Writing types, post the best snippet you've written

[Silver_Tyger]

Or at least a bit you find especially good / fun / interesting.

I’ve been rereading some of my stuff lately (rather than, y’know, getting anything worthwhile done) and one bit jumped out at me as especially good banter. (I love me some banter, I do I do)

It’s from something that I hope I will eventually turn into a comic (probably on the web). A group of villains are playing poker (which is probably stupid on my part, since I don’t) I still need to do more to a couple of them so they’re not such rip-offs of Batman characters, but…

“Now really, Wildcard,” Kiwi said. “There’s no need to be angry. Let’s just play. For old times sake.”

“Sure. And for ‘old times sake’ I’ll let you win a couple of hands.”

“Why thank you. I need the money for my dear, sick old mother.”

“Is that the bird? Or was that your father?” He traded two cards.

“A bit of both. They were both loons.”

So! I know a bunch of you are working on NaNoWriMo. I know at least one of you (-poke poke-) is working on a Non-NaNo severally awesome novel. Share something!

[Kamino_Neko]

I no longer have a lot of my best writing…

Of what I do still have easy access to…this passage always manages to pique peoples’ interest… (From my NaNo last year.)

John DiMatteis settled on the couch, and curled her legs under herself, smoothing her skirt with one hand. ‘Good afternoon, Dr Pini.’

‘Good afternoon, John.’ Dr Richard Pini crossed his legs, resting his notepad on one knee. ‘How are we today?’

‘I’m fine. I don’t know about you.’ John grinned, and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear.

Dr Pini shook his head, smirking, slightly. ‘You realize, John, that you make that same joke every time I ask that?’

John grinned even more broadly. ‘And I’ll keep making it as long as you phrase it that way, Doc.’

Dr Pini chuckled and picked up his notepad, jotting something down. ‘That’s a nice skirt, by the way.’

John blinked, looking at herself, and shrugged. ‘Mmm. Thanks, I guess. I borrowed it from Karen. It doesn’t really fit right. But, our washer’s dead, and we haven’t had a chance to go to the Laundromat, so I didn’t have any clean pants, and all of Karen’s fit worse than her skirts. So…’ She tilted her head and pulled at one of the pleats near her knee. ‘I guess it does look pretty nice, though.’

The names should be familiar. >_> They’re swiped from real people.

[RealityChuck]

I’m not one for snippets. It’s hard to take something out a story and make it work. For instance, I’m very proud of this exchange:

“And how many will you have to kill to create your better world?”
He looked at me with steely eyes. “A hell of a lot less than six million,” he said softly.

Trust me that this is a kick-ass exchange in context, but doesn’t really make much of an impact here.

Also, I feel that if you get too involved in particularly good snippets in your writing, you may be missing the bigger picture.

[Savannah]

I was in the middle of Cry Me a River when I noticed him.

The set was going all right. But I was going through the motions and the audience knew it. They liked me okay, but they weren’t in love with me. Some nights you’re on, and some nights you’re not, and by then I didn’t care all that much.

Until I saw him in the darkness. He sat alone and very still, his gaze following me around the stage. Most of the crowd never really pays attention to the entertainment, but he was. And he wasn’t impressed. He sat with his drink on the table before him and his face blank, watching me. I wasn’t touching him at all.

You weren’t trying to touch him, Sandy, I thought. You were just calling this one in over the phone.

Of course I was. I was singing jazz that year. Popular jazz, familiar tunes people knew or half-remembered, nothing too way out for the suburbanites. And I was bored. Singing the same songs over and over, to an audience more interested in their highballs and balling later than in me. Still, I didn’t like the way the man in the shadows in front of the stage watched me as if he knew something I didn’t.

