Hello, I did not die after my last post, I merely decided to stop sleeping for a while and was thus too brain dead to write! Yay for insomnia! Lets talk about inspiration!

Inspiration can be every bit as fickle as lady luck. I know I always welcome it (except for late at night when I’m trying to sleep), but it rarely sticks around as long as I’d like.  In its absence I continue to write, of course, until I run into my mortal enemy . . . writers block. He is a dastardly and thoroughly unlikable villain. He grabs hold of every good idea before I can think of them and punts them over the horizon.  Fortunately he doesn’t stick around forever, though I’d prefer he never came round at all. When he is around, I think I get so focused on the block that I zone out everything else. Even when inspiration tries to give me a light tap on the shoulder.

Interesting things happen in the world, big and small. Driving to work alone has so many individual events. The crazy driving of a fellow driver, the person at the red light jamming to their tunes, the ambulance that causes everyone to scramble to the side of the road, the teen sitting sullenly at the bus stop . . . all things that could spark inspiration. Basically I’m trying to say that inspiration is everywhere, you just have be aware and attentive. Sometimes Inspiration finds you, and other times you have to find it.

A short post with nothing hugely groundbreaking in it, I know. But drawing both of those images took way more time than I’m willing to admit, and I just got pizza and my tummy demands I give it my full attention. So on that note, thanks for reading. Until next time!

-Kron

Hello dear reader,

I apologize for my long absences. It’s been far too long, I hope you’ve been well. Another year has come and gone, as years tend to do on a reoccurring basis. With the holiday season behind us we can all face a brand spanking New Year, full of potential awesomeness. It is traditional for people to make resolutions for a new year, often aimed towards self-improvement. Personally I think it makes more sense to resolve to do things whenever you can, not at the birth of a year. Despite that I do have some resolutions for this new year, especially in regards to writing. In order to feel like less of a hypocrite I’m not calling them resolutions. Instead they are writinglutions, and here is the list!

Kron’s Totally Not Hypocritical 2016 W20ritinglutions

1. Write consistently and passionately.

I’m passionate about my writing/stories, and I’ve definitely written consistently in the past. However I’ve struggled to keep both in balance. I’ve noticed that with consistency I sometimes I burn myself out, to the point where I’m writing only for the sake of writing, not for passion. That is something I really want to work on. How? I’m not 100% sure yet . . . but a motivational poster on my wall probably wouldn’t hurt!

2. Finish a rough draft.

I have never actually finished a rough draft of anything that was longer than a few pages. There are multiple reasons for this. The biggest reason is I tend to lean towards writing big stories . . . and without the above-mentioned consistency those can take a very long time to finish. I also think I develop too much in my head and not enough on paper. I’ve almost always written with a rough outline in my head that I loosely follow, but rarely one that I can physically read. As such I all too often get off track and end up on so many tangents that I eventually lose interest/give up. I’d love to finish the rough draft for my first science fiction story this year, but I’m setting my sights on the shorter and simpler story I worked on during Novembers NaNo. Which incidentally I’ve been using a physical (well, digital) outline for.

3. Read more

Ok, so reading isn’t writing, but it’s important all the same. Practicing writing is important for improvement, but studying is too. In recent years I’ve stopped reading as much I used to, which is rather lame. When I do read, I’m paying attention. I’m watching out for interesting word choices (a strong vocabulary is important!), how characters think, how the writer does his/her dialogue, and so on. I consider myself to be a good writer, but it would be arrogant to think I have nothing to learn from others, especially others who have actually gotten something published!

4. Blog more!

Self-explanatory. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, or just looked back through my previous posts, you know that I had an extended period of time of consistent posts. This is something I’ve wanted to get back to for a while now (aka since I stopped posting regularly). I’m not sure exactly what form it’ll take in the new year, but I know I’d like to do at least two scheduled posts a week, preferably three. Maybe even start up a bi-weekly serialized story. Who knows, the skies the limit!

Thanks for reading, an happy new year! 🙂

Time for a little update on my current project, code-name: Genie in the Post Office.
A week into NaNo and I’m currently at 12,810 words, which puts me on track to have at least 50,000 words by the end of the month, if I keep up this pace.

