Wednesday, January 5, 2022

The Storytellers' Conference (Part 1) - 31 Stories (January 2022)

My first multi-parter of the month! I just couldn't finish this whole thing today, but I have a good idea of where things are going, and it was too much fun to think of the ways an author might need to make herself scarce online for a day or two. Enjoy part one of draft zero of The Storytellers' Conference!

The envelope was fancier than anything I'd seen before, and sealed with wax. I wasn't sure how it had found me, since it had no postmark or return address - it hadn't been processed by our postal service, that much seemed clear. It also hadn't appeared at my PO Box, or in my assistant's hands, which is where all the important mail came from. No, this had appeared on the door of my office, inside my house. That was more than a little frightening, and I was tempted to call the police and have someone check it for explosives or anthrax or something equally insidious.

It was ridiculous to think that way, though - I wasn't anyone famous. I had sold a couple of books, and they'd gotten decent reviews and had good sales, but I wasn't the kind of author that people would seek out to hurt. I wrote fluffy romance novels set on spaceships, for heaven's sake - I wasn't trying to change the world with my stories, I was trying to give people something light to read while they were escaping the horrors of the real world. I wore the label of "escapism" like a badge of honor, and the only people who had a problem with it were the small, vocal minority who seemed to think that anyone who dared put words on a page had the obligation to use those words to fight all of the injustices of the world, and anyone who was writing to make themselves and their audience happy, heaven forbid, was just wasting their time. I had been added to the occasional list of "authors not doing it right," but even then, no one really knew who I was. So why would someone break into my house to leave an envelope at my office door?

My curiosity got the better of me, and I carefully peeled up the seal and opened the envelope. The contents were thick, printed on heavy gold paper that matched the envelope, and reminded me of my cousin's extravagant wedding invitation. I couldn't think of who I knew that was willing to shell out that kind of money for a wedding, and when I fully extracted the contents, I saw that it was an invitation, but not to a wedding.

I could feel that there were additional documents inside the invitation, and so I moved over to my desk and sat down to dissect the contents without dropping everything on the floor. The front of the invitation was printed - possibly hand-written? - with words in heavy black ink and extremely curly calligraphy. "You have been called to join the Storytellers at the Infinite Library," it said, the capital letters sporting the kinds of additional flair that wouldn't seem out of place in an medieval manuscript. Beneath the large text, smaller text in a more plain font read, "Please see the instructions inside for directions to the Infinite Library."

Storytellers? Infinite Library? None of this was ringing a bell. I remembered spending time with some other writers in the different writing classes and intensive clinics I had taken over the years, and there had been rumors of different secret society type things that authors had sworn existed, but we were all people who made things up for a living - there was no reason to believe any of it. I was tempted to call someone, or at least jump online and see if there was anything on the various social media sites about this kind of invitation, but I thought it best to read the rest of the invitation first.

Opening the ornate card, there was a smaller envelope that simply had "Infinite Library, ATTN: Librarian" written on the front. I picked it up and saw that it was open and contained another card - it was an RSVP. There were the usual options for either attending or not, and a short list of things to check if there were food allergies, along with a blank for any accommodation needs. It was thoughtful, and it made no mention of a plus-one, which I would expect in a wedding invitation. Actually, on the back of the card, there was another plainly-printed line: "Please note that this invitation is for the person to whom it was addressed and no one else. If you require someone to attend with you for assistance, please note that on your card, and we will be in contact with further instructions."

There was another page, this time printed on finer paper instead of the heavy card of the invitation, with more plain-text printing. This explained, in detail, that the invitation was not to be distributed, photographed, or shared in any way, on pain of having the invitation revoked and any access to the Infinite Library denied. There was a small map that detailed where to go on the day of the event, and how I would be met by an escort who would take me the rest of the way to the Library. I wouldn't need to bring anything but myself and whatever I would need to get through a day, morning through evening, but I was assured that I would be home that night.

"Photography within the Infinite Library is forbidden, and your cell phone will not have service for the duration of the event. Please make sure your loved ones, and anyone who would be concerned if they are not able to contact you, are informed that you will be completely unavailable through your normal channels for the duration of the event. We will provide you with an emergency number for your loved ones to use while you are unavailable. In case of a life-threatening emergency to you or a loved one, a Librarian will find you and escort you to the place where you are needed."

It sounded incredibly ominous across the board, and more than a little impossible. Going completely offline for an entire day was the definition of problematic in my world - I had children, and a mother who was not in the best health. There were other people who could help, of course - my sister was always wanting to watch the kids, and they were old enough that they could manage a lot of small things on their own. My brother lived closer to Mom than I did, and was the main point of contact for her anyway, so I was just wanting to be available if he needed something, but he wasn't the type to ask for help. And if they gave me a number to give people in case of an emergency, well, wasn't that like it was when I was a kid and my parents would go out to dinner? The babysitter had the number of the restaurant they were going to, in case anything happened - it wasn't like they had immediate access to us the entire time they were gone, and we never even thought of calling them.

Would it really be so bad? Why was I so anxious to go to this thing? I didn't even know what the Infinite Library was, much less what the Storyteller Conference was or who would be there. None of it made any sense. So why did I want to go so badly?

My phone rang, scaring the crap out of me - I'd been daydreaming at my desk and hadn't even finished putting my bag down or getting my day started properly. I reached for my phone and saw that it was my assistant, and frowned. She very rarely called in the morning. "Joanie? What's going on?"

"Lisa! Oh, thank God," she said, her anxiety bubbling over in her voice. "Listen, I don't know what's going on, but you should probably think about laying low for a day or two, OK? There's a new article that just came out, and it's not being too kind to the romance world. Especially not the sci-fi romance world. Um." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "They call you out by name."

I felt my skin grow clammy, and I reached for my laptop, nudging the mysterious invitation to the side as I did so. "What kind of article, Joanie?"

