But first:

First of all, I hope everyone had a happy Halloween. Jennifer has been gone for the weekend, so on Halloween evening, it was just me handing out treats (small windup toys) to the kids. We had about 45 trick-or-treaters come by, and I ran out of those toys around 8:00, so I had to turn off the porch light and close the door. And yet, two kids still showed up, braving the dark stairs, and I had to turn them away. They were very understanding.

Several of the younger children who came by insisted that our house is haunted. To which I say, pfah. The house is over 100 years old, and if there were any ghosts here, I would have seen them by now. Or, at least, I assume so. Honestly, the only things that haunt our house are the cats.

Last week’s story:

As is apparently tradition, I did not finish last week’s story. In fact, I haven’t even started it. I wrote the story for the week before, “The Lost Crown of the Final Elves”, in a flurry of words yesterday and today. It’s more of a vignette than even a drabble or flash fiction piece, a bit of backstory of one of the characters in Witness to the Scourge, the novel I am writing for NaNoWriMo. Said novel has not been started, even though it’s already the second day of November.

Anyway.

Last week’s story, title to be determined, just hasn’t been written yet. Or even started. I’ll start it tonight and hopefully finish it tomorrow or Tuesday.

My only excuse for not getting the writing done will be revaled in the Recommendation section of this blog post.

This week’s prompt:

I rolled a 4 on the d8, and a 6 on the d6. The 4 means to use the Fantasy deck, while the 6 means that there will be no subgenre. Just straight fantasy. That gives me plenty of room to mess around.

Here’s the prompt:

A plucky swashbuckler wants to imprison a dangerous spirit in a cavern, but they must forsake that which they worship.

Pirates! Or, rather, swashbuckler. This has the potential to be grand fun! Pirates are always fun. I’ve read quite a few books about pirates and watched a few documentaries and shows. So while the term “swashbuckler” may technically refer to a genre of European adventure novel featuring excitement and derring-do, I will use a pirate on the road to redemption, since that’s a feature of the swaschbuckler genre.

Plus, I’ll be outlining a new pirate novel starting, if all goes according to plan, in January. But I’ve already talked about Oceanbound.

This week’s recommendation:

Last Friday (that is to say, Halloween), I began watching a television series called NOS4RA2. It was originally broadcast on AMC, but is currently streaming on Netflix. It’s based on Joe Hill’s novel of the same name, which I read a few years ago and about which I remember very little, so I can’t say how faithful the series is to it. I enjoyed the series, though. It was cheesy and featured Zachary Quinto chewing up the scenery whenever he appeared on screen, and featured some mind-bending ideas and fascinating secondary characters. I was less than utterly pleased with the end, I’m afraid, but on the whole I recommend this limited-run series, two seasons of 10 episodes each. Yeah, I binged it. And that’s why I didn’t get any writing done.

And that’s it!

As always: be safe, be kind, be weird, be punk af, and don’t let the evil beings bite.