my thoughts on life (writing), liberty (television), and the pursuit of happiness (Vanilla Coke).

Also, yesterday kicked off the triannual YA Scavenger Hunt. There are 60 authors giving away cool prizes, so you should definitely head over and check it out. I did the YELLOW team puzzle yesterday, and I think I'm going to work on RED next. They're fun, and a great opportunity to check out some YA authors with whom you might not be familiar.

Also also, you should go check out Kindles for Kids if you haven't already. It's for a great cause, and you can submit a short story or enter a contest to win some awesome prizes.

Who's excited about the Blogging from A-Z Challenge? This is my first year entering, so I'm pretty psyched, even if I've only come up with, like, seven of my topics.

I... think that's it. For now. Stay tuned for my Flash Fiction Friday update later (you know, after I write it).

Knights of Microfiction and Teaser Tuesday - 3/27/12

It's the last Monday Tuesday of the month, which means it's time for a Knights of Microfiction prompt. This month's was:

In 250 words or less:
Use at least one of the following adjectives: delicate, repulsive, hostile
And at least one of the following nouns: New York City, My 16th Birthday (yes, this would be referring to you), and Kilts
For the words you don't use (unless you use them all), you can just use them as inspiration.

I'm not normally a dystopian writer, but apparently when I think of NYC, I think of the apocalypse. So here's what I came up with:

They said that by the time the survivors came to, New York City had crumbled. The greatest city in the world, and now it was nothing more than piles of rubble and smoldering remains, its population all but wiped out.

There were perhaps three hundred people left in the city, maybe a couple million in the world. There was no way to know for sure since all lines of communication were down. Ari wished she knew whether her family in Ohio was okay.

She’d made friends quickly. Allies, she supposed, since they weren’t likely to be meeting for drinks or chatting about boys any time soon. But they found food and water and shelter together, and they shared everything they had.

Puppet had survived, but she wasn’t sure how long a Goldendoodle puppy would last in this strange new world. He ate their scraps and whined pitifully when she had nothing else to give him. She knew the others were wondering if they’d be better off without him.

They were living a delicate balance now, surviving while trying to maintain their humanity. Something would give soon; she just knew it would. All she could do was try to stay out of the crosshairs when it happened.

Also, it's Teaser Tuesday. I'm still reading the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, but I'm on book 5 instead of book 2 (yeah, it's been that kind of week). So here are the rules and an excerpt from Silver Borne.

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
• Then hit up Should Be Reading to add your link.

"I woke up lying in the dark and hurting all over, but especially on the back of my head. My ankles were also sore when I tried to move them." --Mercy Thompson

I'm taking this week off from writing so I can focus on editing Rosetta (which will soon not be called that anymore as I finally came up with a new name). I'm hoping to have the rewrite done by March 31 so I can start giving it to the wonderful people who've offered to read it for me, and maybe even stay on track to start querying agents in June (for the record, if I do, it'll be the first time I've ever created a schedule like this and actually stuck to it). So if you start seeing a barrage of either ecstatic or very angry comments on Twitter, don't be alarmed.

Flash Fiction Friday - 3/23/12

Sorry, guys, I haven't been the best blogger this week. I had a lot to do at work, and I've been feeling a little creatively tapped. I'm hoping that spending this weekend really plotting out some of Defenders (and maybe even editing Rosetta) will help get me back on track. It feels pretty messy and disjointed, and it's making it hard for me to write it when I don't know what's going to happen next. I didn't even take a swing at hitting my word count yesterday, so I've got almost 1600 more words to write before Monday to keep me on goal.

But anyway, this is Flash Fiction Friday, not Tobi Whines Friday. And this flash fiction is a possible future scene from Defenders (depending on how the story goes). Hope you enjoy.

He knew he was in trouble. His chest ached where the sword had pierced it, and no amount of fairy magic could heal a gash like this.

Yeah, black magic was a bitch like that.

Still, he forced himself to his feet and summoned the remainder of his strength. He might be dying, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

She was only about a hundred feet away—though it may as well have been a hundred miles to his battered body—and he staggered to her just as she threw a Trip Spell at her opponent. He fell back, head smashing against a rock, and didn’t rise again.

“You’re getting better,” he grunted, and she whirled to look at him, face falling when she saw his bloody shirt.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“You always did have a way of pointing out the obvious.”

She glared at him, fierce. He liked her fire, even if it would get her killed someday. “I’ll be fine,” he lied, and she didn’t believe him.

She let it go anyway. “They have us surrounded,” she said. “And there are a hell of a lot of them.”

“Where’s your backup?” he asked, looking for her teammates.

“They’re here. Not far. They’re waiting for my signal, but I don’t… I…” She hesitated, then pushed on even though the words seemed painful. “I don’t have a strategy for this.”