"I mean, they don't say as much about you as they do about some of the others - there are some people that they really go off about, like REALLY go off about, and they only mention you in one paragraph, but, um. It's. Um." I could imagine her moving her hands through the air as she tried to think of something to say - Joanie was a very expressive speaker, especially when she was trying to find the right words.

"Joanie, just tell me where to find this article," I said, booting up my computer and opening the browser to a new tab. "I get that it's going to be bad, so I might as well see how bad it is." I waited, my fingers poised on the keys, for her to give me a name, but got nothing but silence on the other end.

"Joanie," I said in a warning tone. "I know I'm not going to like it, but it's better that I know what's being said than to be blindsided completely. Come on. Out with it. You don't want me to Google myself, do you?"

"No! God, no, not now," she blurted out, and I winced. It had to be pretty bad, and there had to be talk online already if she didn't want me searching for it on my own. "Fine. It's in Locus. It's an editorial, naturally, but it's the one that's at the top of the page right now. It's, um, pretty obvious which one it is."

I headed over to the magazine's website and found the article quickly - "Smut on a Spaceship?" - and groaned. "Seriously? I don't even write that kind of romance!"

"You know how it is," Joanie said, her voice taking on its normal motherly tone now that the news was out there. "If there's a kissing scene, or fade to black, some people figure that means it's all about sex, and that's all they'll focus on." She sighed deeply. "I'll let you go so you can read it, but I don't think you should respond to it right now. That's probably the worst thing you could do at the moment, is respond - you need to give it a few days to sit, and let people forget about it." She said her goodbyes and hung up, and I put down my phone and clicked through to the article.

It started off bad, and just kept getting worse. The author was the type of reader who believed that sci-fi was the sacred ground of the white men that were the pantheon of the golden age, and so any woman who dared come near the hallowed field should be run out of town with a scarlet A on her chest. The fact that some women, and some men (who the author had some incredibly mean-spirited things to say about), dared to make some of their sci-fi stories about characters and their relationships to each other rather than all science all the time, well, that was even more unacceptable.

After he'd laid out his thesis statement, he started naming names. Several of them were bigger names in the sci-fi community, some of which didn't even write books that were commonly considered "romance." They were simply guilty of having characters in loving relationships, and letting those relationships form a part of the book. Those of us who did write romance novels explicitly, well, we were simply the worst of the worst.

"As for Linda Gates, her latest atrocities toward the genre include having a relationship with multiple partners, all of whom engage in an orgy on a generation ship that had children on board. What kind of author would have such depraved behavior in her protagonists, if she herself wasn't filled with depravity?"

I dropped my head to my desk, gently bouncing it off the hard wood of the surface once or twice. The characterization of my book was, naturally, completely inaccurate, but my book did have a polyamorous relationship on a generation ship, and that quad did have a night together that faded to black before things got too spicy. It fit both the characters and the book, but I knew it was a risk. And now, here was the consequence.

When I lifted my head from the desk again, my eyes fell on the invitation. Maybe now was the perfect time to be offline for a little bit... (TO BE CONTINUED!)

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Come With Me If You Want to Live - Day 4 of 31 Stories (January 2022)

Whew, this one got long, and I need to figure out a better ending. Again, using a prompt from The Writing Network: your character discovers time travel. Enjoy draft zero of Come With Me If You Want to Live!


The snow crunched under our feet as we walked the normal path between school and home. Our breath formed clouds in the air ahead of us, growing and blowing until they intermingled in the air over our heads. The idea of our breaths intermingling made me feel a little funny, and I hugged my arms around my chest to keep myself warm and to keep from reaching out to hold her hand. I'd only been walking to school with her and home for about a week now, and I didn't want to move too quickly. She was the first girl I'd ever really, REALLY liked, and I didn't want to screw things up. (I was also absolutely terrified and didn't really know what I supposed to do, but that was besides the point.)

"Elisa?" she asked, twisting her gloved hands together as we walked. I focused on her fingers, clad in bright pink and purple woolen stripes, to keep from staring at her face too intensely. I'd already learned that looking at someone's face for too long made them uncomfortable. Anna's voice was soft, almost squeaking, ,like she wanted to talk to me but didn't want me to hear here at the same time.

"What is it, Anna?" I said. I kept my voice soft, too, since I didn't want to raise my voice to be louder than hers. If she wanted to be quiet, I could be quiet, too. I glanced up from her fingers to her face, and stopped walking. "Is everything OK?"

I don't know why I asked that. Her face made it clear that everything was not, in fact, OK. Everything, in fact, was terrible, and she was crying, and it was probably my fault somehow. I didn't know what to do or how to fix it, but I knew I didn't want Anna to cry anymore. I dropped my hands down into my pockets and hastily handed her the napkins that I always kept in my coats. (Mom always said to take extra napkins when we went to get food, because they were always useful. Mom might be a lot of things, but she wasn't wrong about that.) "Here, if you need them."

Anna took the napkins and wiped her eyes, but she kept looking up at me, and her eyes kept overbrimming with more tears. I was panicking. What do I do know? Why didn't I ask my big brother Jake how to handle crying girls? I'd seen him with his girlfriends enough, he'd been around enough of them when they were crying, he would know what to do! I thought for a second, letting out a slow breath, and I noticed that Anna was doing the same thing. Maybe that would help! I started taking the big, long, deep breaths Daddy always had me take when I got "wound up," and letting them out real slow, and watched Anna do the same thing with me. After a few breaths, she smiled a little, and I smiled back at her.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked, my hands still in my pockets. My phone only had three numbers programmed into it, but one of them was Daddy, and he would be able to help. He always did. I ran my finger around the edge of the phone in my pocket while I waited for her to answer.

Anna shook her head, then stopped, staring at the snow in front of her. Then she mustered up her strength, and pulled one of my hands out of my pocket to take it in hers. I was too stunned to stop her. "Come with me, if you want to live," she whispered fiercely, then she turned, still clutching my hand, and ran. Since I'm very attached to my hand, I ran after her.

