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#fiction

85 posts45 participants7 posts today
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2504.14 — Who is your kindest character and how do they show it?

Of my recent works, Wintereyes from Inklings (now on composition hiatus) is likely my kindest. She lives in my Townships and Wands universe, which is full of various magicks. I've a few sample stories posted in my pinned samples post. Her magic is… well, it's rather peculiar.

She's is a very naïve girl when it comes to humans, and as a result is suddenly shy (like her author). She wants to be helpful and she likes to listen, and not be seen (like her author). She's quite kind; her demeanor. She wants to be friends, but raised on a farm at the edge of the Fell Forest, her opportunities for friends were… well, rather peculiar.

But not limited!

She befriends wolves, is adopted by them, and lives with the pack, running with them, hunting with them, and healing them. This did not make her cruel, even when she also befriends prey animals, too. Her ethics are… interesting.

Oh, about befriending. Befriending is her sacrificing part of herself to become more like her new friend. For example, her most recent mess started when she befriended a wyvern (bat-dragon) because it had a cold and was burning up the forest sneezing. She wanted to find out how to treat its cold! How did she become more like the creature? Besides learning how to converse with it, when she concentrates on its language, she can breathe fire. (It's like a glottal stop.)

But she'd never hurt anybody with it!

The Warlord of the closest Township (actually a woman) takes a serious interest in Wintereyes, and her story begins.

See image: This is how I imagine the wyvern. A face only a mother, or Wintereyes, could love.

de.pinterest.com/pin/342344009

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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PinterestWyvern by PaulReinwand on DeviantArt | Creature design, Creature drawings, Weird creaturesNov 28, 2024 - If it's warm blooded is it a wyvern? Exploring different approaches to dragons and ended up w/ this. I think that rat/croc tail is my fave part. Edit: C... Wyvern
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MikeDunnAuthor

Today in Labor History April 14, 1935: The Black Sunday dust storm swept across the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. This was one of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl. 4 years later, on this same date, John Steinbeck published his classic working-class novel, The Grapes of Wrath, about Dust Bowl refugees in California.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #dustbowl #GreatDepression #JohnSteinbeck #GrapesOfWrath #refugees #poverty #fiction #books #author #writer #Oklahoma #texas @bookstadon

The "Black Sunday" dust storm approaches Spearman in northern Texas, April 14, 1935. Looks like a 100-foot tsunami of dust rolling through town. By Monthly Weather Review, Volume 63, April 1935, p. 148. - https://photolib.noaa.gov/Collections/National-Weather-Service/Meteorological-Monsters/Dust/emodule/647/eitem/3025(original upload: http://gimp-savvy.com/cgi-bin/img.cgi?noabU7tT7yk5VKc5780, a no longer working link)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8017282
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JP Mens

Can't wait for something like this:

"My team is thinking about migrating from BIND 4.8.3 to something a bit more modern. Curious if anyone has done this before and their thoughts or experience doing this? Any issues you ran into? TIA!"

#dns#fiction
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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2504.13 — How dangerous is your MC? CW: Definite Background Spoilers.

The Reluctance Series stories MCs by danger score least to most:

  • 0: Devil-girl — Give her a book and leave her alone.
  • 1: Streak — He's a sweetie. He'll have your back if you are mobbed by bullies. His danger score is multiplied by Thorn's as he's protective of her. He did charm the pants off of Rainy Days, so there's that wild card.
  • 2: Thorn Rose — She's capable, just not very antagonistic. Pushed into a corner, watch out. Her danger score is divided by Streak's because she realizes he has more common sense than she does and listens to him when he's around to advise her. She loves him.
  • 3: Rainy Days — She's a lot less capable then most people think, but she has experience. Her inclination is to fight for others. First it was family, then it was for women. After millennia of bearing children, all of humanity is related to her—except the dragons. She's very sweet, caring, supportive, and she'll teach you lessons if she thinks you'll benefit from it. You don't want to cross her, however. She's lived through the fall of two civilizations, and ended up being rebuilt from parts at the end of the last fall. She's technologically immortal and always 24 years old.
  • 4: Devil-girl — Told you to give her a book and leave her alone, didn't I? Nobody listens! She's very capable (unlike Rainy Days) and self-taught. People keep using her as their sharp tool. She'll try the dangerous, impossible, and taboo things anyway because, Well, that's Interesting! The character was conceived as a study in how evil isn't born but is created through interaction with others and their environment. Each story is, Which side of the knife edge will she tumble? Will she end up saving people or suddenly be so frustrated she ceases to give a damn? Recently she discovered love, and got that used against her—not by her lovers, thank goodness! Well, we'll see.

BTW: Streak and Thorn live 200 years before the Devil-girl. Roughly 1960 vs 2160.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.13 — When is it best to be terse? Flowery?

Two answers:

  1. If I have a word limit, I make it terse. When I wrote Mars Needed Women, each chapter was limited to a maximum of 4,700ish characters (hashtags were necessary). That forces me to practice concision and ellipsis. By concision, I mean making each word necessary to carry an idea or an emotion, double-duty being better, or to complete a grammar construct. Sometimes I had to choose words by length, when I hit my toot-limit. By ellipsis, I mean grouping meaning such that it also implies what was necessarily left out. As an example of the latter, neither giving birth nor OB-GYN doctors are mentioned, not even midwives, but I'm sure the reader knows they exist, they have to. When I expand the story for publication, this topic might be a good target for an additional sentence, maybe even a chapter.
  2. If I have a time limit, I work to compose sparser prose. To be clear, by this I mean both a deadline or "I can only write so much before I become exhausted." Charles Dickens and I could easily have a prose style in common, but I neither (re)read his works anymore (because I can't help emulating him) nor let myself get carried away (much) writing things that don't carry to story along (but are nonetheless glorious). I've come to learn that if I practice concision and ellipsis whilst composing, what I will have written is a fertile framework upon which I can plant flowers during revision.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2504.12 —How would you write a story with a cast of one? Could you?

As I would any other, I suppose. Since I write in 1st person, the character would essentially be having a conversation with the reader, and I might emphasize that. Actual dialogue would be the MC talking to themselves. Could I right such a thing? I see no issues other than situations where there would be a cast of one seem prone to being depressing, and I avoid such stories.

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RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist

#WordWeavers 2504.12 — MC POV: Name 3 dangers that exist in your world. How do you protect yourself from them?

[Thorn Rose speaks. She's a bit of an egghead.] The heat of day time is very dangerous, but nobody really thinks about this. Buildings big and small are designed to use convection to cool the interior. Since daemons, like me, are fairly common, you can pay for more efficient miraculous recirculation. Mostly, when the day shine is bright, most people sleep.

People are dangerous. Not just the prejudiced people who might gang up on you because they think you don't have a right to exist, or at least walk in their neighborhoods. I got the pleasure (NOT) to witness what the dragons did in their autonomous region; that type of thing skews your whole idea of humanity. Of course, there is also the armistice with the Wild, and even Rainy Day's does her best to tread quietly around them.

Last, the sky is falling. Literally.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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