I’ve been flattered.

Nezha left the following comment for me: “Hey, i love your writing. I keep checking the site for new posts but so far nothing. Post something soon for us fans, would you?”

I think that might be one of the most ego-boosting comments I have ever gotten.

For those who feel the same, good news...

I’ve signed up for Blog365.



That means I must post SOMETHING in at least one of my blogs every day.

And since I plan on one of my “resolutions” for 2008 to be to write no less than 100 words every day...that means more bad fiction and worse poetry for you guys to sink your cyber teeth into!

I plan on posting at least once a week, possibly more often if I churn out good stuff.

As Angst Ages

Give me an EMO boy
in skinny black jeans,
wearing mascara.
We’ll sit at home
watching porn together.
When they climax
we’ll scream out loud.
It is our agony
to never feel love like that.

I’ll be his Gothic Lolita
in fish net hose
wearing glittery pink skulls.
He will remind me
not to be so peppy
out in public.
I’ll laugh out loud
when I’m alone
to remember how it sounds.

I’ll never tell him
“Cheer up EMO kid,”
He’ll never tell me
“You’d be beautiful
if you smiled.”
Well grow old together
to be a well adjusted
He an investment banker
I a stay at home mom.

We’ll have an EMO daughter
in skinny black jeans
and multiple piercings.
We’ll have a Gothic son
who writes poetry about pain.
We’ll tell them
“Cheer up EMO kid.
“You’d be so handsome
if you’d smile.”

She isn't the type of girl who shows a lot of skin....

Written from the prompt in the subject line. Alos influenced by the music at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dv-mE7Q6VY which was playing as I wrote it.

------

She isn't the type of girl who shows a lot of skin but the music got under her skin. When it pulsed she pulsed. When it beat, she beat. It rocked her body, it rocked her soul, it set her brain on fire and her skin followed.

She danced, closed her eyes and went where the music took her. It often took her places she would have never desired to go otherwise.

And it often took her out of her shirt.

It didn’t matter if she was at a rave or in a club surrounded by strobe lights and glow in the dark jewelry or if she was at home alone, dancing in her kitchen while supper cooked in the over.

Something about the music demanded that her skin be bare while it played. Perhaps better to find her pores and leach itself into her. Perhaps to let its vibration, its throb, caress her.

Bare skin made seduction easier.

She was never embarrassed afterwards. Never apologetic. She never made excuses, never said, “The music made me do it.” When the pulse and the beat let her free again she merely found her top and covered herself again.

She isn’t the type of girl who shows a lot of skin, but sometimes it just can’t be helped.

Poem (from prompt)

The poundy, angry woman is alive inside
I want to *remove* her so that I might rest.
She struggles against the *inequality*
being less than the rest of the world
And the hatred, the anger the stupidity
its all around and its *poisoning* the tiny peace she has
So inside she rants and she roils,
the blood in her veins boils
And in loud yet silent words she cries out
*describing* all the agony we together have endured.
I cry, hot salty tear for her,
she is *obsolete* , this pounding angry woman
in me.

---

The prompt was to use all of the highlighted words in one piece.

Flesh Pillows

“He’s currently caressing her flesh pillows.”

This announcement caused Nivea to lok over the top of the manuscript she was reading.

Amanda was holding the stapled sheaf of paper an arms length away from her, her face wearing a combination of mirth and misery.

“He’s doing what now?” Nivea asked.

“I said he’s caught the attention of the vixen and he’s giving her a good old fashioned second base groping.”

“Yes, but, ‘flesh pillows’?”

“Thats what he’s calling her breasts.”

Nivea rolled her eyes.

“Manda,” she said, “What exactly are you reading?”

“Some sort of anthropomorphic furrie fetish erotica thing. I think.”

“You think?”

“I’m sort of stuck on the whole idea of flesh pillows right now.”

“Who woudln’t be?”

“It makes me wonder why I keep reading this trash.”

“Because you put out a trashy ‘zine. One that people buy because they know it will full to overflowing with anthropomorphic furrie fetish erotica.”

“Flesh pillows, Nivea. Flesh Pillows.”