Running on hard snow isn't easy, and her short legs and my long ones didn't really mesh well to run together, but we managed it. We ran past my house, past her house, and around behind her house to the abandoned pharmacy on the corner. She kept marching forward, but I started pulling back. She stopped and turned to face me. "What is it, Elisa?"

"I'm not allowed to go in there," I said automatically, sounding like the little baby that I secretly was. I was a big girl of twelve, almost thirteen, really, but I couldn't do something my mom and daddy had told me I wasn't allowed to do! "There are people who use that place to shoot up drugs and stuff. It's not safe for kids."

Anna came closer, still holding my hand, and put her other gloved hand on my cheek. I'd never had another girl touch my cheek like that before, and I was surprised she didn't burn her hand from the heat of my blush. "I know you're scared," she whispered, and every word made her sound a little different, a little older, than she had before. "Don't be scared. I won't take you any place where you'll get hurt. Do you trust me?"

I blinked furiously, trying to kickstart my brain back into gear. Did I trust her? I'd known her for all of three weeks, maybe? I'd never seen her before she showed up at school one day as a new kid, whose dad had moved the whole family to our little town in the middle of the year because of some great job that Anna had never been able to explain properly. Though, to be fair, I didn't really know what Mom or Daddy did for work, so that didn't really matter. But she'd been shy, and then she'd sat down next to me at lunch, and we'd started chatting, and she had such a pretty smile, and she didn't know anyone else, and did I trust her?

Well, no, not really. But did I have a choice right now? Probably? I wasn't think about that part right then, though - I was just thinking about how nice her hand felt in mine, and how close her face was to mine, and how much I really, really didn't want to mess things up.

"Of course!" I squeaked, and she grinned. I'd given the right answer after all. She squeezed my hand, then turned and walked to the door of the abandoned pharmacy. I was going to be in so much trouble, but I really, really hoped it would be worth it.

The glass part of the door had been boarded up for years, and there was a big padlock and chain across the handle. I figured that she would walk away once she realized it was locked, until she pulled a key out of her jacket pocket and touched it to the padlock. The lock disappeared, taking the chain with it, and I did a double-take. That wasn't how chains worked. And I had a lock like that for my bike before - those keys didn't just touch the lock to make it go away, you had to fight to get it into the lock and then force it to turn. Before I could say anything, though, Anna had dragged me through the door, closing it carefully behind me. In the silence, I could just make out the sound of a chain slithering against the door.

I was a little distracted for that, though - in the center of the room, where the aisles of the pharmacy used to be, was a huge metal cage, lit up from inside with a bunch of orange lamps. The cage was open on one side, and it was angular, not round like a bird cage. It was big enough to take up most of the space in the pharmacy, and I could make out a set of bunk beds and a dresser inside. I also saw an adult woman moving around inside, standing at a panel with a lot of switches and dials on it, who didn't even look up when Anna cleared her throat.

"About time you made it back," she said, flipping another switch and noting something down on a clipboard. "Come on, I think there's some stew on the burner out back. Your father says he's just about fixed the chronotriggers, so we should be good to leave tomorrow-" she cut off when she finally looked up and saw me standing there, taking it all in.

"Anna Marie," she whispered, coming out of the cage and grabbing Anna by the arm, dragging her away from me. "What do you think you are doing?"

Anna stared stubbornly at the woman - it had to be her mother, they had the same cheekbones and scowls - and folded her arms across her chest. "We're taking her with us, or I'm not going."

Her mother started to speak, but a man's voice cut through the air. "Taking who with us? What are you trying to do, Anna-Banana?" I froze, because I knew that voice. There was no way I should have known that voice, but I knew it. Anna looked full of sorrow, while her mother still had fury in her eyes.

I forgot about both of them completely when Daddy came around the corner of the cage, carrying a pot of something hot and steaming. He froze, the same as I did, and we stared at each other for what felt like forever. I fully expected the stew to have frozen over solid by the time we moved again, but it was still steaming hot when he carefully put it down on a table in the cage. "Elisa?" His voice was filled with wonder and...sorrow? Why did he sound so sad?

"Daddy, what are you doing here?" I asked, trying to sound like the grown-up I desperately wanted to be, and failing. I knew I sounded like a little kid, and one that was going to burst into long, loud, ugly tears at any second. I knew Daddy and Mom weren't happy together, and that Mom had talked to her best friend about wanting to leave, but...did he have a whole other family? Why did Anna just now show up? Why did she have to show up now, and ruin everything?

"Elisa..." He took a step toward me, but the woman stood up and kept him from getting any closer, whispering something furiously in his ear that I couldn't hear. I turned from them to Anna, and she had her head bowed, refusing to meet my eyes. Daddy was looking at the ground the same way Anna was, nodding every now and then at whatever the woman was telling him, and everyone was ignoring me and not saying anything about why my father was in the abandoned pharmacy with a whole new family and a big glowing cage and a pot of stew!

I couldn't take it anymore. "HEY!" I shouted, stamping my feet for emphasis. Everyone looked up, and the woman stopped whispering. "Somebody tell me why my Daddy, who was just at home when I left for school this morning, is here with you two, and why he looks like he hasn't seen me in years, and who you are, and what the...what the HELL is that cage thing?" I gasped, having never used the H word before, but it was the only thing I could think of to get my point across.

The woman looked from me back to Daddy and started to whisper again, but he threw his hands in the air. "Enough! Evelyn, she's seen too much, she has to know what's going on." He pushed past her, leaving her to watch him through narrowed eyes with her arms crossed. Anna was watching a little more cautiously, and once Daddy had walked past her, she moved to her mother and the two of them started whispering.

None of that mattered, though. Daddy squatted in front of me, bringing himself down closer to my level, and chuckled when he realized that now I was a little taller than he was. I smiled, too - I couldn't help myself. He sighed, then ran his hand over his face. "Ah, Sprout," he said with another sigh. "I think you need to sit down with us for dinner."

I frowned. "Mom's not going to like that," I protested. "She always gets mad if I change my plans without telling her first."