Speaking of my writing over this last week, have you ever written a sentence only to realize it sounds like something out of a porno? Yeah, that happened my first day of writing. I plan on avoiding posting excerpts of this project online til I have more written…but I’ll make an exception for this. Besides, it’s really short. Here is what I initially wrote:
“Lick. It.” The postmaster shoves it right under James’s nose.
Yeah. I wrote that. Go me. At least it was a quick and easy thing to fix. I just replaced “it” with “the envelope.” Which I’m hoping doesn’t sound like an innuendo itself. I can be kinda dense around such things. Sigh.

In addition to the accidental innuendo, a lot of things have changed in just my first week of writing. Like me accidentally changing my main characters name in the middle of a chapter. James became Greg, and then I forced Greg to change his name back to James. That was fun. It is one of my darkest fears that James will develop an alter ego named “Grames” hellbent on my destruction. Oh well, I’ll just need to be ready to do ctrl + a and then delete him and his world of existence. It’s sort of a nuclear option, sure… but I feel it’d be my best bet to contain this hypothetical rampaging character.

I’ve accidentally switched from past to present tense after the first day too. Which isn’t a big deal to me…I vastly prefer present tense. As I’ve said in the past it feels much more immediate and draws me in more, when it’s done properly. I guess I just want to make sure I don’t hurt my ability to be versatile with my writing. Past tense shouldn’t be completely removed from my writing toolbox.

This past week has made me hate dream sequences, because I’ve written what feels like entirely too many of them. Out of the seven (short) chapters I’ve written thus far four of them have fairly lengthy dream sequences. The dream sequences in this story are supposed to be pretty integral to pushing the plot along. If I need to write some wacky zany dream happening, that’s not really a big deal. But having to fit in symbolism and meaning into it… that seems to make it ten times harder for me. Onward and upward though, they say practice makes perfect after all.

That’s all folks! Next Monday expect to see my first Monday Musing post in ages, later! 🙂
-Kron

I’m alive! It’s crazy how time flies, at some level it only feels like a month or two since the blog was last active. I’m going to keep this post short and sweet, but expect to see weekly posts popping up here again!

Life has been super hectic and full of change this year, which is why the blog completely fell to the wayside. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has what I feel is the ideal song for getting yourself moving again after a long absence (video below).

Now that that is out of the way, I’m participating in NaNoWrimo this month, and I’m aiming to win! I’m taking a break from the Space Story and instead working on a shorter story set the quirky fantasy genre involving a post office, a genie and all kinds of other wondrous/ridiculous things (I mean, post offices are bizarre, am I right?). I’m two days in and I’ve slightly exceeded my average daily word count to finish by the end of the month (at my current pace I will be done on the 27th!). Even better, I’ve finished two (short) chapters already. I’m hoping I can keep up the pace of a chapter a day, though I fear that once I get a bit further into the story that chapters will become longer which in turns make finishing one a day harder.

In addition I’m participating in the #NovWritingChallenge on twitter (I’ve participated a fair amount in the past, but not recently.). The basic goal is to write 500 words a day every day for the month and then tweet your count for the day out there with the #NovWritingChallenge hashtag (is saying its a hashtag redundant? I dunno). For more information on the challenge click here.

That’s all folks! Short and slightly scatter brained post…not to mention probably riddled with stupid mistakes that I will find later and be frustrated by, but I’m feeling a little short and scatter brained and riddled with errors (wut?), so it seems fitting. I’ll be back with more regular posting soon, peace out!
-Kron

Hello! I missed my Wednesday Writing prompt again, sorry. Seems like no matter what I do I continue to struggle to get back into the groove of writing posts regularly. I’ll get better, I promise! At any rate, a quick update on the Space novel…I have no updates. I’ve barely made any progress towards Camp NaNo. In fact, I think that 50,000 word goal is actually keeping me from working on it at this point, so I’m going to lower it to something more manageable like 20,000.

Anywho,  l don’t exactly have a musing. Instead I have a continuation of a bit of writing I posted some time ago. You can read the first bit here. So it’s not a musing, but maybe it’ll be interesting enough to raise some questions and cause some thoughts. I don’t know, you tell me.