I was used to being assessed and judged. But more than an audience’s usual dare–entertain me–came off him. There was a quiet arrogance, and something else maybe I was the only one who felt. It made me a little angry, and so I sang to him the rest of the set. Sometimes I do that–pick out a face in the crowd and make them my only audience. Why not him? He was a good-looking man from what I could see, and that was all right, too. I didn’t have much of a career, and I didn’t have a steady man in my life. So I sang to him. I didn’t figure it would be for the rest of the night though, because who’d stick around that long?

Even I knew I wasn’t that good.

[Mister_Rik]

This is an excerpt from a short piece of erotic fiction I wrote about six years ago, called “Serendipitous”. I wrote it with the specific intent of using striking contrasts to tell the story, so it might seem a bit overdone.

The protagonist is a 21-year-old guy named Seth, who plays bass in a garage band with some other 20- & 21-year-old guys, and the story opens with an extremely chaotic scene of the band preparing to start a rehearsal. But Seth has a story to tell his friends, and with some difficulty he gets them to shut the hell up and listen. He describes how he went to a bar the previous night, but got tired of listening to “…all that fuckin’ ancient '70s shit” on the jukebox, and decided to go to the local underage club to listen to something current. There, he encounters a young lady who is out alone, celebrating her 18th birthday …

---

She was the most amazingly beautiful thing Seth had ever seen. About five-foot-two, small tits, long legs, short red hair. An open, black leather jacket that exposed a lacy black bra and flat, bare tummy. A ridiculously short, tight, black miniskirt, black, thigh-high stockings and spike heeled boots. One ring in her nose, one in an eyebrow, too many to count in her ears and no doubt a stud through her tongue. Her makeup was elaborate but tasteful, and somehow the leather collar around her neck didn’t look out of place.

She made her way directly to the drink counter, cutting straight across the crowded dance floor, unconcerned with the indignant looks from the frenzied dancers who were stumbling to move out of her way. Seth watched her order and receive two cans of Red Bull, and immediately drain both cans in mere seconds. He watched her turn and survey the room before making her way to the exact center of the dance floor. Some unknown force impelled everyone on the floor to give her space.

Spellbound, Seth watched her dance alone. It was as if nobody dared approach her, or challenge her claim to the largest territory on the crowded dance floor. She spoke to no one, didn’t give anyone more than a cursory glance as she gyrated in time with the throbbing beat blasting from the gargantuan speakers that encircled the dance floor. There was something raw and primal about the way she seemed to become one with the music. Lights sparkled and flashed, striking colored flames that flared briefly and then died on her reflective silver jewelry and studs. Her jacket offered tantalizing glimpses of black lace and pale flesh. And she danced with herself, seemingly unaware of anything but herself and the music. She was high, but Seth could tell it was not a drug that drove her, but the very essence of her being that was cut with the music and inhaled through her ears to fuel her beyond the normal plane of consciousness commonly found in a place like this.

She whirled and leaped, a dervish and a ballerina, combining animal savagery with grace and artistry. Beauty and the beast in spandex and leather. Sweat matting and darkening her hair and a flush reddening her cheeks, neck and upper chest and contrasting sharply with the porcelain of her flexing belly. Taut, hard muscles mixed with soft, smooth skin. Her diminutive frame was larger than life, incongruously but naturally overshadowing everything else.

Aware of a cool wetness on his hand, Seth discovered the fingers of his right hand clenched tightly, crushing the thin aluminum can in his hand and forcing the remaining Red Bull out of the can to spill across his skin and onto the table. He relaxed his grip and looked up, astonished to find her standing in front of him.

Her bright green eyes burned into his for a brief eternity, and then, without a word she turned and walked away. As if hypnotized and compelled by a Siren, Seth stood and, forgetting his jacket at the table followed her out of the club…

[garygnu]

Alone, in the dark outside the dorm building, Sarah soaked her hands with tears as the night sky soaked the rest of her with tears of its own.

[Ranchoth]

Jeez…how to choose? I spend long enough with my stuff that I can’t tell too easily what’s the “best” I’ve done, and what’s just my favorite. Assuming it’s not just crap to begin with.

