Cleaning the new house

While all of you were celebrating Memorial Day with barbeques and traffic jams, Kimmy, her family, my parents and I were hard at work cleaning the new house.

• I mowed a lawn for the first time since I worked buildings and grounds at my college.  You would think that techniological progress would have made lawn mowers easier to start up but you would be wrong
• The purpose of the employees at Lowes is the be as sarcastic and unhelpful as humanely possible.  They are exceeding quite well at this.  
• From now on when I move chairs and trash cans will be the first things to go into the new residence. 
• We have been to the house almost a dozen times and still don't have a clue which light switches do what.  
• Apparenlty I am the only person who thinks that painting the walls black and turning the house into a labyrinth with cardboard boxes would be a cool idea.   
• It's fun to store your 1000+ books on the floor of a room and then realize that we still need to shampoo the rug.  
  
• It's even more fun to shout at your parents, "Hey!  Get off my lawn!"

Two Penny Saga: Slimy Awakening

My friend Jon R suggested this first line to me.  I wrote for five minutes.  This is what I got.  (If any of you have any more suggestions for prompts please let me know.) 

Sara sat up with beads forming at her brow. Her dream was slipping as they often did - like words do in the wind. But this was different...

In her dream she had been floating through the ocean with thousands of others like her but they hadn't been human.  There had also been something else in the dream she needed to remember.  

Sara sat up in bed but when she tried to pull back the blanket she didn't have any fingers to grip it with.  All she had was a fat seaweed-colored tentacle.   

Sara screamed and thrashed back the blankets. 

"What's wrong?"  David murmured next to her. 

"Nothing!"  Sara tucked the tentacle under her.  "Just a bad dream.  Go back to sleep."

"You okay babe?"

"Everything's fine!"  Sara jumped out of bed and crashed onto the floor.  Her legs couldn't support her.

"Sara!"

"Just go back to bed, David!"  She crawled into the bathroom and kicked the door shut.

In the glow from the streetlight outside Sara could see two squirming tentacles slithering out of her pajama pant legs.  She pulled herself up onto the counter and looked into the mirror.  Her face was covered in deep green scales.

"Sara!  What's going on?" David threw the door open and turned on the lights.  He crouched down next to her.  "Oh God what happened?  Sara?"

Sara didn't respond.  She was too busy staring at the orange beak sticking out of his face.    

Post-Writers Conference thoughts

Last night I returned from the Backspace Writers' Conference in New York. 

•  The conference seemed to be designed to break you down (Agents reviewed our queries and first two pages on the first day) and then build you back up again (Workshops and time to hang out with fellow writers were on days 2 and 3).
• Next time I will save up money and just stay in the hotel.  My New York friends are fantastic but without the commute I could have gotten an extra hour of sleep every night.  Also it isn't fun trying to find your way back to the subway at 2 in the morning after hanging with fellow writers in a bar for five hours.    
• Unlike most creative writing classes, there was little of, "You must write like this" and more, "There are many ways to write.  This is how I do it."  
• Nothing makes an aspiring writer feel like a normal human being like being in a room with seventy other aspiring writers.  
• I am not the only person in the world who thinks that "write what you know" leads boring material. 
• Agents are intimidating but really do want to see you succeed. 
• Our keynote speaker Lauren Baratz-Logsted did an excellent job of pumping us up.  She truly is a lovely person. 
• My query letter and writing have improved since the last Backspace conference.  

I'm back! (Finally)

It's been excruciatingly too long since my last post.  Honestly, I don't even have an excuse.  Of course I've been busy, but who isn't busy?  I can't even remember what was happening in my life around my last post.  Probably what happened was I just had an extremely busy week and then the blog just fell off to the sides and since then the more time that's passed has meant that it's been harder to get back up on the horse.  Remember kids, that's why you always post at least three times a week or else your blog will die.   

But I assure you I have been overwhelmingly busy.  Along with maintaining basic hygiene, trying to eat at least two meals a day and seeing The Avengers I have done the following since my last post:

-Finished the most complete draft of Edge Country yet.

-Officially started the rough draft of a new novel (currentlty untitled.) 

-Read 22 Books

-Attended the Backspace Writers' conference in New York.  (My true inspiration for returning to this blog)

-Kept up with wedding plans. 

-Attended my 7th college reunion (which wiped me out for a week)

-Planned a honeymoon

-And I also bought one of these:

Yep I officially have my own lawn to mow. 

So yeah!  I've been busy but that also meant I had plenty I should have been blogging about.  Time to grab the ol' defibrillator and see if I can bring this blog back to life. 

Two Penny Saga: That Jerk in the Bar

My friend, Fox, suggested this first line to me.  I wrote for five minutes.  This is what I got.  (If any of you have any more suggestions for prompts please let me know.)

