This week’s #SundayLit prompt is: Time
Snip "Bijou the Time Traveling Ghost," #WIP #RoughDraft
“Yeah, I can’t see myself building a raft and paddling out to the pyramids. I don’t suppose we could just time-travel over there? We don’t seem limited spacially when doing it. And it doesn’t seem as taxing as dematerialization.”
End Snip
#SundayLit prompt is: Games
{Snip Konbini Idol](https://www.pixiv.net/novel/series/11417104)
At night, we wrote and presented poetry. We all took part, but Shishi came alive when performing. On stage, she rived Sarah Bernhardt herself. Once or twice, Kan-chan’s critiques offended her, especially as our internment wore on.
We also played endless rounds of Go. We briefly bet smokes, and Tomo consistently won my daily ration. Shishi played like a wizard when cigarettes were on the line. Otherwise, she couldn’t be bothered. When we smoked on the veranda, she would graciously let me bum one. I happily switched to betting coins after Shizuka gave them to us.
Our Go tournaments became so successful that the servants even spied on them. Then, with enormous delight, they penned satirical poems about my playing and “accidentally” recited them where I’d overhear. Fortunately, they made a greedy move one night.
End Snip
#SundayLit Q2. Does your world building include games? What purpose do they have in the story?
I research and use games with cultural or historical significance. I don't so much world-build as explore the world as it was.
Q1. Which games do your characters play as a pastime?
Several card games are mentioned, an early form of backgammon, poetry contests, sutra knowledge contests, Go. And matching humorous wit.
11/16 #Wss366 #crude #MastoPrompt #hunter #SundayLit Twist
#FanFiction #TheHunger 1983
“I must have died and gone to heaven. I see an angel.”
I looked over, taking in the speaker. Crude like his clothes: expensive, tasteless, like a gold-plated oil donkey gushing crude.
“I thik I’d too many.” I slurred, then looked at him. “Gin fizzy.” (Giggle.) “Lime twist,” and pushed my empty glass across the bar.
“You’ll hav’ta excuse me, powder woom.”
Pushing through the crowd, I stopped in front of the restroom and looked back in time to see him add something to my drink.
“A hunter,” I thought. But I was one too, fingering my razor-sharp ankh medallion.
#NMV366 #NMPrompt #NMSL #Vampire #TheHunger1983
#Drabble #MicroFiction #TootFic #FanFic
#SundayLit Q2: The Mentor archetype is often depicted in popular fiction as an old white man.
An interesting observation. I write in a Japanese millue, so this isn't quite what happens. It's an old, wise Japanese man.
How easy it is to slip into genderized stereotypes. I will have to think about how to shake this up a bit. Too late to change it completely.
#SundayLit Q4: Dreams can equally mean goals. Do you, as an author, let your protagonists achieve all their dreams?
I like "happy" endings. So love is fulfilled. Some of the characters' secondary dreams are fulfilled. Usually in the form of found family and finding a purpose for their life.
Other dreams are impossible: For example, Kao dreams of a world without prejudice. Fat chance.
I also write about Karmic Entanglement. My characters never escape their destiny. This is spoiler territory though.
#SundayLit A3: Has a dream you’ve had ever sparked a story or poem?
Some of the more biazzar bit of my dreams show up in stories. No full stories are inspired by dreams. The illustration below is from a dream and is part of For Love of a Konbini Idol
10/18 #SundayLit prompt is: Dreams
The last stand-alone #dream sequence I wrote is:
#PIXIV: Camellia Blooms サザンカの花
#AO3 Camellia Blooms サザンカの花
#SundayLit A3: Which colours regularly crop up in your storytelling? Why is that? 2/2
Here is a sample. Full range color use.
Snip Konbini Idol
All around was a clear blue sky, and far below were green prairies cut by tan roads. Houses clustered like prayer beads along them.
Ahead, the path ran along a ridge toward a higher mountain. Stone cairns marked the way, with lines of prayer flags strung between them. Above each cairn flew an orange flag. At the end of the trail, more tangerine flags billowed around a larger stupa, brilliant gold, in the bright daylight.
End Snip
#SundayLit 10/11 prompt is: Colour
The meaning of Blue.
For most horror and horror-adjective fiction, red is the color of fear. Demon eyes blaze red, fire crackles.
However, in "Otherside Picnic," blue represents otherworldliness, and that seeped into my work. Ghost and phantom flames give off eerie blue light. Malignant creatures' eyes blaze blue.
Q4: #SundayLit When does showing get in the way of the story?
The biggest place I find showing gets in the way is pacing. Showing takes a larger word count than narrating.
