‘Fraid Not, Chief

The Most August Etty Biggs-Wharton, Chair of the Imperial Defense Commission, sat in her office and eyed the guardsman in front of her with disfavor. He stood at an unprofessional slouch. "Well?" she demanded of the guardsman. "Have you secured the inner doors?" It was true that the guards were greatly outnumbered by the crowd...

The Prometheans Demand Blood

“One more day of blood sacrifice,” Pierce chanted. One more day. Painted in congealed arterial spray and clotting fluids, with sweat streaking his jowls and plastering expensively styled hair to his skull, he shrieked the shibboleths and prayed that this be would the day. The day his god would reward his devotion by ending the...

The indestructible girl! Classic Marvel roleplaying campaign, week 2 (part 2)

Here's another flash-fiction story I wrote by way of setting up the second week of our Marvel superheroes roleplaying campaign. Wednesday, in the not too distant future Sidney Malloy puts her strawberry protein smoothie in the cup holder, wipes the sweat off her brow, and turns the treadmill up a notch. On the curved, wall-to-wall...

The amazing elephant girl! Classic Marvel roleplaying campaign, week 2 (part 1)

So here's a little thing I wrote -- I guess you could call it flash fiction -- to get the players set up for our second Marvel Superheroes roleplaying game session. It picks up the tale a few days after our characters' first superhero action ever. Wednesday, in the not too distant future The alarm...

Short Story Thursday: Nature Calls the Lookout Man

Here's the very first story for Short Story Thursday. I started this story at the end of National Not-Novel Writing Month in November and finished it in December. Nature Calls the Lookout Man Sunny Jim watched enviously as his two companions worked. He had thought he could ride and rope -- and he could, well...

Recap: Not-Novel Writing Month is much better than the real Novel Writing Month

For anyone who may not know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), when writers attempt the Herculean labor of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This year, I got wind of a different challenge; a not-novel writing month, as it were, in which the goal instead is to write a flash fiction story every...

National Not-Novel Writing Month, day 21: Return of the Silent Kid

This is a followup to The Silent Kid, which is the first Not-NaNo story I posted three weeks ago. I wrote this on Nov. 21 at a NaNoWriMo write-in I went to with my daughter. She's doing the regular NaNo, while I'm doing something a little different. A ghostly smile flitted across Sunny Jim's face...

National Not-Novel Writing Month, day 15: A Robocraft story

I play only two video games: Minecraft and Robocraft. What I like about both of them is that they don't feel like video games to me. As a kid (and as an adult when my kids gave me a great excuse) I loved building awesome futuristic vehicles out of Legos and imagining them in combat....

National Not-Novel Writing Month, day 8: The Kiss

I've been doing the flash-fiction every day NaNoWriMo replacement as prescribed. Most of them are rudimentary or fragmentary, but I thought this one came together rather nicely. So here you go. The Kiss It wasn't Scott McHaney's fault that his town collapsed. He was only the mayor, after all. How was he to know what was...