 

Jackson wasn't sure about many things in life, but of this he was absolutely certain: he didn't like the cut of that Canadian's jib.

The guy had one of those faces where you just knew he was an asshole.  The fact that he had his arm around Jackson’s ex didn’t help either. 

Jackson pushed his way across the bar and shoved the Canadian in the shoulder.

“What?” the Canadian snapped. 

“You….that….”  Jackson was trying to form a straight thought but that last shot of Jagermeister was clogging his brain.  He finally managed to blurt, “I don’t like you!” 

“Fantastic.”  The Canadian said, drank his beer and squeezed Jackson’s ex even tighter. 

Jackson shoved him again.  “I really don’t like you!” 

“So what’re you gonna do about it, runt?” the Canadian snarled. 

“I’m gonna fight you!  Eh!”    

Twenty seconds later there was a maple leaf shaped gash in the middle of Jackson’s forehead and his friends were hauling him into the street.  “I’m gonna pound his ass all the way back to Juneau!”  Jackson screamed before passing out. 

His friends considered taking him to the hospital but remembered it was dollar shot night at the bar across the street.  They left Jackson in the parking lot figuring he would find his way home.

Around three in the morning, Jackson was found by a pair of girls who were a part of the same group as the Canadian.  They saw the maple leaf mark in his forehead and assumed he was the Canadian equivilent of Harry Potter. 

The next morning Jackson woke up in Montreal with a splitting headache and a gang of devoted followers.  Within a year thousands of people from across the world were coming to him to learn from his wisdom and hear tales of his battles against the evil moose sorcerer.  By the end of the decade his followers had reached the millions.   

And that is the story of how Jackson McDonald, a boy who didn’t even know what country Juneau was in, became the first and last wizard king of Canada. 

Two Penny Sagas: Uncle Leo

My cousin, Karen, suggested this first line to me.  I wrote for five minutes.  This is what I got.  (If any of you have any more suggestions for prompts please let me know.) 

"Crap," I thought, as I broke off another toe.

“Dude!  Not again!”  My brother shouted. 

“Sweetie, be more careful with your uncle!”  Mom panted hoisting up his shoulders.  Uncle Leo had died right after the holiday season so his corpse weighed fifteen pounds more than it should have. 

Uncle Leo just moaned and strained against the straight jacket we’d kept him tied up in since he’d died and come back. 

“Sorry,” I mumbled and pocketed the toe.  “It was an accident.”

With a lot of panting and heaving we managed to haul Uncle Leo out of the basement and up into the den.  The worst part about having a dead relative was that we all had to get up ten minutes earlier every morning. 

After we placed Uncle Leo on the couch my brother checked the straight jacket, Mom placed a plate of raw meat next to him in case he got hungry and I put on a football game we had recorded on TiVo.

“We’re going out now!” Mom shouted at Uncle Leo.  “We’ll be back in the afternoon!  Be good!” 

Uncle Leo snarled at her.

“Mom we’re gonna be late for school!” My brother moaned. 

“Both of you give your uncle a kiss!”  Mom snapped. 

We groaned, and pecked him on the cheek before running out to the door.  Everyone at school thought that it was weird that we kept Uncle Leo around.  There were places where professionals could help people with his condition but Mom insisted that this was more humane. 

Two Penny Saga: Big News

My friend, Mikey, suggested this first line to me.  I wrote for five minutes.  This is what I got.  (If any of you have any more suggestions for prompts please let me know.)

In one instant I became the second most important thing in my whole life. 

“Well?” my wife asked. “Aren’t you gonna say something?”

“Am I the father?”  I blurted out.

Her glass of ice water splashed my face.  “How can you even ask that?”  She snapped.  “What kind of insensitive jerk are you?”

I became painfully aware that patrons and waitresses throughout the diner were staring at us.

“Sorry.  I’m sorry!”  I spluttered wiping my face.  “I didn’t mean that.  I know I’m the father.  I just got excited.”

“Isn’t there something else you want to tell me?”

“I love you.”

“Better.”

“And I love this baby.  I’m going to be the best dad ever, I swear.”

She stared down at her lap.  “We need to talk about the future.”

“We’ll sell the apartment.  I’ll find a house in the suburbs with a great neighborhood and a fantastic school system.  When that baby arrives in nine months-.”

“It’ll be here in six weeks.”

“Wait, what?  How long have you been pregnant?”

“Less than a month.  As for moving, we’ll have to go somewhere isolated.  There can’t be any neighbors.  It would be best if the house had a really deep basement where the baby can dig tunnels and hunt rats when it gets hungry.”

“Honey!  Stop that!  Why are you talking about our baby like this?”

“Because children in our family always take after their mother.”