He winced, then stood up straight and put his hand on my shoulder. "Let's get you in the vehicle, and I'll tell you all about it." He put out his other hand to the woman, who walked with Anna in front of her, and all of us walked into the cage. The door closed behind us, and the walls glowed bright orange as we all sat at the table where Daddy had set down the stew. He smiled to himself. "I wondered why we had an extra place setting this morning," he commented, and the woman sighed.

"I guess it was supposed to happen after all," she said, nodding to Anna. Anna flushed a little, then pulled her gloves off and shoved them in her jacket pockets before setting the table. "You'd better fill your other daughter in, Stan."

I winced to hear myself referred to as his "other" daughter, because it confirmed what I first thought about Anna, but I was more curious about what was going on than anything. I looked at Daddy expectantly, and he sighed again. "Elisa...Elisa, we're in a time machine right now. I'm not from around here originally - I'm from about 2525, but I travelled back to 2006 on a mission and got stuck. I met your mother, and we had you, and then Kathryn came to rescue me. Will come to rescue me. The timing is a little hazy. Either way, I came home." He started dishing up the stew to the plates that Kathryn handed him, acting as if he hadn't just spouted absolute nonsense at me.

"But...if she rescued you...why are you here now?" I asked, trying to figure out what the best question to ask in this field of ridiculousness was. Kathryn made an impressed face as she passed me a plate of stew. "She's pretty clever, Stan. Must get that from you."

He shot her a wuthering stare, which I appreciated. I might love Daddy more, but I still loved my mom. "We came back here because I'd left a few things behind when I landed here the first time, so we had to clean up. The abandoned pharmacy had been as good a place as any to leave things, but it's not good to leave futuristic tech out where just anybody can find it. Because it was going to take us some time to fix it, Kathryn thought it would be a good idea for Anna to go to school for a little bit, so it wouldn't be suspicious to have a girl her age running around and not in class. I guess that's how she met you?" He asked the last question to Anna directly, and she nodded.

"I saw her in the lunch room, and I remembered her from the picture you showed me in your wallet. We started talking, and I knew...I knew..." She looked down at her plate again, and her eyes started to well up. She sniffled. "I didn't want to let her die with the rest of them," she finished in a small voice.

"Die? With the rest of who?" I asked, looking around the table. Anna wouldn't look up, and Kathryn looked away. Only Daddy met my eyes, and they were full of sorrow again.

"I'm so sorry, Sprout," he said softly. "Your mom and your brother, they had a car accident on the way to dinner tonight. They didn't make it. And if you'd been at home when you should have been, you'd have been in the car, and you would have died, too."

Monday, January 3, 2022

No Summer - Day 3 of 31 Stories (January 2022)

While I started with the idea from The Writing Network's prompt for today ("Write a story about a year without a summer,") I ended up taking it in a different direction - is there ever really a summer if summer never ends? Behold, draft zero of No Summer.


 Everything was dry as dust, and the heat was becoming unbearable. That's what people were saying on television, at least, but we had been through "unbearable" heat for the better part of a year now, and most of us had managed to bear it. We didn't like it, exactly, and there had been a few of us who hadn't managed to bear it, but most of us managed to make it from one day to the next.

Scientists still weren't sure what happened, exactly. The seasons just...stopped. The spring had been hotter than most of the ones we'd had before, but nothing out of the ordinary. The summer had been dry, the sun blasting down and making the ground rock-hard and keeping anything from growing. We knew that the fall would kill off anything that the summer hadn't already destroyed, but at least the temperatures would cool off.

Except...the temperatures never cooled off. The end of the year, and winter should have arrived, but it never did. No snow, no cold air to blow in and take the edge off the unrelenting heat. The trees remained bare, even when spring should have arrived and things should have started budding and blooming. Everything that should have been growing simply didn't, unless it was in a greenhouse of some sort. The ground remained baked dry and dusty, with no hint of shade or rain to allow things to grow again.

By the time I graduated from high school, I didn't remember much of a world without an endless wave of heat. The names of the seasons didn't mean much to me, even though I had some vague memories of snow and jumping in piles of fallen leaves. My youngest brother, only three years old, didn't understand when people referred to "spring" or "summer," because the heat was all he'd ever known.

Every now and again, the scientists would come up with a new plan, a new study that would lead them to believe that the seasons would come back. They thought they could seed the clouds, bring on the rain, and kick-start a water cycle again. Unfortunately, the clouds were too thin and far away, and so the missiles with the chemicals used to seed the clouds ended up falling back to the earth with no impact on the sky at all. We all saw them go up, hope in our throats, and felt the pain of that hope burn down when the missiles came crashing back down.

It wasn't like this everywhere in the world, I'd heard. There were parts of other countries, other continents, that still had a season or two. They weren't the same four seasons that the old books talked about - usually, there was a growing season, and a harvesting season, with perhaps a time of cold and ice in between. Still, those places seemed so far away, especially when some of us had never had the means to do any kind of real traveling, and we knew it was unlikely that we'd ever experience these seasons for ourselves. For some of us, the greenhouses and hydroponic farms were the only things that would give us the chance to earn a livelihood, and they were what kept the people of our homes fed. There was nothing for it but to keep working and hoping that the next year might be a little better, knowing full well that it likely wouldn't be.

Still, in my heart of hearts, I wanted to go away from home. It felt awful to even think it, but I wanted to learn about more than just the greenhouses and farms. I knew that the ways we were doing things weren't the best ways out there - I'd seen things online about different, more efficient methods that people in other areas that were similarly set up like us were using, and they were able to have higher yields with less water usage. I showed them to my parents, but they weren't the ones who had the say-so about the 'houses and farms - we all just worked in them, but we didn't own them or have any kind of management in them. The people who did have the power wouldn't listen to some kid who was coming to them with ideas they'd seen online. I knew because those were the exact words they used when I tried to show them what other states were doing, and how they were able to increase their yield. I wasn't an authority in any way, and so they had no obligation to listen to me. I didn't even know what it took to run a 'house or a farm, so why would I be able to tell them anything about how to run theirs better?