“Manda, if I can turn this stuff,” she waved her own manuscript in the air,” into something fit to sell in a badly photocopied ‘sines then I’m sure you, with all your fancy college education, can come up with a clever way to edit out the flesh pillows and still have the author happy to be in print.”

“Yeah. Okay. You’re probably right. But I swear to god, if I see the words ‘prodigious unit’ in here anywhere then this one’s going in the trash.”

“We’ve come so far in so short a time, eventually we’re bound to hit gold. Someone will send somethingi n so inspired it will make Moon Time a real glossy. No more copy shop special for you!”

“Nivea, I hate to be the spoilsport here, but if we’ve been doing Moon Time for this long without a diamond in our rough, its not going to happen.”

“Whatever, you pessimist. Just go back to your flesh pillows, and don’t let that prodigious unit catch you by surprise when it pops up.”

100 Words - "Night Terrors"

Sleep escapes me, no matter how tired I am. Tossing and turning in the night I’m sent back to childhood, when the night meant dark and dark meant monsters under the bed.

Childhood monsters would be preferable to the adult deviants that haunt bed time. Though the fears could be chased away by the same thing.

Another person in the room.

Someone big and strong to hold me and protect me from the monsters, from the night terrors.

Having company is the kryptonite of both childhood and adult monsters.

Too bad I don’t have a superhero to lay with me.

NaNo Story Ideas

Its just a few days away! JUST A FEW DAYS!

Are you ready?

I’m not.

It might be my downfall every year that I go into it having NO IDEA what I’m going to write.

This year is no different.

I have a couple of ideas, but none of them are fleshed out.

Moon Time....last years failed novel. I still like the idea. Thinking maybe of re-starting it and trying again. An all female werewolf pack takes in and protects a young girl (who may or may not also be a werewolf) from....I was never sure who the bad guy was other than it was a red wolf. Was it the girls mom? Maybe.

Home Again (this is the one I’ve put the most thought into)...a gay semi-romance. A young man feels he must leave his hometown after coming out to (and coming on to) his best friend. Follows his life from the time he leaves home until the time he comes home again. Along the way he meets and befriends several people (a truck driver who calls himself Cowboy. The son of a preacher, afraid to let his family know he’s gay. A famous (in the book) rock band. A photographer he sees everywhere he goes, but only sees her in graveyards), all who try to talk him into going home again.

Sooooo....what do you think? Which of the two would you like to read? -grin- Or...should it be neither of them?

My Writers Notebook

Since this is called my Writers Notebook, I thought I'd give you a peek into my REAL writers notebook. Might share more pages like this is anyone is interested.

You can click the image below to see a larger version.

100 Words - "Sheep Dip"

Warning: If you are a reader of mine, and are also a Christian, chances are close to 100% that the following will offend you.

Yeah, sorry about that....

----

“That’s fucked up!”

“Pardon?”

“I’m reading this funeral psalm thing, and I think he’s getting his bone on with the bodies.”

“What?”

“‘With thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me...’”

“Maybe he’s getting his bone on with the widow?”

“That’s less creepy, but equally as fucked up.”

“Could be worse.”

“How?”

“He could be getting his bone on with the sheep.”

“Ewe!”

“Exactly!”

“There’s a definite wool fetish going on there. You never see a picture of the guy without a lamb.”

“Doesn’t that also make him a pedophile?”

“Jesus is our necrophiliac, child furry loving Holy Father.”

“Amen.”

--

100 Words

She's an unrepentant outlaw out to steal his heart.

She was a poodle, he was a bulldog. A star crossed love, never meant to be. Certainly her owners frowned upon it.

She was attracted to his dangerous side, his bad boy appearance, his spiked collar. He had such big teeth, and so many scars. She dreamed of the street fights he must have been in, the Dobermans and pit bulls he must know.

Disillusionment came when she saw him backed into a corner by a chattery squirrel.

She learned the hard way never to judge a dog by his collar.

100 Words

“Its nothing but a rumor, that’s all it is.”

This was her answer to her daughters question, “What is love?”

“Love is an urban legend. It’s something that happens to someone else.”

“Weren’t you and Daddy in love?” the little girl asked.

