Shards and Phractures

In honor of Nano this year, I'm posting a series of snippets from my past attempts at Nano.  This one is the opening pages from 2007.   -=ad=-   He stepped onto the mountain top just as the first gleams of sunlight appeared on the horizon.  He had hiked in the dark for nearly five hours to reach this point, to prove to himself that this was the spot he wanted; and for that, he had to see how it looked as the sun rose.  He had barely made it. Exhausted, he dropped his duffel, collapsed onto a rock, and let his eyes take in the surroundings as the dawn light illuminated them.  There were rocks and boulders galore, with a few patches of snow decorating them, the last survivors of a long, cold winter.  Further, beyond the cliff face, he could see for miles, and there wasn't a single sign of civilization. A bright flash of color caught his eye.  Not ten feet from where he sat, an early bird of a spring flower had forced it's way through a patch of snow....

In honor of Nano 2009, here's another snippet, another dream scene from Tangler.   -=ad=-   ...he was sitting in class, and the clock was frozen...fifteen minutes until the end of class, and the clock hand just didn't seem to be moving. The teacher was droning on in his usual fashion, and Joey was trying desperately to take notes; the teacher was moving much too quickly for him to get everything, but he was at least trying to keep up. "Node line intersections are points of great power," he wrote. "Interstitial connection lines, conversely, are hazardous to traverse." He let his pen travel across the page on its own, and let his eyes travel to the window. The drone of the teacher's voice faded as he looked out at the sun-swept playground. It would be so much nicer to be there than here, he thought. With a sigh, he turned back to his page. He looked, but he couldn't find the sentence he had just written. What was on his paper now was "Man, this...

In honor of Nano this year, I'd like to offer up a few tidbits...a random sampling of the random dribblings that trickle out of that word-generating subsection of the grey matter in the back of my head. This piece is from the beginning of my very first shot at a Nano challenge. -=ad=- There was blood on his knuckles, but not on his face. The school bully was on the ground in front of him, eye already swollen shut, blood running from his nose and lip and tears streaming from his eyes. Beyond the bully, Joey's little brother Mick was getting to his feet, brushing the dirt from his clothes and face. He looked up adoringly to his brother. And beyond him-- ...beyond him was the green-eyed girl, and the look she gave when their eyes met was electric. The bully got to hands and knees, and looked up at Joey with raw, undisguised hatred. His face was long and narrow, with thin lips below ice-grey eyes and greasy curly black hair. He got to one foot, and Joey put his hand...

This is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge, which can be found here . I've written about Nicky Weird before . The challenge for this week? Write the Climactic Battle scene. Xarathon's rage grew as he stalked the halls of the abandoned high school, eight lesser vampires surrounding him. It's the Harvest Moon, he thought savagely, one of the most magically potent nights of the year. I should be sacrificing virgins, not hunting children. Indeed, it was forty years to the day since the Harvest Moon where he had cursed the entire Earth, covering up the appearance of vampires and magic once and for all. He should be ripping the still-beating heart from the chest of the leader of these savages, that Nicky woman, not wasting his time looking in closets and stalking empty corridors. Up ahead, movement, a fleeting blur as a teenager dashed across the lobby and into the gymnasium. With snarls of impatience, his troops dashed ahead, pursuing the youngster through...

Very often, I seem to be catching flack from people who disagree with my opinions on vaccinating my kids.    The school seems to think I'm exposing my kids to dangerous germs.  Other parents believe that by not vaccinating my kids I'm somehow endangering theirs--an argument that makes absolutely no sense, because if the vaccine works, and their kids are vaccinated, then vaccinating my kids would be completely irrelevant to the health of theirs.   Granted, there are quite a few disagreements over certain vaccines and their effects on people:   1.  Thimerasol (mercury):  Depending on who you ask, this is either a deadly toxin or "such a small dose as to be absolutely harmless."  Many parents blame this additive for autism.  I'm not taking sides in this debate, but I have a problem with injecting any amount of mercury into a child's body for any reason whatsoever.   2.  Side effects (Swine Flu, 1976):  How do you ensure that the v...

Note: This is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge . The assignment: "What I Did on my Summer Vacation only make up something cool." ---------- Thirty years ago, an evil sorcerer cast a spell on the Earth. Under it's influence, humans can no longer recognize magic; vampire slayings become "teen runaways," magical storms and disasters are "freak unseasonal storms." Even history isn't immune; show a human a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, with the wizard robes and auto-writing quills moving, and they'll see a bunch of stuffy white men in the style of the 1700s standing around, powdered wigs and all. Magic just doesn't register on human senses, and even if it does, it's instantly rationalized away. But there was a glitch in the spell, a mis-spoken word in a long forgotten language...a loophole, if you will, in a spell that was supposed to be eternal law. The spell only works on adults. And so, the...