Well, here goes…

---

*The briefcase slid across the desk surface with the smooth, velvety sound of leather against rosewood, belying it’s considerable bulk. A gloved hand reached around it’s manacle, keyed a combination, and opened the lid.

Yet another screen waited inside, immediately flickering to life.

A single, tabbed menu appeared, with a master title “SIOP”

The President carefully removed a pair of booklets from the simple integral keyboard, placed a finger to the trackball, and clicked the tab labeled MAJ ATK OPTNS—CENTCOM.

The menu changed into a table of arcane codewords, next to a default map window.

“…It’s ‘118_GOCHIHR.’” came a voice at the President’s side. Daria turned to the National Security Advisor, raising an eyebrow. “You wrote it?”

Eulmeyer shrugged. “Not all of it.”

*Good old RAND, *thought the President, clicking the button again.

The map display grew, showing a full representation of the Khalifah.

“Henry, Chief…are you linked up?”

A row of red LEDs blinked by the side of the screen, before the replies came on the comm line.

“I see it on my end, ma’am.”

“Pentagon Actual. We are go.”

“All right, let’s see a full target list…” The President drug an onscreen slider from it’s default position, to it’s opposite extreme. Obligingly, a text window above the slider changed from “MINIMUM” to “DOUBLE PLUS MAXIMUM.”

Daria almost forced herself to look look at the map screen…and the multitude of new targets superimposed on the map.

Good god…

Eulmeyer stabbed at the screen with a long index finger. “As you can see, Red is for ‘counterforce’ targets—military, strategic assets. That’s ‘First Strike’ stuff. Yellow is for ‘countervalue’ targets…”

“…‘Second Strike.’ Population centers, industrial assets. Natural resources.” The President finished.

Buzcout’s voice crackled over the line, again. “Now transmitting modifications to SIOP based on Chinese data…”

There was an uncharacteristically long delay, accompanied by the blinking LEDs, as the deeply encrypted data was received, decoded, processed.

About half of the yellow dots disappeared, with a much smaller handful of the red ones, replaced by pulsing orange. Curiously, a rough line of dots seemed to have been planted along the Khalifah’s twisted northern border…apparently away from anything of possible value. The President squinted…and at least one was in the southern Caspian Sea.

“General…the data you sent me looks like they’re making a…‘skirmish line’ to the north. Is this right?”

“It’s right…” Eulmeyer said, leaning across the desk. “General, this looks like the Chinese are trying something we call ‘Fallout Sculpting’…surface-bursting nukes in empty sectors upwind of spots they want to target. Like…crapping in the Mississippi at Baton Rouge to give New Orleans cholera…”

The President’s eyes twisted towards the advisor, almost on their own. Nasty.

There was a pause, and some muffled speech sounds on the line, before the Chairman of the Join Chiefs came back on. “Yes…they’re telling me the same thing, here. It certainly seems to explain some things.”

‘They?’ Ah, of course…“General, is doctor DeWitt there? While we’re on the subject, I’d like to have him start on—”

“Ma’am,” Buzcout interrupted, “There’s something I think you should see, first. Transmitting now…”

Delay, flicker, and a sprinkling of new dots, blue this time, appeared on the Football’s map screen.

“These are the targets that Chinese intel suggests we hit, minus a few that we DID already know about…” The President scanned the image…a number of the pulsing dots—bunkers, or safe houses, Daria imagined—were on the outskirts of cities, a few in the countryside, or in the nooks of mountain ranges…

…and the rest were aligned, filling in gaps, with the line of orange dots to the north.

*“Son…of a bitch…”

[Silver_Tyger]

Wow, now I wish I could read the rest of all of you guys’ stuff.

I suppose I’ll throw another one out (from my NaNo from 2006.) Actually this bit I had come up with randomly at some point and saved the appropriate story.

