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You know that feeling where you wake up and think you're late for something so you start off with a panic and your day jumps off a bridge to accelerate from there? I'm not having that. What I did have was a weird dream where the kids and I were on a holiday, the place we'd borrowed from a friend or family member was a disaster, and that I stress-cleaned into the wee hours of the morning. I woke up feeling completely done for the day because I'd just finally gotten everything sorted away so that the kids and I could all sleep comfortably and wake up to have the best of our awesome vacation every day going forward... So basically I tucked in my kids after cleaning all night and then woke up.
But I woke up in my bed, in my house, and not on a tropical ocean vacation.
And it seems that I've hit a point in my writing life where I'm just being handed creepy ideas. I'm not sure that I'm doing them the service they deserve, I don't usually write creepy, but I'm enjoying the twisted takes these short stories are spiraling off on. My hope, coming into a summer off of posting short stories so that I could focus on writing them, was to have one creepy story I could develop into a horror short for posting around Hallowe'en. (I'm not good at horror, but someone who is volunteered to help if I could get the idea started.) In the past four weeks I've written for six prompt words and ended up with a sad story, a children's story, three creepy stories, and a novella in space. With three more weeks to go before my soft deadline for switching from drafting to editing, I'm exceedingly happy with the outcomes so far.
Happy anniversary for everyone involved in the first lunar walk! Space is awesome. We'll probably be spending some time today at the Telus World of Science to celebrate. Hope you have a great weekend!
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Hello! I just want to start off today with a shout-out to the parents who are veterans at preparing multiple kids for school, getting there on time every day, without the benefit of one kid (or more) who starts later or who hasn’t hit school-age yet and if that little one shows up in their pajamas it’s just a sign of how bad the morning went. Getting both kids prepped and out the door on time for summer camp this week was a training camp for me. Those of you who've done it for a year or more, my hat is off to you!
As for the writing side of things, my space opera continues to mock my efforts for attempting to make it a short story. This is going to be a novella. Flip side, I really want to keep it as a blog story, so… hopefully you guys will be interested in sticking around for some long-term Science Fiction doled out in weekly increments. And I have my next prompt word, provided by my lovely sister, so short story drafting will continue once this not-so-short-story-anymore wraps up.
Now begins the next bit of unscheduled days as we count down toward our sisters’ trip to Drumheller! Because dinosaurs :) Hope you have a great weekend!
Summer is tough to stay motivated in. There are about seven hundred things I think about doing every day, and all of them are currently thoughts that finish with 'tomorrow'. As in, I can do this thing 'tomorrow'. It's a dangerous trap! It's also a sweet days-off occurrence, and I'm coveting the time I have left where I can keep using 'tomorrow' as a period.
This has been the kids' first full week off school together. Both kids are still alive, and neither has maimed the other seriously. I have been informed a minimum of three times, every day, that summer is the most boring of boring things to ever make a 7-year-old bored. It's been unpredictably raining every day (showers, lightning storms and bonus hail), and the hours between rain have been filled up with mosquitoes, so there hasn't yet been much summer fun. Next week they both have summer day-camp. Fingers crossed they like that. After that, we have our sisters' trip to Drumheller booked! I'm excited, and it's still weeks away lol. As for me, I kinda fell off the rails for writing my short stories. I'm taking no blame in the fact that the latest one I'm writing has drafted itself into novellette territory and will likely finish as a novella-length book. My 4-year-old provided the prompt word, so this is on her. ;)
Plus, I'm apparently really bad at not sharing short clips of some writing so... here's an excerpt from the not-so-short story I'm writing! I love this dialogue. Hope you have a good weekend!
(Untitled Sci-Fi, futuristic space opera. Please note that, in this universe, naming conventions for people born and raised shipside are reversed to landside. Trevor is a woman, and Charlotte is her brother.) Captain still kept the lifeboat in hold until the end of the next shift after, in case of anyone who decided slower that they didn’t want to risk career, life, and potential ruination so wanted to choose instead to join the ninety-two leaving the ship. Only once more person did. Leo couldn’t help it when he woke up smiling to the open hold warning alarm. He and Trevor had filed their Established Relationship Registration and Captain had issued them a shared cabin, so he was waking up curled with her in a bunk actually big enough for them to sleep without being squished. Plus, Dockland felt lighter without negative voices weighing down every conversation. It might just be part of what Trevor called his sensitive, landsider emotions, but this old gunship suddenly felt comfortably home. “What are you grinning about?” Trevor asked. “I’m just happy,” he said, hugging her a little closer. “And yet you went to sleep scared of the dark.” “No, I went to sleep scared of all that living stuff like sleeping, walking, eating, and defecating on and around an enormous amount of ammunitions.” “Same thing,” she said through a yawn. “So what changed? You finally grow a spine?” “No, not at all,” he said, deadpanning it perfectly and making her smile. “I realized this is the same ship we’ve been on for a year and it hasn’t blown up yet. Chances are good that it won’t just because I now know the potential is there.” “Good job figuring that out, sweetpie,” she congratulated him in the most condescending voice possible. The open hold warning stopped alarming as Trevor stretched. “Sounds like it’s time for you to get ready for your quarterly physical.” “Speaking of, I expected Mom to had vidded about that by now,” she said, glancing at her smart. It chimed for an incoming vid request. “Okay, there she is.” Trevor answered the vid with only voice. “Hi, Mom,” she said, yawning again. “Where are you? I can’t see you. Are you up yet? You have that physical today, don’t forget,” her mom answered. “I answered you voice-only because we just woke up. I’ve got an hour until my physical.” “ ‘We’ just woke up?” Trevor’s mom demanded, making her daughter chuckle. “Established relationship forms signed and filed yestercyc. Captain assigned us a shared cabin and we moved in before going to bed.” Her mom made the same excited noise that she had for finding out Trevor was going to have a pregnancy check on today’s physical, and then yelled at Charlotte (who must’ve been minimum in another room) that Trevor and Leo were registered now. He grumbled a reply that the couple didn’t hear through the vid and got yelled at by his mom for being older than Trevor and not having someone to be registered with. “I’ll vid you after the physical to tell you the results, okay mom?” Trevor said over top of her brother's reply that, under Daion law, relationships didn’t have to register. “What time will that be?” “Usually the physicals only take half an hour.” “Okay, so I’ll vid you in an hour and a half.” “No, mom, I’ll vid you. I can’t get vids during physicals because of the monitoring.” “Oh, yes. Okay. They have to check the baby.” “No, mom, they’re checking me, remember? I’m the person getting the physical? We don't know if there is a baby yet.” “Of course there is if you're getting a physical for the baby. But you have to be healthy, too, I guess.” “Okay, mom. I’ll vid you after, okay?” “Okay. I love you. Oh, I’m so happy! Charlotte! Your sister will vid us in an hour with the results for how healthy the baby is!” The vid disconnected before Trevor could argue with her mom. Leo was laughing as she growled from the frustration of dealing with the vid before her morning tea. |
AManda FLIEDERThis was a weekly blog updating on Fridays, but life got busy. Now I pop in when I can to let you know I'm still chipping away at my stories. If you look back through the archive you'll find weekly quick personal blurbs about me, as in what's going on during my life as an Author and mom, and each blog entry doles out my short stories and novellas in bite-sized parts for everyone to read. For free! Check out my Short Stories section for free e-book downloads of most of my writing :) (Aside: almost everything I've written is free to read over on WattPad, too.) Archives
July 2025
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