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Procy yawns and stretches until his shoulder blades pop. Dealing with Creativity has always been an exhausting endeavor. He turns and looks through the one way window into the room, nodding approvingly at the sight of Creativity slumped in a corner.
A thin man with a sallow gray complexion clears his throat nervously.
“Good job calling me.” Procy says approvingly. “Shouldn’t have any more problems with this one for the next few cycles.”
“But…is it…” the man looks around nervously before finishing his sentence squeakily “…safe?
Procy glowers at the man. “Are you questioning my ability to do my work?”
“Oh…no…no. Of course not! I would never…”
Procy silences the stammering with a wave of his hand. “Just get back to work.”
“Yes sir. Right a-away!” He salutes and scampers down the hall, presumably to resume his patrol.
Procy turns and walks the other way, back towards the control room. “Oh how things have changed.” He says to himself silently. “Wasn’t responsible for anyone but myself, it was great. Nothing got done. Nothing!” He throws his hands up in the air.A pair of workers in black coveralls give him a wide berth, eyeing him nervously.
“But now, now we’re ‘organized,’ all working together for a brighter future. Blah.” He snorts. “Pile of hogwash, of course. A dream cooked up to ease the already strained relationship between citizens and the ruling elite.”

He stops in front of another cell and leans against the viewing glass. The inside is filled with several feet of standing water. In the middle stands a small child, her ankles chained to the floor, forcing her to stand on her tip toes to keep her head above water.
He reaches over and flips a large switch on the wall and the lights in the cell blink off. In the dark Procy can see the slight pink glow emanating from the child. “Ah, Hope. You know, I kind of envy you.” He taps the glass as he talks conversationally.
She turns her head and her large blue eyes dart to the window. She shouldn’t be able to see him, but Procy has always suspected that Hope can see more than most.
“Look at you. It doesn’t matter that you’re in a miserable situation. You keep on being you. But me? I’m in a great position. I’m free, I can boss others around…but I can’t be myself.” He takes on one of his rare philosophical tones. “Sometimes I wonder which one of us is the prisoner.” He squints “Then again, you’re getting a little dimmer each day. Give it some time and your dangerous radical ideas will dull.” He flips the light back on and continues down the hall.

He passes the remaining cells quickly, not bothering to look at them or their occupants. He’d much rather be in his office sitting in his brown leather chair while staring at the clocks little hand go around and around. Unfortunately today is a busy one. Not only has an emergency meeting been called for the council, but he has been chosen to host the meeting in his prison. Extremely inconvenient. He passes through the security check points as quickly as he can, counting the hours in his head til he will be free to do as he wishes. He enters the lobby and is met by his assistant.
“Persistence.” He nods, trying to be cordial.
She gives him what he assumes must be a smile, though it comes out as a half sneer. She holds up a clip board and looks at it. “Council members will be arriving any minute. Don’t forget you need to ask about an increase in funds for rehabilitation. As you know there is a much higher chance of being able to reform citizens and elite alike when we have proper tools. The more citizens and elite that we are able release the bigger our work force can be, and the happier said work force will be. It’s a win-win, which is why you should ask. Also numbers are down 5% in breakout attempts, a favorable number that you should share, I’m sure that will make the council more willing to release funds to us…”
She continues to ramble on, but Procy tunes her out. Truth be told Persistence, Persy for short, nearly wound up a prisoner herself. She’s what one might call a fringe elite. Potentially a sympathizer for radical elements, but definitely useful. There had been some concerns raised about Procy’s ability to run the prison on his own. No one doubted that he could keep prisoners in line, and even eventually reform them. The concern was his lack of work ethic. Persy on the other hand has an overabundance of work ethic. She can’t stop working on something until she is happy with it. A more or less perfect counter-balance, the two of them. An add bonus, as pointed out by Guile was that seeing her would set a precedent amongst imprisoned elites that there can be a place for them in this new society, if they conform.
Persy tugs on his sleeve, pulling him out of his reverie.
“They’re here!” She hisses quietly. “Don’t forget. Funding! Numbers!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Procy pulls his sleeve free and walks towards the front doors, squaring his shoulders.

