I’m so excited to share a new short story you can read on my blog today! Even superheroes have to pay the rent. When Restoren “Glassman” starts receiving broken things to fix with his repairing powers, it may be just the job he needs. But not all his clients are as they seem, and he may find himself in a fix he can’t…well…fix. Continue reading
The last (for now) episode of my serial story is up today!
Part 5: “Of Portal Chases and Chocolate” brings the Twelve Dancing Princesses mission arc to a close, and it’s all I have ready so far . . .
I DO however have some Plans And Ideas (bwahahaha) for a NEW batch of episodes continuing to follow Sean and co. on their next mission, so hopefully that will happen someday if I can get more written!
Meantime, I hope it’s been fun, and if you missed the first few episodes, now is a great time to catch up on this urban fantasy/fairy tale/snarky agent serial short story since they’re all up now!
(The episodes are 1-2K words, for a total of 8K words.)
If you check it out, leave a comment below letting me know what you think? Or if you’d like more stories? Or a comment or like on Wattpad, if you’re on there, would be so helpful too.
Thanks sooo much for reading! I’ve had a blast writing and sharing this story and I hope y’all enjoy too!
I have a new short story you can read online — and it’s about superheroes! But not in the way you’d expect. *cackles*
Superhero stories are not my usual genre, but I had loads of fun writing this one!
It’s called A Night in the Life of Glassman. I wrote it for the A Day in the Life challenge hosted by the fabulous Hazel West, and you can read it today at the Tales from a Modern Bard blog!
Here’s the opening:
My day—or night, to be technical—starts how it always does: I destroy my alarm clock. Now, that might sound backward for a guy whose superpower is fixing things.
Read the rest HERE!
I hope you enjoy meeting Glassman! (Oh boy, he hates me for using that name. XD)
And I’d love it if you let me know what you think! 🙂
Thanks for reading! ❤
Happy New Year, my dearest Roadlings! *throws confetti cleverly shaped like little 2019s*
This is the obligatory new-year post but it’s a little different because it’s two weeks late not all goals and accomplishments and resolutions. (Though there’s some of that.)
New Year calls and I’m terribly tempted to pretend like Bilbo that I’m not at home. XD *cough*
We’re already 2 weeks into 2019 and I haven’t figured out all my writing goals yet and . . . I feel a little stressed about that. The pressure is on when the new year hits to figure out All The Things and set goals etc. And I simply haven’t. (Particularly for my writing, which is slightly awkward because this is a writing-ish blog.)
But you know what? It’s okay.
I don’t have to know all the things I want to do this year RIGHT NOW. I do know the next thing I want to do, and that should be enough for this moment.
And if it isn’t, it ought to be.
(*shoos list-aholic self to sit somewhere in the back row instead of booing in the front one* Ahem. >.>)
I’m sitting here wondering why I’m so stressed and thinking how I should let it go . . . and I just glanced at the writing journal I finished minutes before midnight brought in the New Year and it made me pause and reflect, because I’d totally forgotten about it.
Here’s an excerpt of my quietly-excited New Year’s Eve self, inking dreams for the future:
“. . . that the windings of the road of this writer will bring me to wondrous places and tales of the fantastic and of the heart. I don’t know for sure my goals for 2019. But I hope to meet it with a deep breath and a soul ready for the wild adventure of this road that calls me onward to new horizons of pen and paper and imagination — and the love of worlds to touch our souls and show us the stars. Whatever goals and dreams await, onward — let’s rise to meet them with the dawn beyond the horizon. The stars and the sky of imagination await! Happy New Year and may 2019 be filled with words of wonder!”
As I’ve been stressing out these last few days, I’d totally forgotten I wrote that — I suppose that enchanted hour before the turn of the year was closed in the final pages of the book that was 2018 and I forgot to open it and look at it again until just now.
Granted, it’s a little dramatic (I don’t always write like that in my journals, I promise. XD), and may be harking back to my steampunk WIP world, but it’s the feeling that remains.
That girl sitting in the light of the Christmas tree scribbling her soul down before the new year arrived . . . I want to be her. She was so excited and full of hope, and even though the future was strange and she only had a faint idea of what might come next, she was ready to embrace it and make it beautiful to the best of her abilities.
She wrote those words and then went out and stood in the cold under the stars, and watched fireworks ring in the New Year and talked and laughed, and saw a falling star, and the night was full of magic.
So I don’t know my goals. And that’s all right. I have vague inklings of possibilities and I’ll hopefully pick some of them and goal-ify them at some point . . . but here are a few.
After that . . . I don’t know, exactly.
So you see, I have plenty of options. I just don’t know, after this one goal (last 2 chapters of KW2), which option is going to pick me. (Because sometimes it feels that way instead of the other way around . . .)
It’s all very well to pretend you’re not home when the Sackville-Bagginses come calling, but who knows if 2019 might not be, instead, a whole bunch of dwarves and a wizard, waiting to take us on an adventure? We might miss out. So I think I’ll answer that door anyhow, even if I don’t know my dreams and goals yet. 😉
Speaking of dreams and goals, here’s a quick run-down of accomplishments of the last year, from my 2018 dreams post, since I’m curious how I did with them!
Well! I’m pretty happy with how many of those dreams I managed to track down and haul into becoming a reality! 🙂
A few other highlights:
I wrote 103K words in 2018! Which makes me happy. (I usually average around that much but had quite a bit less in 2017 so I’m happy that my slump went away. XD)
This included:
Other writing stuff that happened:
I also:
Whew! I had no idea so much awesomeness happened. I’m very glad I decided to write this post after all and found out. XD
I’m going to call 2018 an EXCELLENT year in the writing department, and look forward to the new year.
