But first:

I had a good conversation over the past week with a writer friend of mine about who can tell what stories, since they’d read my concerns about writing a story about a queer character’s coming out to their loved one. So maybe I could publish “The Obsidian Toad” someday, since the focus of that story is NOT the main character’s coming out, but their adventure and the murder at the heart of the story. Food for thought, to be sure. If I do decide to revise and publish, I will probably end up paying a sensitivity reader.

Last week’s story:

I almost didn’t make it, but I’m still caught up! Last week’s story fermented in my brain for nearly a whole week before I finally had an image that I liked.

That’s not to say that I didn’t make notes our come up with a character, of course. Each week that I work on a story, I usually open a Google Doc or a Word document which I use as a scratch pad for the story. I paste in the prompt, then include a few notes: main character, setting, antagonist, that sort of thing. Last week, though, it didn’t work out the way I wanted. I couldn’t come up with a blessed thing until Friday, and I wrote the story in a fevered rush yesterday. It’s called “Upward”, and it is, if I do say so myself, fairly creepy. And it’s a Christmas story!

This week’s prompt:

I rolled a 6 on the d8, to draw from the Science Fiction deck; and a 4 on the d6 to write a humor story. So here’s the prompt I drew:

An extraterrestrial wants to plan a bomb in a mobile high-rise but it will mean trusting someone who betrayed them.

I’m not sure what to do about a mobile high rise. There is certainly precedent in fiction for large mobile structures; Howl’s Moving Castle is definitely one from the fantasy realm, and Alastair Reynolds has played with the idea in one of his novels (alas, I don’t recall which one; I haven’t read it in nearly twenty years). And why would an extraterrestrial want to blow up a mobile high rise building? I don’t know. And how will Christmas play into this story? Again, I don’t know. But, as always, the fun is in finding out!

This week’s recommendation:

This week, I’m recommending that you watch the HBO Max series It: Welcome to Derry. It’s gory, it’s gruesome, it’s creepy, and has far too many subplots to sustain a simple story. In other words, it’s very much a Stephen King story.

I am definitely enjoying this show, even the ridiculous military subplot. It’s staying true — eh, sort of — the original mythology of the creature known as It from the novel by Stephen King, which I appreciate.

As I understand it, this series is meant to be a prequel to the recent film duology. I have not seen those movies, though I may get around to it this week.

And, of course:

As always, be kind, be weird, be punk, don’t be horrific, and have a happy ongoing Advent!