“Welcome, council members!” He booms, forcing himself to grin as if he is happy to see them.
Deceit steps forward, his long cape swishing behind him. He returns an equally fake smile. “Ah, so good to see you again, buddy.” his words ooze insincerity. Still, the man is a brilliant at manipulating public opinion, so Procy is willing to cut him some slack.
Behind him comes Frugality. A tall awkward man with frizzy brown hair and the opportunistic look of a vulture. “Hello.” Frugality has a nasally voice that grates on even the most patient persons nerves. However since he controls all funding, Procy has to be extra nice to him.
“Ah, Frugality. Is that a new tweed suit? I must say I admire your fashion choice!”
“Mm. Yes. It was on a sale, only one gem, if you can believe it!” Frugality beams.
The front door slams open, and in steps Anger, commander of the military. A head and a half taller than even Procy, and three times as muscled.
“Ah, commander. So happy you could make it!” Procy tries to keep a neutral tone. Anger can do terribly bad things when he is angry.
“You better be!” He roars, spraying Procy in spittle. “Make sure not to waste my time!”
“Of course. Wouldn’t dream of it.” Procy assures him as Persy hands him a handkerchief.
“In fact, why don’t you let my assistant take you to the meeting room? There will be refreshments, and you can take a seat and relax until the rest of the council arrives.”
“Ah, lovely idea. Let’s do that.” Deceit nods and motions for Frugality and Anger to go ahead of him.
As Persy leads them away Procy turns back towards the door, waiting impatiently for the final two council members, hoping they’re not late.

It is only a few moments late when Guile arrives, wearing a nondescript gray suit and aviator sunglasses.
“Hello, Procrastination. Am I the first one here?” his voice is smooth and gentle, though Procy knows the man can be quite hard when need be.
“No sir. Deceit, Frugality, and Anger are in the meeting room already.”
“Ah, I see. If you don’t mind I will join them. I think I know the way.”
“Of course, of course.” Procy motions politely.
Guile strides off with a spring in his step. Definitely has something up his sleeve for this meeting. He always does.
Procy begins to daydream of sitting in his office doing nothing when the door opens one final time and the arguably most important council member steps through, followed by her guard.
“Honesty. So happy to see you again.” Procy does his best bow, nearly falling on his face.
“Please, you do not need to pretend around me. You know that.” She gives him a small smile.
“Quite right, Honesty. Quite right.” Procy nods. Honesty’s position on the council is an odd one. Publicly she is in charge. That is a sham though. She’s not a fringe elite like Persy. She’s way past that, in the league of Creativity and Hope. She’d be locked up if it weren’t for the fact that she makes a useful puppet for the public, and for the fact that she can keep Deceit in check at council meetings.
“Shall we join the others?” Procy steps to the side and politely motions towards the meeting room. “You are the last one to arrive.”
“Blame my guard for me being late.” She gives an evil glare to her guard, Sloth. He is a large greenish blob in a vaguely humanoid shape. A large chain protrudes from his chest and connects to metal harness wielded around Honesty’s waist.
Procy shrugs “Perhaps you could request the council consider a new guard for you. I’m sure something could be figured out.”
Honesty starts to walk towards the meeting room, but jerks to a stop as she gets to the end of the chain.
“Sloth! Please, just work with me here, huh? Please?” She fumes.
Sloth responds with an illegible gurgle and begins to move and a glacial pace.  When they finally reach the meeting room Sloth holds the door open for what feels like ages, until both Honesty and Sloth are within. He takes a deep breath, once again wishing he could just be in his office, before stepping into a room that could erupt into chaos any moment.

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Well, that’s all for now folks, I hope you enjoyed!
Until next time! -Kron

No Monday Musing today as I have unfortunately been under the effect of extended insomnia, which makes writing and thinking rather hard at times. Six days into Camp Nano and I should have 10,000 words written. How many have I actually written? Six hundred and eighty-nine. I’m just a bit behind, no biggy.
I’m going to do my best to still win Camp NaNo, but I may lower my goal from 50k words to a more manageable 20-30k. I’ve had to learn it’s ok to adjust personal goals, expectations CAN change.