Before she placed it in the mage’s hands she spoke, “If thou darest betray me with this sword, Mage, it will turn in thy hand and it and I will hunt thee down as the lowest dog. And thou wilt see us in the shadows and in thy dreams and in the faces of every stranger thou pass. And from that moment on, thou wilt be without kith or kin, ally or admirer, and thou wilt wander the world - the worlds alone, and in fear until the day we find thee. And we will not slay thee with honor, as we would a man or dragon, nor will we slay thee like the livestock, but like the soulless vermin which feed upon the livestock. And from that moment in which thou betray me, thou wilt be in Hell.”

Anyone else find writing Medieval style English to be way too much fun?

[Millit_the_Frail]

This is a great thread. I’m loving these. Anyway, I’m not a writer, but I wrote a novel for NaNo 2006. It’s neither good nor memorable, but I wrote it, all 50K+ words. I’ve barely looked at it since, but here’s the part that sticks in my head and still cracks me up to this day:

---

A red-haired friend once told me that the only hot red-haired people were fake-red-haired people. “What about Conan O’Brien?” I asked, skeptical. He looked at me as if I were crazy.

Whatever. Conan’s wife is a lucky woman.

[An_Gadai]

If anyone of the larger works are posted online could you please include links. I’ve found some of these excerpts fascinating.

[Chefguy]

This is part of something I started on some time ago. It’s actually an accurate description of my time spent living in St. Thomas, VI.

“Moot”, mumbled Hairspray Tom as nobody listened. Struggling to his feet from the bench where he had slouched motionless for the better part of two hours, Tom shuffled in the general direction of the toilet at the back of Joe’s Place. I waited for it, although I’d seen it many times. Not one to disappoint, Tom tripped over nothing in the middle of his journey – an errant dust mote, perhaps – and staggered into an embrace with a wall, which obligingly prevented him from falling. Also not one to be encumbered by long relationships, Tom slid south onto the filthy floor.

There was a brief pause in the conversation as Nikki, Lee, L.D., J.J. and I watched with mild interest to see if Tom would remain where he ended up, pissing his pants in place, or if he would be able to bring himself back to the upright position and continue his journey, assuming he could remember what the purpose of it had been in the first place.

[lissener]

Had an idea to “update” Aesop’s Fables for a child friend. The gimmick would be that the Tortoise would wander through each story as he undertook his slow, steady race. Here’s one of the stories I toyed with:

THE FOX AND THE GRAPES

A hungry fox came grumbling along the road one sunny buzzing Tuesday. This particular fox, name of Dennis, hadn’t had anything to eat since half past breakfast and his rumbly stomach would not let him forget it. He stopped abruptly: a deliciously grapey smell was fluttering about his nostrils. Now, being a fox, he knew that few things smell as deliciously grapey as delicious grapes, so he began looking around him with juicy thoughts of lunch.

And there they were. It seems that in his grumbly bumbling, Dennis had stumbled upon a grape arbor. And few arbors, thought Dennis, as he made his way toward the it, are as deliciously grapey as a stumbled upon grape arbor.

Now arbors, being arbors, tend to be higher than they are low. And foxes, tending not to be birds, or even monkeys, tend to find themselves, when compared to a grape arbor, rather lower than they are high. So the position that Dennis found himself in—well below the delicious grapes—was not a unique one, especially in those parts of the world where foxes are likely to find themselves stumbling upon grape arbors.

And so Dennis did the thing that any fox, in such a situation, would find himself compelled to do. He jumped.

Now, if you stop to think along with me, you might find yourself agreeing that a road is called a road because it often finds itself being traveled upon. (How that connection came to be I have no idea, but I think you are hardly likely to deny that there is such a connection.) And on this sunny buzzing Tuesday morning, as it turns out, this road was no exception to this general rule, as it did indeed find itself being traveled upon. That the traveler was a tortoise who had far more important things on his mind than the curious behavior of a hopping fox has very little to do with this story, however, so we will pause just long enough to allow the tortoise a double take, and then return our attention to Dennis.