She barked in laughter, not a mirthful one, but a harsh and soulless one.

“You, my darling little girl, were the result of forced fornication.”

She stared at her for a moment, wondering why she’d kept the result of her rape.

“Go away, you’re bothering me,” she said, then returned to the tax document in front of her.

100 Words for 5-3-07

“If you keep doing that the police are going to catch us for sure!”

“Doing what?”

He was always doing things that would get us in trouble in the end.

Like currently he was holding the dead mans arm our of the car window, trying to smack the road signs as we passed.

He had hit two of them, and now the arm was missing a finger. It was back there somewhere, in someone’s front lawn.

I could picture the cast of CSI finding it and tracing it somehow back to us.

As usual, it would be all his fault.

100 Words for 5-2-07

Great big clouds rose up.

In the distance birds took flight. They didn’t fly far before the flames found them.

Great big winds rose up.

The air smelled of burning flesh. People, pets, large farm animals as they flash fried in the fire.

Great big screams rose up.

They thundered up the mountain and down the valley, but they didn’t last long at all.

Then there was peace. A peace like the earth hadn’t seen since man rose to power.

Things were quiet for a short time.

Then a great big roach rose up, and the world was born anew.

100 Words for 5-1-07

She came at me from the sugar as I stirred it into the pitcher of kool-aide. She assulted me with her memory.

We had matching coffee cups once, and we stirred our sugar into our drinks with soup spoons.

I know where she is now, and will be forever after. I wonder where our cups are now, and our spoons. Perhaps someone else is using them, or perhaps the cups have been shattered.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Broken ceramic chips turned underneath landfill dirt.

Then she retreats, her memory dissolving like the sugar into the water.

Goodbye, again.

A tribute to Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite stories. Here I borrow the character of the White Rabbit, and mentions of Alice, to see if I can write in the same tone.

Comments appreciated.

--

(unfinished fiction)

Florence had been staring at the bush for quite a while, wondering what made it interesting enough to account for her extended staring, when she realized the bush was staring back at her.

Well, thats rather rude, she thought, and picked up a stone to throw at the offending bush.

The white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch came out as quite a surprise. That was the very last thing she had expected to see, even though she had been taught to expect to see just that.

Queer, she thought. Maybe Auntie Alice isn’t as deranged as they all say she is.

“Oh dear, I fear we’re late,” the white rabbit said, taking Florence’s hand and pulling her under the bush. “Hurry along now Alice, why must you always be so slow. We haven’t time to hesitate.”

Florence protested that she wasn’t Alice, but the white rabbit wouldn’t hear of it, and all too soon she found herself falling rather unpleasantly down and unusually long rabbit hole.

“Pardon me Mr. Rabbit, but could you bother to tell me why it is so dark in here? Auntie Alice never said the Rabbit hole was dark.”

“Must you talk so much,” the rabbid scolded. “We’re quite late enough as it is.”

“See, its just that I’m not found of the dark that much.”

“Rubbish stuff and horrible untruth. You can see perfectly well girl, just open your eyes.”

“Mr. Rabbit, I hate to be a bother, but I assure you my eyes are open and it is certainly dark in here.”

“It’s only as dark as you think it is. If you think it is bright, then it will be bright. Open you eyes, Alice.”

“I’m not Alice,” Florence huffed, then said, “Fine. I think its light in here.”

No sooner than she thought the thought, the rabbit hole brightened considerably.

“Well, now that’s odd.”

Florence took a moment to look about.

“Rather plain though, isn’t it? Just simple dirt walls. Auntie Alice said there were shelves here.”

Shelves appeared.

“Did I do that mr. Rabbit?”

“Yes, you did. Now hurry along now. We’re very, very late, and getting later and very later.”

“So anything I think, anything at all, will show up. If I thought about a carthorse in a nightgown it would show up beside me?”

“Why certainly,” said the carthorse which had been the white rabbit seconds before. “Now could you not think quite so much, Alice, as you’ve always thought too much. Think much less, except to think us to the bottom of this hole? We’ve somewhere to be!”