Second, not all readers will get a simple show. What does a raised eyebrow mean or a sigh?
Third, it can feel like ping pong with multiple characters with changing emotions.. This is basically too much of anything is poor writing.
#百物語 #HyakuMonogatari: 14 Smile 微笑
#Fandom #AlfredHitchcock #Psycho
#DrabbleTober #Spooktober
#SundayLit (#Happy & #Sad) #Wss366 #WordWeavers 10.5 — Antagonist sadness?
A smile touched his lips, like a frost bloom on iron-hard ground: brittle, cold, and easily erased.
His eyes focused on the decaying Victorian on the hill. Mother would be so proud of his cleverness.
She had been so upset when the sheriff came by to ask questions about the abandoned car on Ashcreek Lane. Her shrill voice—a searing, shrieking wind, orphaned sparrows #piping under eaves, and the whistle of a willow cane—blew the crystal away.
But he was cleverer now. His eyes followed the bubbles emerging from the muddy bog, and with them, a full smile welled.
[Note 1] Feel free to join in #Drabbletober (A spooky 100-word story a day.)
[Note 2] Or join in on #HayakuMongogatari. Number your submissions one higher than the last. If we reach 100, a spook is supposed to appear. An internet #youkai. Maybe the muskrat.
[Note 3] Image from Psycho, Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
#NMV366 #Drabble #Horror #Halloween #Hitchcock #NMWW #NMPrompts #NMSL #MicroFiction #TootFic
Market Open
#Wss366 #MastoPrompt #SundayLit
The #market had just #opened, and Tina #trembled. This was her first show, a small affair in a neighboring village. There were a few farmers, a bored crafts person, a phone service vendor, one juggler, and a local musician.
Still, she was terrified. What if people thought her work was junk or that her display was sucky? Hopefully, no one from home would visit. That would be awful. She could hear the kids at school whispering about how cringe she was already.
Two old ladies stopped by, saying, “How cute! They’re darling.” Then they left without buying anything. Being treated like a cute kid was embarrassing. She’d worked hard on binding her stories and creating the cover art.
A man wearing a worn suit with leather patches on the elbows, like professors wore, stopped at her table.
He opened a few books, leafed through one, read a few lines to himself, and then looked at her and asked, "Did you make these?”
She nodded, then found her voice. “Yes, sir. I wrote them and bound them in-in-in the best leather-leather. I even made the cover art with old Tandy tools I found in the attic.”
“They’re good, and their prices are too low.”
He looked over her stock and selected five. “I’ll buy these if you give me a 20% discount. I’d like your email address. If they’re well-received, I’ll purchase more. At 20% off your new price. Maybe double at first, you can raise them later.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, wrapping them up.
“Here’s my card,” the man said. She looked at it and saw that it read, “Findle’s Rare and Exotic Books.”
#NMSL #NMV366 #NMPrompts #MicroFiction #TootFic #SliceOfLife
#SundayLit prompt: Openings
(The Opening of my Time Travel Serial.)
Bijou: The Time Traveling Ghost -- Prologue: 2025: A Filthy Alley
Vague shadows coalesced. Regrets, half-lived lives cut short, but by what? There were just swirling doubts.
“Revenge” was the first thing I thought. But revenge for what and against whom? No answers arose.
I didn’t even know who I was.
“What was I?”
“A ghost.” That answer came easily enough. I knew that meant I was dead, but beyond that, the word held little meaning. “Can I pass through walls? Disappear? Drain life essence?” I didn’t know.
“So what can I do? There must be something.”
Again, the answer came quickly. “I can travel through time, space, and reality.” I suppose that was useful, but for what? Revenge, maybe, but that idea led nowhere.
I checked my memories. Did I even have any? No, I was without a past, but I knew things. “One plus one equals two. The Earth goes around the sun. Down under referred to Australia and sometimes New Zealand. The War to End All Wars started in 1914, and the US entered it in 1917. Lots of facts, but no memories. A ghost with no past. The Time-Traveling Ghost.”
What about the present? I had an answer for when, at least, 2025. In 2025, plagues had returned, and politicians were copying the 1930s playbook: appeasement, liberal hand-wringing, and the rise of fascism.
I didn’t like where I was standing in more ways than one—spiritually dystopian, physically vile. I stood in a filthy alley reeking of vomit and urine. Slogans screamed from the walls: a red swastika painted over the words “Eat the Rich.”
“Funny, I was going to say ‘piss,’ but that seemed vulgar. I must be a sensitive, proper ghost.”
Whatever, I wanted to go somewhere shiny and happy, away from this diseased time. It would be awful if I were stuck haunting this alley and era forever.
Someplace gay. “Gay Paree.