Well, Dennis, in our momentary absence, had had it just about up to here. He had done the required: he had jumped, and hopped, he had leaped and bounced, he had flung himself into the air at LEAST a hundred and eighty-seven and a half times, and still the grapes remained just out of reach. And don’t let’s forget about gravity. When you fling a thing—even if that thing is yourself, and even if that self is a fox—it just does not stay flung. Every majestic flight that Dennis undertook in his efforts to achieve his lunch goals ended in a dusty thump (sometimes more than one, depending upon wind direction and bounce factor).

And so let us take stock of the situation. Let us freeze a moment in time, and see where we are. We have some delicious grapes hanging plumply from a grape arbor. Beneath these grapes, we have a fox named Dennis, suspended in that bittersweet moment we’re all familiar with: the moment when flight becomes freefall, and anticipation becomes fear: we have not reached the grapes; we will hit the ground. It is at this moment, when time seems to stand still, when the comfy buzz of a summer afternoon is transformed, without changing, into the tinny screech of onrushing mortality, that we say quietly, to ourselves—“Oh great, now that tortoise thinks I’m an idiot”—just as the dusty earth slams us into a moment of darkness.

“And anway,” we say, as we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and run after the tortoise in order to explain, “now that I’ve had a moment to think, those grapes actually looked a little sour.”

ETA: I hesitate to call this my best, but my best tends either to be pretty personal, or about movies. And I didn’t want to hijack the thread into a Verhoeven discussion again

[OtakuLoki]

Here’s a little something for a story I’ve started working on. Not NaNoWriMo. Just a fun little story. This was where I set the ‘voice’ for the story.

Perhaps the oldest story form is that of the ghost story.

I can imagine my great-great-great-great-great-etc-grandfather Untahentupet sitting around the fire pit, and telling a story to the rest of the clan. The way I see it he’s the father of all of us story tellers. And of those of us who like to hear stories, too. So he’s your great-great-great-great-etc-grandfather, too.

Now he was a proper story teller. He’d maybe liven things up with a pile of dried leaves sitting next to him, to make the fire flare at dramatic times. Other times he’d emphasize the tension of the story by pouring a little water onto the flame, making them die down, letting the darkness come closer around the fire. And with his soft, scratchy voice, he’d cast a spell – one of fear, and bravery. Maybe there’d be a lesson in the story. And maybe not. Not every story needs a lesson, after all. Some are just fun.

But, a proper ghost story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now, Untahuntupet, might muddle things up, by starting in the middle. Or even at the end, and then explaining how things got there. But he was a craftsman, and he’d always make sure that his story had a beginning, a middle and an end.

The ghost story I’m going to tell isn’t a proper ghost story. I’ve got plenty of middle. I’ve got muddle, too. And confusion and daring-do, and all sorts of other story elements. But I don’t really have a beginning. Or I have too many beginnings, and Untahuntupet would not approve of that at all. It’s just not proper.

I also don’t have an end. I have a place I plan to end my narrative, but it’s not really an end to the story, since, in the real world, things don’t just stop. At least not unless everyone involved is dead. And even then there are bugs and other gross things going on, so you can’t say that everything has ended. So I don’t have an end.

I don’t even know if this is a ghost story.

I think it is. But it’s awfully hard to get a ghost to stand still be measured and tested, and compared to the accepted standards of ghostology. And my ghost is even more problematical than most. First off, while this story will supply us with a body, or two, it’s not the right body. After all, in a proper ghost story at least one of the bodies is going to be that the ghost used to inhabit. At the moment, however, the body that my ghost came from is upstairs in his room, playing his hip-hop too damned loud, and not dead at all. Like I said, it’s not a proper dead body for a ghost.

So, if one needs a dead body for my ghost, and the ghost’s body is still alive, was it really a ghost? I don’t know. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.