It set a fire in me that I had to keep banked down, for the sake of my own sanity. I wasn't an authority, it was true, but I had the chance to go out and learn enough to make myself an authority - make myself someone they would have to listen to. There were schools that were offering degree programs specifically in hydroponic farming and greenhouse growth, finding the best ways to increase yields with less water, because it was a big issue. If I'd been able to go to one of those schools, get one of those degrees, spend some time in the other states that had spent more money and time in figuring out a better way to deal with a lack of seasons instead of just hodge-podging it all together the way we had, I would stand a chance of getting someone to listen to me when I came back home. I could bring that information back, and make things better for everyone at home.

It was a pipe dream, though, because we'd never be able to afford to send me to school. Not only was travel and school expensive, my family couldn't do without my income from working in the 'house. Besides, just because I wanted to do it didn't mean that I was the right person to do it. There were plenty of people who were smarter than I was, who would do much better if they were sent off to school to make things better. Hell, my best friend's sister was saving up money to go be an actress on the coast, because she hated working in the 'house and the farm with the rest of us, and she'd had a plan in place to do that since she was twelve. She wasn't planning to come back until she'd made as much money as she could, and then she was going to move all of her family away from here and buy them a big house out on the coast, where they could see her in the movies and spend their days lounging around and dancing in the rain. It wasn't my kind of dream, but I could admire the intensity of it for her.

I came home from my shift at the 'house after graduation - the ceremony had been a small affair, since most of our schooling was done remotely and online to avoid having to plumb and cool another big building in the community. We had the ceremony early in the morning, before the heat really turned up, and so we could go on to work our full shifts for the day; there was no point in wasting a day just because we finished school. I'd heard from my grandparents once that they wished we'd been able to have a big party for graduation, but that always seemed kind of foolish to me - why celebrate something where you've just finished the bare minimum, and it's not actually going to change anything in your day to day life? Well, that's not entirely true - now that I didn't have school to worry about, the law said that I could work a normal 50 hour week, instead of restricting it to 35 hours to provide sufficient time for classroom instruction. I was looking forward to that, at least.

I came into my bedroom and set my jacket on the back of my chair, with my mask tossed into the laundry basket next to the door. The jacket was more for protection against the dust that permeated everything, and the masks had to be washed every three days to keep the dust from clogging up the cloth and rendering them useless. I started to take off my boots, before I noticed that there was something on my bed, on top of my pillow. I could just make out the edges of it with the light from the moon outside, but it wasn't enough to see exactly what it was. I turned on my bedside lamp, squinting to try to keep from blinding myself, and gave myself a moment to adjust before picking up the object.

It was a large envelope with my name and address on it, with a return address from the state college at the capitol. I frowned, wondering what they wanted, because I'd never written to a college before. Still, my heart started pounding a little louder as I pulled the envelope open and slid out a large stack of paper. On top of the stack was a small pile of shiny cardboard cut-outs - confetti? Why was a college sending me confetti?

I shook the things back into the envelope as best as I could and then looked at the top page of the stack. My heart, which had been pounding so loudly only seconds before, felt like it stopped. I had been accepted to the college, and my tuition was being paid for by a scholarship specifically for people from my town. Apparently, someone had heard what I had done by talking to the owners of the 'houses and farms, and they decided- they wanted- they-

There was a small, handwritten note at the bottom of the front page. "Become an expert. Come back and change their minds. I believe you can do it." No name, no initials, no nothing. Just a mission statement, and a belief in me that I didn't have in myself.

It was everything I needed to change the world.

Sunday, January 2, 2022

Sinking Island - Day 2 of 31 Stories (January 2022)

 I decided to use one of the prompts from The Writing Network today - they're the people who are hosting the 31 Stories challenge, and they are putting up two prompts per day, to be used (or not) as one sees fit. Today, I used the prompt: Neighbors meet with a visiting geologist that provides facts proving their island is sinking. So please enjoy draft zero of Sinking Island.

HOA meetings were the bane of my existence, as they were for any right-thinking person, but they were part of the cost of living on one of the most remote, resourceful, and technologically-enhanced islands in the world. You paid your 7000 credits per annum, you followed the rules put in place that are partially for protection but mostly to make sure everything and everybody looks the same, and you attend the mandatory meetings every lunar cycle. Considering we were one of the last remaining outposts in this hemisphere, it wasn't that much of a price to pay, but good grief, it was boring.

I had the window for the video meeting open on my main screen, with a small window in the corner showing me the most recent episode of the latest iteration of Baking Show. (I refused to use the term "Great British Baking Show," even though all the ads still referred to it as such, because Great Britain has sunk beneath the waves some eighty years before I was born. Nostalgia's one thing, but that was just taking branding a bit too far.) The contestants had just revealed the technical challenge, which would be to make a form of steamed bun and hoisin sauce - a tricky feat, considering they were competing from a bubble in which open flame and liquid water were prohibited. I had heard that the challenges hadn't been quite so grueling in the older seasons, but I didn't see how they could compare.

I had the video on mute with captions, of course, because I had to keep the volume of the meeting turned up in case anyone asked a question and required a response. I had learned the hard way early on in my residence in Riozona that not responding when someone asked a question was equivalent to telling the entire HOA that you hadn't, in fact, been paying the slightest bit of attention to the mandatory meeting, and thus you owed them an additional 3000 credits. The lesson I took away was that I needed to be better about not getting caught; actually paying complete attention to everything being said during these day-long meetings was simply out of the question.

I had enough of an ear out to the meeting that I was able to tell when the tone of the president's voice changed, and the other residents also shifted in their level of participation. I paused my video and put the meeting in full-screen so I could see if anything was being shared.

President Jacobs had their hands up in a conciliatory fashion, as though they were able to push the people on the screen away. "Residents, I assure you, we don't know anything for certain," they were saying, their voice just panicked enough on the edges to take away any sense of tranquility they might have been going for. "This is why we want to bring in Dr. Segovia, who is an expert in environmental matters and will be able to answer all of your questions. It will mean another meeting next week, but that will be optional, I assure you."