I was going to do a continuation of my creativity story (you can read it here), but I’ve decided I’d be better off focusing on getting rested up. Continuing that story definitely something I want to do in the future though!

So yeah, that’s all I got. Thrilling post, right? I’m still trying to get back into the groove of blogging and writing regularly. Progress is slow right now, but that could change rapidly! Thanks for reading!
-Kron

Hey there! I guess I’ll start off this post with some general information on where my science fiction novel is. By my estimation I’m maybe a little over halfway through my first rough draft. At least I am until I decide there’s even more I want in the story. Camp NanoWrimo started today, so I have once more entered with the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month. It’s an achievable goal, I did it last July after all, but I’m not sure if I’ll make it. In order to win I’ll have to average 1,600 words a day, thus far today I’ve written 689. If I do win it’ll be a sizable chunk of progress towards finishing my rough draft. Fingers crossed I guess! Anyway, I know I usually post  a writing prompt on Wednesday, but because I’d like to try to get more writing done for Nano later I’m not going to today. Sorry for the short post, I’ll be trying to build up by blogging stamina back up over the upcoming weeks!

Howdy! It’s finally time for me to pull my brain off the shelf where it’s collecting dust and put it to work. No joke I’ve spent all week trying to figure out what to write for this post, but just couldn’t quite get a good grasp on any solid ideas. I decided it was probably the fault my five month hiatus, I’ve gotten rusty. Then I realized that my hiatus itself could be the topic for a musing.  I’m the kind of person to to usually test a pools temperature with my toe, rather than jumping straight in and getting it over with. So I’m going to do my best to just jump straight into this post, short as it will end up.

As I said I feel rusty with my writing, both structurally and creatively.”It’s like riding a bike,” that is what people like to say. I don’t feel like that is completely applicable. If I were to pull out my bike and start biking again (which I need to do actually) I wouldn’t be able to bike as long or fast as when I did semi-regularly years ago. My previous experience in biking might make things a little easier to get back into the saddle, but it wouldn’t be an immediate transition.
The same goes for my writing. I remember how I used to write my blog posts, and the method I would use to come up with ideas for posts. I can’t seem to quite utilize that knowledge at that time. I guess the brain is just like physical muscles, if you exercise it you’re able to do more with it. You leave it alone and it starts to decline and atrophy.

Aaaaand that’s my musing for the day. Super basic, but eh, I’m just starting to exercise my writing abilities again. I wouldn’t want to develop a literary charly horse by overdoing it! 😉

Expect a writing prompt on Wednesday, along with some general information about about the state of my science fiction novel and more!

-Kron

Helloooo! My writing prompt post of 2015. Are you excited? I’m excited! In the past I’ve usually given a sentence to be used for the prompt, this time I just want to use an idea.

So, here is the prompt:
An older man tries to give advice to a much younger, and less experienced man.

I know that’s a bit vague, but that’s on purpose. If you use the prompt and would like for me to post what you wrote from it, please shoot me an email at kronaq@kroniaq.com.

Here is what I wrote from the prompt myself.

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The grizzled veteran, James, limps down the trench, the fine misty rain causing him to squint. He carefully allows himself to slide down into a crouched position, wincing. He glances to his right at two fellow soldiers who are using a water-logged deck of cards to play an impromptu game of poker. One of them glances up at him and nods. Acknowledgment without friendliness. James nods back, not interrupting their game. He looks to his left and see’s a small huddle of men, talking in hushed whispers. Gossiping most likely. One of them turns and meets James gaze, as if a sixth sense told him he was being looked at. James sizes him up. He’s green, a rookie. Might be eighteen, but James wouldn’t be surprised if he’s younger. Some kids will lie to get into the army, they only think about the glory and pay no heed to the danger.