Untahuntupet definitely would be shaking his head at me, now and telling me that I’m going about this all wrong. And muttering to himself, so we could all hear – all of us around the fire pit, “Not a proper ghost story at all. This younger generation – no respect. Not proper at all.”

So, I have to begin by apologizing to Untahuntupet. This isn’t a proper ghost story. I don’t have a single, clear beginning. I know where it began for me. And I can point to some beginnings for other people – but no one person’s beginning will work for all of us involved in this story. Not proper at all.

Untahuntupet will have to admit I’ve plenty of middle. And I’ve got all the things that a middle should have, too: Derring-do, scoundrels, and heros. And lots of people in-between. And some of the scoundrels become heros. And maybe a hero is really scoundrel. All of this Untahuntupet would approve of. These are all hallowed traditions that he began for us, all those many years ago around the fire pit.

And I have a ghost. I think. It’s mysterious, and a ghost is supposed to be mysterious. Untahuntupet would have to agree with that. But my ghost lacks a dead body to go with it. If, it’s a ghost at all. Maybe it’s an angel. Or just a meddler of some kind. I think it’s a ghost, though, and since this is my story, that’s what I’m going to call it. Even if it’s not a proper ghost.

But as for endings? I’m afraid if you’re looking for a proper ghost story with an ending that ties everything up, and explains it all so it makes sense, you’re bound to be disappointed, just like Untahuntupet would be. He’d be muttering even louder when I get where I plan to finish my story. He’d be telling us all in a loud voice now, that none of his ghost stories ever left so many loose ends. He’d point to every character I’d left dangling – introduced for a few moments on stage, and then sent back to their lives – and tell us all, how in a proper ghost story all the characters have a purpose. And their purpose would be obvious at the end of the story.

But, as I pointed out earlier, this is my story – and it’s from my life. And things in life just don’t quite work out the way they do in stories. I’ll certainly agree with Untahuntupet that it would be more tidy if things would work out in life they way they do in proper stories. But, here I have to disagree with our revered ancestor. Life may imitate art, but it doesn’t follow the same rules as art. And since my story involves other people, they have their own stories that began outside my own story. They’ll go on doing their own stories, and only dance into my story by accident.

It’s the way of life. And in this case I have to tell Untahuntupet that life, especially my life, in my story is always going to trump what he says is a proper story form. And I hope that after he was done grumping, he’d smile his gap-toothed smile and tell me that I have the one thing that every story teller needs: a stubborn heart.

Even if my ghost story is improper.

[Fretful_Porpentine]

Ah, why not. A bit from YA Fantasy Novel With Art:

The artist met her under the bare tree in the center of the courtyard, and began his work again. Slowly, the misty outlines of domed and colonnaded buildings took on substance. They were clustered around the harbor, and a wide expanse of sea spread before them. In the foreground was the Rebecca Godfrey, the wind billowing its sails in the direction of the shore.

“What manner of man is this captain?” the artist asked at last. “You know him?”

“He’s my father, but I saw him last when I was six. He’s tall, with black hair and a beard –”

“You told me that yesterday. Tell me of his character.”

“He’s brave,” said Tamsin. She was fairly sure of this, at least. It took courage to help a princess escape from revolutionaries, and to return to their cottage in Falmouth when the Triumvirs had declared that it was death for him to set foot in Albia.

The artist gave her a shrewd look. “Did you like him?” he asked.

“Aye. He was kind to me. He told stories and laughed and played, but with half a heart, as if he would rather be somewhere else.”

“Where else?”

Tamsin weighted how far she dared trust him. The Triumvirs were no friends of artists, she knew that; but she could see that this man needed money, and tales of the activities of traitors fetched a good price.

“With King Francis,” she said at last. “He loved us, but he loved the king more.” Her mother had said that once or twice, on the rare occasions when she allowed herself to speak bitterly, and Tamsin had come at last to believe it.

“Ah,” said the artist, and bent to his work again. Now and again he asked Tamsin if the color of the man’s hair or the way he stood looked right, and when he had finished, the tall man on the deck looked something like the father she remembered.