I've Been Nominated

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The voting for my category is at http://www.thebestofblogs.com/2007/03/30/best-bookliterary-blog-vote-here/#comments

100 Words for 3/4/07

Another of my daily 100 from 100words.com

--

Its not that way, the way you think.

Its not murder, its self defense.

Its not because I’m a freak, its because I’m special.

He just tripped and fell on the knife, over and over again.

She sits in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth, thinking up the excuses she’ll give when the police gets there. Everyone needs a good excuse, the thinks, and when you’ve just killed someone, you need a good excuse more than ever.

As police sirens drew near she finally decided on a golden oldie.

“The dog ate my husband.”

100words for 2/27

Its not so hard to give up. You just stop. You stop caring, you stop fighting, you stop trying to be yourself and you be what everyone around you wants you to be instead.

You smile and you nod and you work and you sleep and you eat and you screw, but you quit smiling and you quit laughing.

It’s a small price to pay, really.

There’s still coffee in the morning and sandwiches for lunch. You still go to work and the paycheck still comes, and the bills still get paid, but little else happens.

Life still goes on.

The One That Got Away

She went down to the river, only it wasn’t really a river it all. It was a muddy, swampy, tree sheltered, root infested bit of water, but it certainly wasn’t a river.

There were fish in there, she’d seen them herself. She’d even caught one once, a surprisingly large catfish which looked laughingly small when her father insisted he have it mounted and hung it in his den right underneath the marlin he had caught himself.

He like to say he caught the marlin right down at the river too. A different kind of fish tale. The one he caught instead of the one that got away.

She still pretended to believe him, long after she knew that fish like that marlin never lived in the muddy river waters alongside the catfish she had caught.

Her father loved the river. Loved spending Saturday afternoons down there with his cooler and his pole, and his plastic can of worms.

She sat down on the bank now, unmindful of the mud soiling the seat of her jeans. She was at home here, with her cooler and her pole and her own plastic can of worms, just like her father had taught her.

Even though she wasn’t there to fish, she knotted a worm on her hook, apologizing to it like she had apologized to every one of its squirmy brethren since the first time her father taught her own to bait a hook.

She managed to get the hook in the water without catching it in the trees overhead, but doubted she’d get it back out of the water without snagging it in a root.

She lodged the butt of her pole in the mud, propped it up with two bricks nearby, brought down by some long ago man for just that purpose. Then she opened the cooler, first taking out a slightly soggy cardboard box, then taking out two beers. On beer she cracked open and took a swallow. The second she cracked open and sat in the mud beside the box.

She sat her own can in the mud and twisted it, then lifted it, sat it down, twisted and lifted again. Over and over she did that, making dozens of can sized circles in the sand, focusing on the shapes they left in the sand. Watching an ant walk in circles inside one of the circles.

Where am I, she imagined the ant thinking. Where did my road go? Where did this trench come from. She lay a twig across the circle, building it an ant sized bridge which it scurried over, wiggling its antenna in thanks.

Her dad loved ants too. Never would smush them, even when they bit him.

“Ouch, damnit!” she say, but brush it gently off. “I probably deserved that.”

He had told her once, “I’m gonna write a novel one day. One about ants. Ants are special, and my book will make other people know that. It’ll be one of them New York best sellers. Just you watch them headlines. I’ll even sign your book for free.”

Across the river, on the other bank that wasn’t really too far away, a man hooted. It could have been excitement, but was probably frustration.

“Whatcha catch Larry?” the mans friend yelled at him.

“Caught me the biggest damn acorn I done caught all day!” Larry called back, and the men laughed together, cracking open cold beers of their own, digging their short, stubby, dirty fingers into their plastic can of worms, baiting and rebaiting as often as they felt like they needed to. Pretending like they actually expected to catch a fish.

The river wasn’t for fishing. It was horrible for fishing. Many lines hung down from the bank hugging branches of the trees. They danced in the wind like spiderwebs, and looked like silver threads when the sun was at the right spot in the sky.

If you managed to get the hook INTO the river, getting it out was unlikely. Logs and roots studded the water, making it dangerous to wade across to the other bank.

So close yet so far away.

Not for fishing at all. Her father had told her so himself.