"An optional meeting? You want to make the meeting in which we meet with an environmental specialist who will tell us if Riozona is going to sink like all the other land masses optional?" My next-door neighbor Bruce was getting a little hot under the collar, and I could hear his voice through both the computer speakers and through the open window in my office. He rarely spoke above a library voice, so to hear him shout was enough to shock me out of any kind of complacency I might still have been in.

I wasn't the only one who had this reaction. I saw several other faces on the screen with their mouths moving, but none of their voices were audible - even Bruce's voice had been silenced. It appeared that President Jacobs, or more likely one of their assistants, had muted everyone to make sure no one else could interrupt the call. It was a big mistake, in my mind, because all that would do was tick people off even more, but I'm not the one in charge. Thank God.

"I understand your concern, and in the interest of not taking up too much of your time, I move that we close this meeting now and will continue discussing this particular topic at next week's optional meeting. All other business of the HOA will be moved to next month's mandatory meeting. Do I have a second? All in favor? Wonderful, it's unanimous, see you next week." President Jacobs ended the call without allowing a single one of us to respond to any of their calls for second or a vote. I sat back in my chair, blinking foolishly. The President had a tattoo of a QR code to the most current version of Robert's Rules of Order on their wrist - they knew what they just did was completely out of line. Things had to be BAD.

One week later, I was back in the video meeting with the HOA, along with everyone else in Riozona. Evidently, just because the meeting was considered optional, it didn't mean that any of the residents were willing to miss the opportunity to hear from a specialist who might be able to tell us if our island was the next to disappear. President Jacobs looked more disgruntled with every new face joining the meeting, but there was nothing they could do - too many people were on the call to allow them to end it and pretend it was an error.

In another screen that had been pinned in the window, a middle-aged woman sat in what looked to be a lab environment, wearing a lab coat. She was fiddling with her glasses nervously, her hands moving quickly between her glasses, her hair, and something on the table in front of her - notes, perhaps, or something on her computer. She quickly looked at and away from the camera multiple times, a nervous smile on her face, and I felt myself giving in to compassion for her. She did not want to be here, and she did not want to have to talk to us. I felt badly for her, until I realized that if she didn't want to talk to us, it could only mean that the things she was going to talk about were not going to be things we liked.

About one minute after the meeting was scheduled to start, President Jacobs cleared their throat and got everyone's attention. "I'm sure you're all very eager to hear from our special guest, so I will simply introduce her to get things started. Dr. Segovia is a leading environmental scientist out of the former United States. She currently works out of a lab in Central Kansas, where she has been studying the ongoing effects of climate change to the coastal regions of Western Europe and eastern North America. She came to me with information that I thought...well, why don't you start, Dr. Segovia?"

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before she began speaking. Her voice was much lower in tone than I had imagined, and there was a great deal of sorrow in it. "Thank you, President Jacobs, and good afternoon, residents of Riozona. I regret to inform you that the island you are currently inhabiting will not remain large enough to sustain life in its current structure. The waters are rising, and the land itself is sinking. The combination of effects is speeding up the process of reclamation of land, and means that before the end of the next solar cycle, your island will be completely uninhabitable."

Silence followed her pronouncement, and she fiddled with something on her desk as she looked at the camera, then at her screen, off to the side, or anywhere else. No one on the meeting was saying anything, not even President Jacobs - judging by their stunned expression, I didn't think they had been fully briefed before the meeting. We were all just...stunned. How do you even respond to that?

Finally, Dr. Segovia broke the silence. "Um, if there aren't any questions...?" She looked at the camera again, then off-screen, and I realized that she was trying to figure out if she could just leave. She'd done her job, after all. When no one spoke up, she added, "President Jacobs has my contact information if you think of anything. Again, I'm very sorry." And with that, she hung up.

A few seconds later, President Jacobs ended the call. They never said anything, either - what was there to say, exactly? "Sorry you scrimped and saved all of your credits so you could move to an island paradise that's going to be gone in a year? No refunds?" There were lots of questions, but none that Dr. Segovia would be able to answer. Where would we go? What would happen to our homes, our things, our people? Was there room for us somewhere else on the planet? What if we couldn't leave?

Those were tomorrow's questions; no answers were coming right now. Tonight, we just needed to figure out how we were going to say goodbye.

Saturday, January 1, 2022

The Three Muskeruffies - 31 Stories in 31 Days (January 2022)

It's 2022! I can tell some of my neighbors are excited still, as they are still letting off (entirely illegal) fireworks in the area. 

As for me, I'm trying to start the year gently, without making any sudden moves or anything that might make the year think I'm threatening it for dominance. I'm taking a little bit of time to write, which means you all get to see it - isn't that exciting? I'm doing the 31 stories in 31 days challenge again, giving myself an incentive to write every day and also a chance to build up a bit of momentum. This time, they aren't all necessarily going to be fiction - I may slip some memoir-type stuff in here, as I think of it. Today, for example, is about a small stuffed dog and my first experience with non-binary characters, which I didn't even think of in those terms until just today. 

As a reminder, this is always draft zero, no editing, take it as it comes. Just want to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into. And now, let me introduce you to The Three Muskeruffies.


I was heartbroken when I realized that Samantha, my little stuffed dog, had gotten lost. She was the twin of my brother's dog Sammy, and they were the best of friends - how could we ever explain to him that his sister had gone missing? How would he ever get over the loss, the grief, of losing his twin sister and best friend? They did everything together, including running their detective agency out of the big cardboard Mansion where they (and all of the other animals in my house) lived. Could the agency of Samantha and Sammy survive if one of them was no longer around?