2019.
*tastes how it sounds*
Let’s make it a good one, shall we?
I’ll leave you with my new bullet journal (bjournal, as I Nordic-ly call it) and my new writing journal — a fabulous steampunk cat!
Hey everyone!
I’m back from vacation (did ya miss me? :P) and I’ll be doing some NaNo-ish posts soon (eek!) but today I’m doing something… different. XD
Jenelle Schmidt has a Spooky Story Challenge again this year (check it out!), flash-fiction edition, aaand I decided to join in.
I’ve been kind of enjoying writing flash fiction — works one thousand words long or less — lately (like We Otter Do It and Mentor Problems). Only problem is, spooky/scary stories are NOT my thing at all. XD
But I did have a flash-fiction piece around that I wrote a few years back and recently rewrote, based on a nightmare I had. I kind of wrote it as “therapy” and after I got it down “on paper,” it didn’t scare me anymore — but I wasn’t really planning on posting it lest it scare other people! 😉
So be warned, if that’s not your thing.
But I decided to share it anyway.
Enjoy!
Midnight Fear
by
Deborah O’Carroll
Night shrouds the world. Black as ink, the dark sky hangs overhead—the roof of a giant safe or vault, locking me into this world of nightmare. A car screeches somewhere. The city block stretches before me, with but a few yellow street-lamps to shine small patches of imagined safety onto the pavement—bits of light, small, pitiful, feebly trying to push back the night.
The wind is on the move. It drives grey rags of clouds across icy stars, slips cold fingers of air down my collar, shrieks relentlessly through the branches of a tree I walk beneath. The twigs chatter together like teeth. I shiver and hasten my pace, casting glances this way and that. I should have been home long ago.
Someone runs up the road—whisks past, a shadow under a street-lamp. He calls back from behind me in a hoarse whisper: “It’s coming!”
I don’t need to ask what “it” is.
I break into a panicked run, clutching my skirt, my shoes pounding a war-drum’s call, my heart a fluttering bird trapped between metal bars. The street stretches on forever. I must reach home before it finds me.
My house appears in the darkness. Relief floods me. But as I near my yard, I freeze. Terror grips me in an iron vice. At the crossroads where my street meets the next, a shadow moves.
Round the corner with slow deliberation pads the embodiment of midnight fear.
The black panther.
It’s twice as big as I had heard. It stops in the midst of the crossroads, shadowy head swinging slowly as if deciding which street to take. Not my street. Not— Motionless save for the twitch of its tail, its gleaming eyes full of quiet malice fix on me.
I stand transfixed as we stare at each other for a short eternity. Then, with slow, measured steps, it pads up the street toward me. Panic breaks me free of my terror-induced paralysis. I tear across the road, stumble up my sidewalk and front steps to my house. Safety lies in wait for me behind the door. I claw frantically in my pocket for the key. Not there. It has to be there—
The key is gone. I can’t get in.
Nowhere to hide. I must find somewhere . . . I dart a glance over my shoulder. The beast still pads slowly up the street. I run across the porch, down the steps, and heave myself over the side of the bed of the pickup truck. I hunker down low with my head down, breath coming in ragged gasps, heart running a marathon. Perhaps the panther will pass by, continue down the street . . . Perhaps it will not find me.
All is quiet. I wait forever. Silence. I dare a quick glimpse over the side of the pickup bed. My heart trips and falls and skips a beat.
I had heard no sound. Yet the panther pads toward me across my grassy lawn, as silent and graceful as any of its smaller kin. In horrified fascination I watch its dark bulk make its slow, sinister way toward me, a deeper black beneath the tree shadows cast by the moon. Instead of leaping, the creature circles the truck. A long wooden plank forms a ramp from the ground up to the tailgate of the pickup’s bed. A path straight to me. The panther sets a fore-paw on the plank and begins its slow relentless ascent, fixing near-hypnotic eyes on me.
I seize the end of the ramp with frantic prying fingers, trying to flip it over. It doesn’t budge. The panther takes another step.
I scrabble desperately about in the dark in the back of the pickup. My hand touches an object. A hammer. I fling it with all my strength.
It strikes the beast between its gold street-lamp eyes.
I hold my breath. The panther pauses, shakes its head once, then comes on. Its teeth glitter under the moon. Its paws tread softly pad-pad-pad up the plank.
In a final surge of mind-numbing panic, I grab the next object my hand finds—a large heavy mallet—and fling that too. Then another—a length of pipe—and another and another, I know not what, flinging them in quick succession. I shut my eyes against the terror and only hope one of them will make it stop coming. Just make it stop coming toward me. I am out of things to throw. Dark despair seizes me, but no claws. I open my eyes.
The panther still stands on the plank. It does not move. Then it sways.
And
The shape of terror hits the ground with a thud. It lies still.
Relief tears a gasp from my lungs as I remember to breathe again. I collapse in the bed of the pickup truck.
***
Time follows in a blur. They come at last to find the beast, and find it dead. I climb shakily down into my lawn. People surround me, despite the midnight hour, praising me and my non-existent bravery for the death of the terror. Voices roll around me, talking of taking me to dinner, of celebration. I don’t listen to them. I can only stand beneath the trees, swaying like their branches, staring down at the panther. It lies on the grass, a sleek pile of black fur, motionless. Dead. But without losing its menace.
Unthinking dread still fills me, and I can’t look away, despite knowing that it’s dead from the heavy metal things I had thrown at it. I wish I’d thrown heavier ones.
I keep staring, half expecting the panther to move.
It does.
Deborah O'Carroll (Road of a Writer) 