“This place is for sitting on a Saturday afternoon and getting drunk in the sun. Its for bullshitting with the boys. Its for getting away from the women.”

She was happy to be there with her father, happy to be sipping from her own can of beer, with him saying, “Take it slow honey, your mum’ll bust me one if I take you home drunk” every time her lips touched the can. Her father saying he came there to get away from the women hurt her feelings a little. She was a girl, after all. She’d be a woman one day. When she was grown would her dad leave her at home. Would he come here to get away from her?

Chuck, her dad’s best friend, must have seen her face fall. He’d gently knocked her chin with the large hairy knuckles on his right hand and said, “Don’t get your panties in a bunch doll-baby. You ain’t no woman. You’re just one of the boys.”

“Got a beer for an old man?” someone asked behind her. It was Chuck, as if her just thinking of him had made him appear there.

“Of course I do!” she said.

Chuck took a seat in the mud on the other side of the box, and took the beer she held out to him.

“That your daddy?” he asked, nodding his head toward the box. She started at him, thinking he should be an old man now, but he wasn’t. He looked like he hadn’t aged at all, except his head was bald, and his knuckles had more hair than ever.

“Yeah,” she says. “That him.”

For a while that’s all they say.

The river might have been a place to bullshit with the boys, to swap fish stories, to get drunk and badmouth your boss, but it wasn’t really a place to talk. It wasn’t a place for telling Chuck about her daddy’s last days, his dying days.

After a while she looked over at her daddy’s old friend and she noticed the tears on his face, but didn’t mention them. Instead she said, “Give him his drink, Chuck.”

Chuck opened the cardboard box and started to open the beer beside it, but she stopped him.

“He’s done with that one now, give him a cool one.”

She handed him a fresh beer from the cooler, and as he pried it open with his huge and hairy fingers she noticed his nails were clean. She noticed drips of condensation falling off the can, into the box, making dark spots on her fathers ashes. They looked like raindrops, or teardrops.

The Chuck poured the drink in, and it turned into a grey mud. A batter of burnt body and beer.

Now there were tears on her face too, but she didn’t cry out loud. She didn’t blubber. After all, she wasn’t a woman, she was just one of the boys.

“You better do it now doll-baby, before the box sogs up and your daddy falls out.”

She nodded, and carried the box to her fishing pole, where she lifted one of the bricks supporting it and dropped it in the box. Then she moved to the edge of the river, and giving it her best softball throw, tossed the box into the river.

As she stood there, watching the ripples around where her father had gone in, there was a sudden whirring, then her fishing pole flew by her, bounced on the water a couple of times, then disappeared into the water, drug along behind the fish she hadn’t expected to catch.

The man across the street hooted again. His friend called over to her, “Whatcha catch girl?”

“Nothing,” she yelled back. “That one got away.”

LUSUS NATURAE

As night fell she peered at the wan pearl of the pale Moon and wondered....

It was a balmy night, scented heavily by the perfume of the small magenta flowers that grew up the spines of every tree she could see.

Flower Devils, the locals called them. They were beautiful flowers with a heavenly scent, but they were deadly. The leaves were thorny, the petals were poison, and their vines would strangle the life out of every other plant they touched.

When she was from the horrid things were not allowed to live, pulled from the ground once its thorny leaves sprouted, never its purple red bloom allowed to bud.

It was lying under the Moon, gazing up at the dead branches swallowed whole by the Flower Devils, that she began to understand what a truly wild place she had come to.

She was a long way from home. Impossible to get any further, she thought, since there was no home for her. A homeland maybe, but never a home again.

She took some comfort from the Moon, knowing that she and her sister Stars would be the same no matter where she went.

One planet. One sky, one Mother Moon and millions of sister Stars to protect her like overzealous aunties. Pick your deity, she thought. Or pray to them all. It made no difference, because the creation of time had been long ago, and now the one Moon and Stars all were deaf to the pleas of her land bound children.

What she wondered was if they had ever had ears at all.

Once such thoughts would have immediately caused her to say a quick prayer for forgiveness, but not now. Not with the screams of her family still loud in her ears, and not with the stench of dragons breath still soiling her hair.