I was distraught, and naturally, I made that everyone's problem. In particular, my mother and father had to hear about how awful Sammy's life had to be, if Samantha wasn't around. And no, I didn't know where I'd left her! I didn't remember the last place I'd seen her! If I'd remembered that, then I would know where she was and she wouldn't be lost! It was probably a solid week before my mother finally came up with a solution. She came home after work and presented me with a new little dog. It was identical to Samantha and Sammy, and yet...not. The face was sewn slightly differently, so it was clear to everyone (meaning my brother and me) that this was not the same dog at all. Even my mother, who had a lot of patience for the imaginations of her children even if that imagination led to more arguments that she was not ever planning to have than she could ever count, understood that this wasn't a replacement dog.

"This is Robin," Mom said as she handed the little dog to me. "Samantha and Sammy had a cousin who needs a place to stay, and I thought Sammy might be lonely. Here you go!" And away she went, figuring she'd done enough to continue with the wild machinations of her children to keep them busy for another hour or three.

Robin was a good name for the dog, in part because my brother and I couldn't decide on a lot of things. For one thing, we couldn't decide who Robin belonged to, and since my dog was a girl and his dog was a boy, who knew if Robin was a boy or a girl? Not us, that's for sure, and Robin wasn't talking. We basically used whatever pronouns came to mind when they came up, but the fact that Robin was a cousin (another conveniently non-gendered word) meant that we didn't have to worry about it too much, and frankly, we didn't give it much thought.

Less than a week after Robin joined the family, my brother and I had Sammy and Robin investigating the disappearance of the hairbrush (a recurring mystery in our house), and upon spelunking under the couch, Robin encountered...Samantha! She'd been trapped under there for ages, and had quite the story to tell of fighting off pirates and hiding under the couch to keep herself safe, subsisting on nothing but dust bunnies and the occasional cookie crumb for survival. She had to go to the hospital in the Mansion for a little bit to get checked out; the resident doctor, Racky Sr. (a giant raccoon that would have taken up the majority of the real estate in the Mansion if he lived in it directly, which is why he built an annex for himself and his son), before she was allowed to rejoin the family business.

It wasn't enough for the family to have just Samantha and Sammy's names on the business anymore, though. Robin wasn't going anywhere. Together, they decided that they were stronger as three, and as the good fans of classic action movies and novels that we were, my brother and I came up with the best name possible for the new business - The Three Muskeruffies. (They even had a theme song. Sammy, sadly, didn't have the greatest of voices, but he tried, bless his little cotton heart.)

The Three Muskeruffies only had about another year to adventure together before my brother "outgrew" them, but I'll never forget the bond that they had, and how they helped us develop a bond stronger than I thought possible. We don't talk that much anymore, my brother and I, but there's still a little part of me that remembers the Muskeruffies and the other denizens of the Mansion, and how they helped a pair of kids who moved around a ton, and had nobody other than each other to rely on every time they became the new kids in school. Our parents helped, where they could, but they were in the world of adults; we weren't quite ready for that yet, and it was nice to have someone else in the world of kids to be with. I just wish we hadn't been in such a screaming hurry to grow up, but that always seems to be the way. 

Here's to the Three Muskeruffies, may they ever adventure together!

Monday, September 20, 2021

Working Through Writing Excuses Episodes 8.5 and 8.6

I'm putting episodes 8.5 and 8.6 together, in part because I am having a devil of a time writing something for the prompt for episode 8.5. That episode talks about breaking the rules of writing, and it made me realize that I never really learned the "rules" for writing. I've never taken a class on writing fiction; all of the instruction I've ever received with regards to writing has been related to writing academic papers, non-fiction persuasion or position papers, essentially. I've had some experience in writing documents for work, things like standard operating procedures (SOPs) and minutes from various meetings, but none of that explains how best to handle point of view or whether you should move from one character's thoughts to another. I've obviously read a lot of fiction in my life, and so I have an idea of what I think works and what doesn't, but I also, embarrassingly, have to say that I don't pay super close attention to what - or rather, how - things are done. I've been known to read a book and not realize until about a third of the way through that it's written in the first person present tense, because I got caught up in the story.

That doesn't happen quite so often anymore, because I have been spending more time trying to figure out how to write fiction for myself, but even when I do focus on what other writers do, it's much more likely to be on what kind of word choices they use. I want to know how they keep me from falling out of the story by describing just enough to keep me engaged without giving me too many details to get hung up on. One of my favorite anthologies is still "Help Fund My Robot Army!" edited by John Joseph Adams, specifically because the way each story is told is so limited, and yet they manage to get across so much information and character and world-building. That's what I notice, and that's what I try to figure out for myself when I write, but I have no idea if that means that I'm following a proper three-act structure or if my third-person perspective is omniscient or limited. It's really hard to write something deliberately breaking the rules when you have no idea what the rules are supposed to be.

Writing prompt: Here is a rule for rule-breaking: The best format for experimenting with rule-breaking is the short. So! Pick your three favorite rules and break all three in a short story. I'm going to have to come back to this prompt at some point, after I've done a little more reading and maybe taking a class or two to help me figure out what rules I want to break. (If anyone has any suggestions for classes they recommend on basic "here's how you write fiction good," drop me a line! I clearly have no idea what I'm doing.)

Episode 8.6 is about retellings and adaptations, and that is much more my jam. I really liked hearing how the team discusses retellings and adaptations, and why we would want to read or watch the same story being told in different ways. Over the last year and a half, I've definitely found some comfort in the familiar, which I think is probably true of all of us, and while I do appreciate watching or reading the same things time and time again, it's nice to find something new or strange in the midst of the familiar. A retelling gives an audience the opportunity to find that strangeness and novelty, just by shifting the focus of the story that they know. There were some great examples of retellings mentioned, where stories are being told from different perspectives (like Gregory Maguire's Wicked) or in different genres or time periods (the movie Clueless). I also really liked the way they distinguish between fan fiction and retellings - fan fiction takes characters that are familiar and builds a different story structure around them; retellings take a story or plot that is familiar and gives the opportunity to build new characters on them. Just that distinction makes me want to give fan fiction a try, maybe.

Writing prompt: Do a retelling of a Bible story in a science fiction space setting.