It's all Jerri's fault. Jerri read something I wrote , and declared "I'm impressed. You can write funny; I can't do that." Now, Jerri is a "real" writer, with over a dozen tech books under her belt; I'm strictly amateur, with a handful of unpublished and mostly unread short stories and poems. To have impressed someone I admire as much as Jerri had an impact on me. Thus was NickelAtATime born. The concept is simple (and right there in the EULA, and everyone reads those, right...?). If you laugh at a joke, you pull up your Paypal account and send in a nickel. You can send more if you like, but the MSRP of these jokes is exactly five cents. It started out as a mailing list, but the job I was working at the time went away shortly after I sent out the first issue, and it...kinda died. Once life stabilized again, I turned it into a blog, and lately, I've been trying to bring it completely to life--and pack it full of fun and humor. Why am I w...

Note: This is an entry in The Friday Challenge, which can be found here. This week's challenge? Explain how Hollywood would screw up a perfectly good comic book--the independent Southern Knights. -=ad=- Nickolas Geekzinski, NYT Movie Critic Southern Knights Rocks. Honestly, I can't say it any clearer than that. From the opening scene with the giant robots, to the final fight featuring magical lighting against superhero lightning, this movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. I'll try to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but there are so many cool things to say about this cool movie that some things are just going to leak out. Whenever you take a book or comic book to the screen, there's a lot of baggage that comes with. Superhero movies have to acknowledge the things that came before. One of the funniest quotes in movies comes from Scott Summers/Cyclops in the first X-Men movie: "Would you prefer yellow spandex?" For a new Superman or Batman movie, t...

This is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge, which can be found here . The challenge: Look back from the year 2049, and figure out what's being celebrated on July 4. "Grampa! Grampa! Did you see the fireworks?" The old man bent down, and handily scooped up his youngest grandson. "You bet I did. Were they good?" "They were cool!" The boy hopped down, and ran off to get munchies. "Gramma! Gramma!" "Pop," James said, "Jim's got a report coming up. July 4 essay. He's got all the ancient history in there, but the tutor wants him to cover the Days, too. Think you can help him out?" "I'd be glad to. Where's he at?" "Stuffing his face, where else...?" An hour later, a well-fed child and his equally well-fed grandfather sat across from each other in the big overstuffed chairs by the fireplace. A video fire burned on the overlay screen, for the cheery appearance without th...

Please note that this is NOT an entry into the Friday Challenge, which can be found Here . Due to the demons of Otogu (that's "other things of greater urgency"), this entry is well over twelve hours past the deadline, so it is not eligible for this week's Challenge. However...that's not an excuse to not share it. Trailer One: Camera pans across Italian countryside, with voice-over, "...in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, two star-crossed lovers..." Sunset, with camera pausing on Italian village. Sunset. Fade to black. Text: "The legendary love story, retold..." Fade in on brick wall. Voice-over screams. Blood sprays across the wall. Text: "...with a modern twist." Juliet is in the tub in her chambers, with bubbles all around. She's speaking to the nurse, behind her, across the room and over her shoulder. The nurse has her back to both Juliet and the camera. Juliet: ad-libbing, and ending with "...so, how do you...

Note: This story is an entry into this week's Friday Challenge, which can be found here . The challenge: Get the fifth chapter out of the way--after your world has been defined, your major characters introduced, the basics of the general plot laid out--you know, all that stuff that gets rewritten and thrown out sixteen times before you actually get on with the actual story. So, we join our plotline, already in progress... Trage settled into his new home. He had no idea if he was doing the same thing that other wizard's apprentices did. His duties mostly involved cleaning up after the wizard and his friends. He cleaned up after the animals, swept out the house, and cleaned and dusted the entire place, every day. Most days, the wizard sat in his room, poring over books and carrying on odd and mysterious experiments. There were strange-shaped boxes and other things stacked in one corner, and every time he dusted them, he noticed Midge was right there watching. The wizard h...

...even if no one else can see what you see... Merchandise is available! -=ad=-

Note: This is an entry into the Friday Challenge, which can be found here . "Doctor!" the nurse shouted. "His eyes are open!" A flurry of activity, lights in his eyes, hammer to his knees. Blood pressure cuff tightened and removed. Where was he? Why was he here? Thinking was fuzzy. "You've been in a coma," the doctor said at last. "But you're going to be all right now. Your nightmare is over." He was wrong. Cassidy stood by the corner of the building, peering around. He thought he had lost his pursuers, but he wasn't quite sure. He had ducked into a doorway, turned his reversible jacket inside-out, and put on a baseball cap to cover his eyes, and now he was trying to see if any of them had caught on. There. Two guys in business suits and shades, standing in front of the laundromat. They were talking quietly, turning their heads from side to side. Looking for him. Cassidy took a step back, and a deep breath. Then he steppe...