From last week:

All right! Last week’s story ended up being a science fiction tale loosely inspired by the prompt I drew from the Story Engine’s Science Fiction expansion deck. It involved a chrononaut getting stuck in a time loop that could only be broken out of by exploding a naked singularity, and it ended up with dinosaurs, as all good science fiction stories should. It’s called “Shadow Event”, and I think it’s one of my stronger pieces, though of course it needs massaging to get it into a state where I’m comfortable submitting it.

I have to say that I’m really enjoying this process. So far, at least. It feels good to put words on screen after taking a break. I still have my novel Padma that I’m revising, and Witness to the Scourge that I’m worldbuilding for, and haven’t had much success with. So far, at least. I’ll make it work. Both of them.

For this week:

I ran a poll on a local writers Slack discussion board as to which Story Engine deck I should pull from, and the response was (narrowly!) in favor of the Fantasy deck. Here’s the prompt:

Or, if you don’t want to look at the picture, here’s the prompt:

A thorny fighter wants to open an ancient door that can only be unlocked by a sword, but it will loose a plague upon the world.

At first blush, this might look a little hackneyed, but I have ideas that I think are pretty original, inspired by some Dungeons and Dragons games I ran eons ago. I don’t know what to call the story yet, but there’s an orc involved as the main character.

Not much else to report, save that I’m terrified for my country and I enjoy eating chocolate ice cream and I expect to have some soon. I hope everyone has a great week!