“And now, you.” Last of all, the artist began to color in a small figure that he had sketched beside the captain: a girl in a grey dress with brown hair, her face turned upward toward her father. Tamsin knew it was vanity, but she could not help looking and wondering if it was really like her.

She pressed all of the money she had into the artist’s hand, and he took the picture by the corners and handed it to her.

“Take it. It is yours and none of mine, and if it be a true picture, I bid you remember me when you look on it.”

She took the picture in both hands and rolled it tightly. “What shall I do with it?”

“You look like a dreamer,” said the artist. “Look on it, and let yourself dream.”

[Stauderhorse]

From a short story of mine:

No one in the town ever suspected him. It was an accident. This sort of thing happened. Nothing to do but move on. But he knew the truth. He knew his father would never be careless or clumsy enough to mistake rat poison for sugar. So he did it for him. As they took his father’s body away, he plucked the horse’s eye from his pocket and held it at the level of his own eyes. He sighed deeply before returning the treasure to its home.

[threnodyangelfire]

Great idea for a thread-- and I want to read more from you all - snippets are fun, but I’m sure the actual stories are even better! Here are a few of mine…

From a Fantasy story I wrote a couple of years ago:

Do you remember our chess games, and how I used to struggle to win, and would become furious if I thought you gave me the game? Aye, but those nights playing chess taught me something that lessons could not. You must have nothing before you have something, Tendlar. And here I am once again, struggling with a concept I cannot fit my mind around. I know there are things which you cannot explain to me, and things which I will learn, and doubtlessly feel hurt and betrayed that you could not speak of them to me, but know this: I will understand. I have the tube, though I mention it only in passing. A light weight that is heavy on my heart and something that I will learn to bear. I know why I have been chosen, though there were times when I wished with all my being that I could be as Myra is even now, and content to be a governess. There is a certain satisfaction in simple things that I have never been able to achieve. I wish her well; will you tell her that for me?

From a short erotic horror:

Jim’s smile was frozen on his face. This card was certainly not referring to him. Norma, it had to be Norma. She was thinking of leaving him. His hands clenched into fists as he envisioned her warm kisses and her breasts riding her rib cage as she lowered herself onto him in the enclosed verandah in the woods last year. He had proposed after, and she accepted. She loved him. She was his goddess. He would do anything for her.

ok. I’ll stop boring you now.

[Ranchoth]

@An Gadaí

If anyone of the larger works are posted online could you please include links. I’ve found some of these excerpts fascinating.

::Looks over shoulder, and back, giving best ‘who, me?’ look::

Well, that one o’ mine is here, if you’re interested.

You can probably recognize the characters quickly enough.

[Kamino_Neko]

Ah, hell with it…Mine starts here. Be warned, it was a NaNo, so it rambles a little under word count pressure.

[Kamino_Neko]

And…for no particular reason, another passage from the same work…a visual that spawned a plotline so I could use it…

Serena sighed, and lay her head on his shoulder. ‘If you say so. It’s too bad.’ She pulled back and smiled at him. ‘Oh, well…At least we have the good night kiss coming.’ She leaned up, her eyes closing, and her lips parting. As he leaned in, she wrapped her arms around him.

They kissed deeply, passionately, arcs and flashes of light dancing over their skin where they touched. She pressed close to him, holding the kiss for what felt like a heavenly eternity. As she pulled away, flashes of light arced between their lips.

[Muffin]

From “Kattawagami Untouched” on my website: Richard Clark Culpeper

As we made our way along the coast we grew used to the marvellous openness of the ocean. We would take the tide out for kilometre after kilometre, far out of sight of land, and then return on it many hours later. Every hour we would stop to take a fix, set our next bearing, and lie back in the boat, surrounded by nothing but water and sky and each other. Hour after hour, day after day, we paddled and sang and slept under the hot sun on the northern ocean, wanting never to return.