It was a smell she feared would never come out, because it remained there after many drenches in icy rivers and filthy lakes. The stench of reptile breath, the smell of dead and rotten things, the smell of the Underside.

She shuddered and curled onto her side, pulling her knees to her chest, her chin to her knees, one hand held out to the side, fingers touching the hilt of the sword, always.

Her brothers sword, too heavy really for her to use, but threatening enough for her to brandish and bluff her way out of most petty scrapes, as she had done a few times since running from the burning farmland.

She closed her eyes and called it back in perfect clarity. Wheat burning to ash, her house an alter of flames. Somewhere inside her father and her mother still were. Her brother was in the wheat field, probably ash also.

And above it all the beast, great and black, its belly and long throat glowing with the growing of another fire. In the night sky it had looked much like a storm cloud about to burst. Only its rain was deadly and hot.

It was an Underside beast, no doubt. If it had been daylight she could have looked into the face of its handler, and then she could have gone quietly insane. Then she might have died in flame like her family.

Then she wouldn’t be laying in mourning with nothing but an unwieldy sword and blasphemous thoughts.

No good, she thought, this place is no good.

It was the flowers, she was sure. The Little Devils were making her mind sick with their perfume.

It was a soul poison they carried. Not one that killed the body, but one that would rot its core, kill the brain, destroy the parts that made one human.

No good at all.

She needed a shelter. Somewhere to hide from the sluggish wind that pushed around the flowers smell. Somewhere to lay, also, away from the Moon. She did not feel like lying to rest under the eye of an abusive mother that night.

There was nowhere, she knew.

The last town was many days behind her, the next one just as many ahead. That was, of course, if the map she had bought from a wandering merchant was a true map, and not one he had drawn for a quick coin in his purse.

There was a stream not far, she knew. If she followed the stream far enough she was bound to come onto a camp at its edge, but in these wilder lands strangers rarely offered to spare space in their tents.

There was a smaller chance of her following the road and happening across a small farm. No one would spare her a bed, but some sandy hearted matron might offer her a sleep in their barn. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept in hay.

Most likely, if she did find a home, it wouldn’t be a farmer. It would belong to one of the Maganese. They were not bad people, exactly, but they were less than human.

They encouraged the growth of the Little Devil flowers. Sometimes they brewed a weak tea from its petals and drank it. Sometimes, for a high fee, they would brew a strong tea and send it away with those in need of revenge.

They were doctors, after a fashion. They used many plants aside from the Little Devils. She’d heard tales of them aiding a woman in preventing a child from growing in her belly. She’d also heard of them helping women rid their belly of a child already there.

There was one Maganese very near where she lay. It was said that he had been gifted by the Goddesses.

He wasn’t just a Maganese potions dealer, they said. He was magical. He had a marks on the backs of his hands, and one hand could heal, while the other could take life away.

The mark on his healing hand was a tree, his arm its trunk, his fingers its branches. He wore a cloth around his killing hand, and the only ones to ever see the mark were never left to tell what it was.

He had a soft spot for children, they said, curing the young for free as he passed through a town, selling his potions only to the adults.

The story told most often was of the baby girl.

He had been taken to a baby girl freshly dead. Her body was still warm in her crib, but her breath was gone and her heart still. He had lain the back of his healing hand on the baby’s breast and she had breathed in a breath then cried out into the night with healthy lungs.

She would like to meet him, to ask how many coins she’d have to press into his palm for him to heal her aching soul.

He was a special case though, and she wanted to avoid the Maganese as much as possible.

You have to leave your bed and move before you can avoid anyone, she thought, knowing that she was still laying curled in the grass beneath the strangled trees, still breathing in the flowers scent, and not far from not caring anymore.

She’d never realized how strong it could be, the Little Devil. How little she had learned in the place where it was not allowed to bloom.

Her lids were heavy, her heart stony, and her arm tired. She pulled her fingers away from the hilt of her brothers sword, wrapping it around her herself. As her eyes fluttered shut she thought she saw something rush past her, toward the trunk of a vine covered tree.

Not smart friend, she thought, and then she slept.