Wow. I had a week lying around here just a couple days ago, but now I can’t find it. If you see it wandering the streets, please let me know. It answers to the name “Sookie.”
The first item on today’s agenda is another entry in the Worth a Thousand series. For our first-time readers, it’s a feature in which I present an image, then write a short story about it. It’s a simple concept, but a lot of fun, and keeps me writing when I could be killing brain cells watching reruns of reality TV shows.
The second item is the aforementioned “machine.” It’s not nearly so ominous as it sounds. It’s not actually a plan to grind up my readers into a delicious, low-calorie dessert paste (that’s called “the contraption”), but rather my feeble attempt to link my Facebook account, this blog, and my Twitter account into a multi-cogged writing-delivery system.
Phase three of that project is now live: Darrell Hardy Tales on Facebook. It’s a separate page from my normal FB profile, and will now be the epicenter for future Facebook fiction. If you’re on FB, please click the above link (or use the “follow me” bar on the top right) and hit “like” on that page to make sure you get all the latest Tales. (And if you’ve been following the serial micro-fiction on FB, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s all compiled the notes on that page, under “Gone with the Roof.”)
On that note, I wish you all a good weekend, and hope that next week (which answers to “Pookems”) won’t run off quite so quickly.
I’d meant to post this earlier this morning, but Comcast decided I needed a break from the Internet. Thanks, Comcast! Thanks for looking out for me!
As promised, this week brings us the second installment of Worth a Thousand, which features a neat-o image from a talented fantasy artist, along with a thousand words (or so) that it inspired me to write.
This week’s story is Breakthrough, the stirring tale of a man who looks for trouble in all the right places. Check it out and have a great weekend!
There is a place near the path I walk in the mornings, where people drop off books.
It’s a free library of sorts. A sort of “leave a penny, take a penny” for literature. It’s usually full of magazines from the past few months, dropped off by travelers who’ve read them and don’t want to take them home with them. There are often a couple books: some romance paperbacks, maybe a hardcover nonfiction book on some esoteric subject.
But every few weeks, whole shelves’ worth of books appear. Hardcover, paperback, genre fiction, literary fiction… It’s as if a book dam somewhere has broken, and this is the resulting flood.
I always wonder what the story is behind these occasional floods. Are the books from a library, cleaning off its shelves? Or is it a retired widower who loves to read but lives in an apartment too small to keep any but his most precious books in it. Maybe they don’t come from a single source, but a traveling troupe of readers. They work their way from one book-drop to the next, picking up new titles and dropping off old ones en masse, like a swarm of pollinating bees.
I heard shouting.
It was a block away, muffled, coming from the other side of the street. A woman was running, shouting, carrying a small silver pitcher.
Another woman turned. Seeing the pitcher woman, she stopped.
They spoke, but the shouting was over. I heard none of it.
The first woman held up her pitcher. The second held up a paper coffee cup and removed its plastic lid. The first poured, and I noticed for the first time her barista apron, and I understood what I was seeing: a coffee shop mistake, followed by excellent coffee shop customer service.
I don’t often buy coffee on my way to work. But the next time I do, I know where to go.
I promised you entertaining micro-fiction in my previous post. And today, I deliver.
That delivery comes in the form of Worth a Thousand, in which I present cool images (of monsters, gangsters, ninjas, etc.) and the stories they inspired me to write. And yes, the stories are about a thousand words. (Most are a bit more, but one is coming up short. I’m afraid you’ll have to add your own “very” in front of each adjective to pad it out. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
The first entry is Darius, which was inspired by a nifty piece by my artist buddy Brad McDevitt. I’ve been a fan of Brad’s since his Night Life RPG, and it’s always a thrill to work with him on a project — even if “working with” in this case means clinging like a leech to his talent.
Please check out the art, check out the story, and feel free to share it via the buttons at the bottom (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Then be sure to stop back next week for our next W1K installment.
As the machinery behind this website slowly groans back into operation, you may be wondering where I’m going with all this. Surely I wouldn’t bother to resurrect a year-dead blog, connect it to various social media, and then start promoting it just to tell the world what I had for breakfast? (Cold, dry cereal, thanks for asking.)
No, the point of all this is to entertain and enlighten (in that order) readers with well-written stories. And some non-fiction articles, maybe on game design, and some humorous essays. And maybe some poetry, if I lose a bet.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be adding regular written features to this site. I’ll announce them as they begin, and link to them from this blog, Twitter and Facebook whenever they’re updated. First off is some micro-fiction (is a thousand words still considered “micro?”), followed by something else that I’m still finishing off. But trust me, it’s cool.
Oh, and I should point out that “follow me” buttons on the top right of the screen. I’ll be honest; there’s not much on the FB site at the moment, and I usually don’t tweet more than once a day, but go ahead and click the links. It’s a good way to stay up to date with changes here without having to check in every day.