Joseph watched through the window as the space ship left the station, almost expecting to see his traitorous brothers counting their money on the port like some kind of movie villains. He knew that they were long gone, and had been gone well before the ship had even finished loading the cargo, but it still made him wonder if he could see them and expect to watch them, watching him being sent away forever. With a sigh, he turned away from the porthole and surveyed the room that would be his prison for the next... well, until the captain decided otherwise.

Joseph didn't know exactly what it was that his brothers hated about him so much, just that they hated him. He was constantly being told that he wasn't their real brother, and he knew that they didn't share the same blood - anyone who looked at them could tell that they weren't completely related. It wasn't his fault that their father had had a dalliance with a member of a different humanoid race, and she had left Joseph at their doorstep before he was old enough to put words together in any language. She wasn't motherly material, he was told, particularly not toward one who wasn't completely of her race, and he should be grateful that she had left him with his human father, rather than leaving him exposed to the elements on some planet somewhere. He supposed he was grateful, to a certain extent, but it was a little difficult to feel anything but anger toward someone who didn't want him around at all.

The earliest memory he had was of being stared at by a group of boys, all human, all older than he was, all giving him the same look of disdain and irritation mixed with fear that he would come to expect from humans in general. These, he was told, were his brothers, and he would learn to love them, as they would learn to love him. They would take care of him, when his father couldn't be around, and they would make sure that nothing bad happened to him. He learned quickly that this wasn't entirely true, particularly when it came to Simeon. He was one of the oldest of the brothers, and the one who took the most offense at Joseph's existence in the house (and, he told Joseph repeatedly, his existence in the universe at all - Joseph was offensive to his very soul, and there was no reason in the heavens why he should be permitted to live). So when Joseph was told that Simeon was taking him to the trade ports, along with two of their other brothers, he knew something was up. He just didn't expect it to be quite so permanent.

Joseph pulled the collar of his coat closer to him, thankful once again for the colorful, warm garment that his father had made for him. Even though the coat had driven his brothers mad with jealousy, they hadn't taken it from him when they sold him to the captain of the mining ship. The coat would have done them absolutely no good, after all - the fabric was made for his race, and not humans. Simeon had still made a grab for it, and managed to snag a part of the hem in his hand before Joseph was dragged away. Joseph imagined that it would help Simeon sell the story of Joseph's death to their father - he'd heard the brothers discussing exactly how they were going to explain his disappearance before he'd been pulled onto the ship. They hated that his hearing was so very good, but he'd tried not to use it to his advantage over them too often. Still, it had hurt to hear how little any of them cared, and how none of them had fought to keep him with them.

Before long, the station was out of sight, and Joseph was off to begin his new life. He had no idea what that would bring, but he was certain he would never see his brothers again.

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Working Through Writing Excuses Episode 8.4

Side characters are the subject of Episode 8.4, which is definitely something I could use help with. I usually have a decent idea of my main characters, but everybody else tends to just show up on their own, and I don't know too much about them until they start taking over the narrative. It's something that I could definitely afford to work on a bit more, so that I can get a better handle on who is in the stories I write, at least to begin with. What happens after they show up, well, that tends to be less under my control than would probably be considered healthy.

Writing prompt: The Hero of the Most Boring Story Ever—your job is to make it interesting. (I'm going to cheat a little bit with regards to the "most boring story ever" aspect - I have a meditation app, Calm.com, that has sleep stories which are deliberately written to be the kind of thing that will help a person fall asleep. I'll riff on one of those.) I'm also just going to remind you all that this is draft zero, because this one is...not my favorite.

She was always inside by the time the sun started to set, watching through the window as the city began to slow down. The city she lived in was one that rolled up the streets after dark, so it wasn't unusual to have things slow down and get quiet after the evening dinner rush and the commute back home. Still, she sat in the window, waiting for the evening to roll in completely before she finally allowed herself to relax.

She kept a diary that listed all of the tasks that needed to be dealt with for the day, all of the different times she would need to interact with the world and things she would need to do in order to keep the precarious balance between her discomfort with the world around her and the things she was obligated to do in order to maintain the lifestyle she had cultivated so far. Her journal held doodles and drawings, proof that she had been outside of her apartment or at least, had seen things that hadn't been within the walls of her living space. It was as much a record of what she'd done as it was a list of things she needed to do.

Her list for the next day contained phone calls and a lunch with people she knew she would have to interact with, but she had no interest in doing any of it. She focused instead on the tasks like cleaning the kitchen, ordering her groceries, watering the various plants that breathed life into the small space. The lunch, in particular, made her anxious, but she knew it was the best way to keep her family and co-workers from worrying about her too much. If she made an appearance once or twice a month, then they wouldn't have need to come by her apartment unannounced again. An afternoon of discomfort was more than worth another month of peace.

Mentally aware of what she would need to approach the next day, she turned the page in her journal and began jotting down her thoughts for the day that had just passed. She'd made it through two in-person meetings and a phone call with a client, as well as an impromptu discussion with a co-worker who was determined to bring her "out of her shell." He didn't seem to understand that, like the turtle, if she came out of her shell completely, she would die. He was certain she was just shy, and just needed to allow herself to step outside her comfort zone and try to make friends with other people. She made sure to note his name and what department he worked in, so she could prepare herself for the next time she would need to be in his area and hopefully find someone else to communicate with there.

With a sigh of relief, she closed the journal and began the rituals of getting ready for bed. Choosing the appropriate soundtrack, lighting a scented candle, putting on the kettle for a cup of soothing tea - all the things that would help her close out the day and put a period at the end of the waking hours. It was her favorite portion of to day, and she tried to remind herself that the point was to calm her nerves and relax into sleep. Still, finishing the day and preparing for sleep was the most exciting part of her day, and she couldn't help but thrill with the joy of it. It wasn't until she went to bed that her life truly began, after all. Everything else was just window dressing, essentials she was forced into by the needs of her body for shelter and food. Her soul, her spirit? That needed only the night.