The rookie hesitates and then saunters over to him timidly.
“Hi. I’m William.” The rookie says, with forced bravado.
“James.”
“Yeah, I know who you are… everyone here knows who you are.”
James cocks his head to the side. “I guess they do.”
“Is it true you’ve participated in over a dozen battles?”
“I don’t really keep count.” He sighs inwardly. Hero worship is not something he ever expected when he signed up. But that’s what has happened. “What can I do for you, William?”
“Oh… nothing.” He reaches up and adjusts his helmet. “guess I just wanted to say that you’re an inspiration. I want to be like you.”
“When you say you want to be like me, do you mean you want to survive against all odds?”
He grimaces for a moment. “I… guess.”
“So you mean you want to be lucky?”
“What? No, luck has nothing to do with it. If a man is a good solider, like you, then he survives.”
James barks out a single syllable laugh, gaining a glare from one of the card players.
“Do you mean to tell me that you think that men who die in war died because they were bad soldiers?”
Williams looks uncomfortable. “No, I don’t mean to disrespect those who’ve died… but if you do things right, then you don’t die. Right?”
“Did you come over here to ask me how to do things right?”
William looks at his feet, his face equally non-committal and embarrassed.
“Well then, fine. I’ll tell you how you survive. Sit down.” he pats at the mud next to him, and William takes a hesitant seat.

“The way you survive a war is you hang back. You do everything you can to not be the person at the front. You don’t try to be the hero. If you have a choice to risk your life when you don’t have to, don’t.”
“But… but.” William sputters. “That’s how a coward acts!” he looks outraged. “You haven’t achieved everything by being a coward!”
“I’m not aiming to survive.” He looks at him coolly in the eye. “I don’t have a death wish, I’m just not afraid of the idea of dying. That is generally an acquired trait, something someone your age is generally unable to really achieve.”
William opens his mouth but James cuts him off.
“Look kid, I know how it is to be young. Even when you know there’s a chance of danger to yourself, somewhere in the back of your mind you think it won’t ever happen to you. That kind thing happens to other people, not someone like you. You’re young, strong, and smart. So let me set you straight. I’m not going to say you’re a special snowflake, that is crap. You are just another person living on hunk of rock that has a surplus of people. You breathe, you eat, you crap and you sleep just like everyone else. Oh sure you may be above or below average in some aspects… but that’s really just part of the human condition. There is some variation in every person… which in the end is just another shared trait. Our differences makes us the same. I’m not saying that to be mean or to put you down. I’m trying to give you perspective. When I leave this earth there will be some people who mourn my passing, maybe even quite a few of them. But given time my existence will fade from memory completely or be replaced by a mere shadow. I will be reduced to nothing, just an idea or an action.”
William chews his lower lip, waiting for James to continue.
“That’s every persons fate, more or less. Whether you bravely achieve glory or survive with cowardice, that will be your fate.”
“So… you’re saying life is pointless?” He looks like he may be physically ill.

“Dammit. That’s not really what I mean.” He rubs his eyes. “Advice is not my strong point. I’m not mentor material. I can’t really tell you how to survive, because that’s really beyond either of our control.
Here’s how I view it. Every day people die, a lot of people die. People die in accidents, they slip in the shower, they fall down the stairs, they die from hunger and sickness, murder and war. With how many people in the world die each day, I figure the odds are stacked against my favor. The fact is you and I will both die, we just don’t know for sure when. Every day I don’t die is another time I’ve beaten the odds. The more times I don’t die the luckier I am. I’m not really good with numbers, but my reckoning the chances of someone making it to even their twenties requires a lot of luck. So I was already a survivor, even before the war. You’re as green as grass, but you’re already a survivor because you’re alive. That doesn’t mean you’ll survive today, or this war, but it does mean every day, every hour, every moment is a victory. Take solace in that. It’s what I do.”
William screws his face up. “I… I’m going to go.”
“Yeah, okay. You do that.” James shrugs.
He scurries away, holding his stomach.