He nodded. “You’re in luck. I do.”

She looked heartbreakingly hopeful, and he had a moment to remember that she was really a kid still. “You think we can take them all?”

“No,” he said. His realism made her face fall, though she hid it behind determination.

“Of course we can,” she argued, and it was a struggle not to laugh, even though that would have hurt his wound.

“The best you can hope for is to delay them until more backup arrives. But that,” he continued before she could interrupt, “we can do.”

He watched the conflict flicker across her face before she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Where do we start?”

Teaser Tuesday - 3/20/12

Why do I always find the cool things to post after I've already posted for the day? Oh, well, this one is a bit timely, since "Tuesday" is in the title, and it looks fun, so here's two posts in one day again. Got this one from Jaycee DeLorenzo's blog, and she got it from MizB of Should Be Reading. The rules are:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
• Then hit up to Should Be Reading to add your link.

Right now I'm (re-)reading Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs, number 2 in the Mercy Thompson series. I also LOVE her Alpha & Omega series (to the point where I get stuck in an infinite loop reading and re-reading them). Highly recommended for urban fantasy/werewolf fans.

Teaser (it was very hard to keep this to only two sentences):

I turned the vacuum off to move the couch and realized the phone had been ringing. Had something else gone wrong? --Mercy Thompson

Lucky 7 Meme

Yay, I was hoping I'd get a chance to do this one, and McKenzie McCann tagged me! The rules are:

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines as they're written-- no cheating!
4. Tag 7 other writers
5. Let them know!

I'm going to use Rosetta because that part's already edited, and I'm pretty sure page 77 of Defenders is smack-dab in the middle of the absolute crapfest that is chapter 6 (it's not; I checked. But it was a slow part of chapter 8, so this is still better).

“We were razzing her a bit,” Nick said. “Jeez, it’s not a crime. It was just a joke.”

“It’s always just a joke!” Aly snapped, then looked away.

“You used to have a sense of humor,” Ben said. “You used to like it when we teased you.”

“Or at least you liked it when Luke teased you,” Nick said.

“Shut up!”

“Aly and Lu-uke, sitting in a tree,” Ben sang.

“Guys, knock it off,” I said. “It’s bothering her.”

Hm, I don't like that without context. It makes the boys sound mean.

And I'm tagging...

1. K.S. Lewis
2. Rebecca Belliston
3. JoLynne Lyon
4. Nick Wilford
5. Chantele Sedgwick
6. Erin Summerill

Flash Fiction Friday - 3/16/12 (and a plug)

OK, plug first. My friend Jeanne Donnelly just published her book, Soul Mates (A different kind of Love Story), on Amazon.

After a tragic death on mean city streets, a woman meets God and begs him to let her reincarnate to bring the heavenly message of unconditional love to the world. Follow the adventure when she is tossed back to earth as one of the smallest dogs on the planet.

She's a fantastic writer, and you should go check it out.

And now for your regularly scheduled (St. Patrick's Day) flash fiction. I don't really know how I feel about this one, so I welcome your critiques.

Jace pounded back his drink and slammed the glass on the bar, silently signaling for another. He made a face at the green shot the bartender pushed toward him but drank it anyway. He could get just as drunk with a green drink as an amber one.

From what he understood about St. Patrick’s Day, that’s all it was about anyway.

The bartender wasn’t moving fast enough, so he took a hit off the flask he’d snuck in, the one that was laced with a little more than whiskey. He felt the familiar rush that was half-adrenaline, half-chemical.

He’d had ten months clean.

He took another furious swig. He’d only gotten clean for her. If she didn’t want him anymore, then who cared if he had a few pills anyway?

Someone sat on the stool next to him. Jace ignored the short, stocky girl who leaned over him to get the bartender’s attention, but he couldn’t ignore her slow Southern drawl. “Where are you from?” he asked reluctantly, and she grinned when she heard his own accent.

“Georgia. You?”

“South Carolina.”

“What are you doing in this big bad city?”

He huffed a bitter laugh and said, “Followed a girl up here. Stupid me.”

“So did I.” Off his look, she laughed and said, “My sister. We’re on a road trip.”

“Cool.” The drugs were starting to loosen him up. “She around here too?”

The girl waved a hand behind her. “Somewhere.”

He glanced around, then took another hit off the flask. Then he smiled, his best, most charming smile, and said, “You wanna go somewhere too?”

She laughed. “We just met!”

He flushed a little. “I meant just to talk. Someplace quieter. I’m not looking to start anything.”

She looked him up and down before shrugging and sliding off the stool. “I could probably take you anyway,” she said with a smile.

No, Jace thought as he handed her the flash so she could take a healthy drink, you really can’t.

Have a happy and safe St. Patrick's Day!