Update on last week’s story:

Last week’s prompt was a lot less challenging than usual, although I did hit a stalling point in around the middle of writing the story itself. I crowdsourced some ideas for misuse of the technology that was at the center of the story, and used what I thought was one of the most frightening. The story was also one of the most personal stories I’ve ever written, and in two days I wrote over two thousand words. This story’s a keeper, I think, though, as usual, it will need revision for I expose the world to it.

One of the reasons I started this story late (I started it on Friday) is because I had jury duty, and now that the trial’s over I can talk a little bit about it. It was, basically, a criminal trial. After seven days of evidence and witnesses, we the jury deliberated for about five hours, and delivered guilty on all counts, including two counts of first-degree felony murder (one count per each defendant). We were very somber while the verdict was read; there were tears among the defendants, their families, and the family of the victim. It was harsh, and emotional. But my jury duty is done for now, and I hope I don’t have to do that again for a long time.

This week’s prompt:

This week’s prompt is…

A well-loved servant wants to escape a death, but it will cost their reputation.

Again, I already have an idea for this one. I hope it’s a good one. This one could be fantasy or science fiction. I think I’ll go with science fiction. There’s always some debate over whether science fiction actually predicts the future or simply warns against it (there’s the whole “Torment Nexus” meme). Personally, I think science fiction is good not at predicting tech futures (though it often does), but, where science fiction is as its best, it’s good at predicting social futures. That is, how new technology or new societal/cultural developments will affect people. So that’s what I’m going for. I’ve developed what I think is a really interesting technology for my last story, “Innoculous”, and will develop it and its implications in this next story.

How would you interpret this prompt?

One of the interesting things to me about these Story Engine prompts (and writing prompts in general) is the wide variety of ideas and stories that can come from them. Mur Lafferty hosts a bi-weekly writing session called Kick in the Pants (you can join if you sign up for her Patreon). Each time, she sends out a prompt and each participant writes either 1,000 words or for thirty minutes, whichever comes first. And each time, I am fascinated by how all the participants interpret the prompt and write to it. Join her Patreon, sign up for her Discord server (a very friendly and welcoming community), and play along.

This week’s recommendation:

This week is another music recommendation, but it’s different from either The HU or Marian Call. This week’s it’s a hip-hop/cyberpunk band called Clipping. I heard about them on the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct (which I highly recommend, by the way), and I was very interested. One of the things I decided I wanted to do this year was to expose myself to musical genres that were unfamiliar to me, and, well, hip-hop/cyberpunk is one of them.

Anyway, here’s their album Dead Channel Sky. Enjoy! And have a great week, all!