“Good job. You terrified that rookie with your philosophical crap.” One the card players grumbles. “You’re a real stand up guy.”
“I didn’t ask for every rookie and his mother to ask me to hold their hand.” He shoots back. “I’m a soldier, not a counselor. Plus, I think that crap is true.”
“Everybody thinks their crap is true.” the other man grumbles, then straightens up. “Looks like we’re about to get busy, gimme the cards.”
As the other player hands the grubby cards back to their owner James looks down the trench.
An officer is striding down it, rousing the men as he passes. He fixes James with a rigid stare. James recognizes the man. He saved his life once… not that he ever got a thank you.
He pulls himself up, standing at attention.
“Alright men. We’ve been ordered to test the enemy defenses again, to try to find a chink in their armor. You know the drill. Wait for my command and then open suppressing fire.” The officer turns. “You lot, lead the charge.” he motions towards James and the soldiers surrounding him. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees William carefully take a step back, further distancing himself from James’s vicinity. He shrugs. He’s used to this kind of thing now, always getting picked to be cannon fodder. Word of his durability has spread through the ranks, and for some reason other soldiers feel more confident marching to their death with him, as if his luck will rub off on them. James leans against the side of the trench, ready to pull himself over the side when commanded. He tunes out everything around him, his senses waiting only for the command to charge. And there it is. The nasally roar that vibrates in his boots. He hauls himself up, ignoring the strain in his leg as adrenalin takes over. With his fellow soldiers he runs into the smokey night, into no mans land. Moments later the enemy begins to return fire. To his left he sees a man stop in indecisiveness and begin to turn around, right as a bullet hits him in the throat. He drops like a rock. Stopping is death, James learned that his first battle. He runs onward doggedly, his fellow soldiers falling around him.
Then he feels a sting in his stomach, followed by another in his shoulder. He tries to walk another step before he realizes he’s on his back. He stares upward at the cloudy sky, blood spilling from his wounds. In his brief moments before peaceful oblivion he has one thought. “Finally. All the victories were starting to get boring.”

Heya! So traditionally in the past Mondays have been for musings, but after all this time not posting on my blog I’m out of practice. Try as I may I can’t seem to get my creative juices flowing properly. As such I am opting to share the start of a short story I started quite some time ago. Enjoy!

The sun peeks up from the horizon, bathing the the earth with a new day. The rays of light glimmer across the ocean. The light reaches the base of a mountainous rocky island. All jagged peaks and eroded hollows. The tallest of the mountains is covered in fleecy white snow and glacial ice deposits. The mornings light reachs the top of this mountain and is refracted into dancing shimmering lights. One such refracted beam of light shines upon an odd little place. A cluster of bulbous balloons with thick black netting around them pull upward on airborn building. At one point this building may have been an airship, but there is no longer anything arrowdynamic about this creature. A mixture of wood and iron, it is a series of box-like shapes stuck together around the naked metal frame of an aged airship. The deck of the ship has had a greenhouse built on it, an affair of glass and wood. Contained within is the only greenery in this rocky forsaken place. One side of the airship has a dozen massive barrels attached to the side. Two heavy duty hoses snakes down from them to the rocky surface below. Smaller hoses radiate from the barrels and are attached to the bottom of the balloons. Located just to the right of the barrels a long wooden room has been built into an ironframe. It sways and creeks slightly in the breeze but remains attached to the structure. The other side of the ship features an open wooden pad. On top of it rests a small aerial lifeboat. It is securely tied down. The under side of the boat reveals several lines of wicked looking cannons, designed to swivel in 360 degree arcs. Three massive chains extend from the building, anchoring onto three opposing craggy rock formations. The light slides across a large windowed room, bathing the interior with warm yellow light. This is when our story really begins….with the awakening of the structures sole inhabitant.

Rarl blinks and yawns deeply, stretching his arms up above his head. He smiles lazily towards the sun as it crests the needle tipped peak, screwing up his eyes as it comes into full view. He sighs and sits up. He survey’s the room from his hammock. The walls are plastered with paper. A rough sketch of a massive city scape sprawls across the papers. Rarl has been using every little extra scrap of paper to make more room for his canvas for months. He frowns thoughtfully, wondering if there are any more old manuals that he can repurpose. He sighs and shakes his head. Probably not. He lightly jumps from the hammock and lands on the floor with bare feet. He yelps and jumps from foot to foot across the room towards an antique dresser. He tugs on the top drawer, which creaks in protest. He glares at it crosssly and tugs harder. The drawer slides free and falls to the floor, almost landing on his feet. Rarl snarls at it as he grabs a pair of heavy wool socks and tugs them on. He sighs in relief, much better.