I’m not a writer. Not a real one, anyhow. I’ve never been paid for my writing, I’ve only a few times even been printed, and none of those really count. I’m not known, I don’t write dependably or easily or consistently, and I am woefully out of touch with the publishing business and even modern literature. I’m not a writer.
…unless, of course, by ‘writer’ we mean ‘one who writes’. I do. Sporadically, unreliably, indulgently and sometimes badly, but I do write. I love to write.
It’s rather nerve-wracking to share these little stories and such, but I hope you like reading them.
Bits of Writing
Pause, Rewind
“Baby, you’re gonna be a star!”
“Don’t worry about a thing. Baby, you’re gonna be a star!”
Pause. Rewind.
“…and we won’t look back. Don’t worry about a thing. Baby, you’re gonna be a star!”
Pause. Rewind.
She’d been doing this for hours. The same scene, over and over. Classic movie, big stars,…Read More »
The Stained-Glass Puzzle Lady
If one should take a meeting with the CEO and founder of the Streitenfeld group- and if One is Anyone, one likely will – one might notice a woman in the corner, with Snow White’s colouring and Audrey Hepburn’s style. Then again, one might not notice, because said woman is…Read More »
Sword, Ring, Needle
The needle flashed in the late afternoon light, shuttering up and down as Shulie’s hands moved the dark fabric under the machine’s foot with her hands. The foot and needle both caught the light and glinted, while the black corduroy fabric seemed to swallow up the light. Black,…Read More »
Summer Song
I wrote this as a song for 50/90, which is a really brilliant songmaking community that really deserves its own post. I worked on the song a good few days, only to realise that it really kinda stood on its own as a poem of…Read More »
Blood and Sand
This little bit of microfiction didn’t start out that way. In fact, it didn’t start out as anything at all. You see, I’ve recently gotten a little Android tablet, mostly for pulling up Ukelele chords and recipes in the kitchen, and other such fun stuff. I was just playing about…Read More »
night for an august eve
night at the end of august
dusty road in dirty summer
the sweaty path to the end of salad days
and we grow sour too, over-ripe youth
(fruit of love mashed between our hungry pearls)
turn to wine, ferment and drop
sweaty shoulders and first-kiss sour and sweet smoke
for…Read More »
Microfiction: A Night with Fireworks
The Premise:
“I want a bitter grl and a cheeky boy and a night with fireworks just after a dance in a decade when everyone thinks the world is about to end. “
I.
No-one past graduation thought it was worth a damn, but the fireworks were…Read More »
A Girl’s Guide to Couch-crash Love
Very old, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I was pretty proud of it back then, though! So here you go.
“So..here’s the kitchen. You…you can cook if ya wanna but I never bother. The bedroom’s in…” the boy who was speaking blinked a few…Read More »
Not Anyone I Knew
She wasn’t anyone I knew.
I met her once, in a bar on fifty-second street. You know, one of those places where everyone orders gin & tonics, because at least you know that will taste bad in a way you’re used to, and all the other stuff behind the bar has…Read More »
What the Moon Saw
It was a hot, sultry evening as the carriage made its way north to Bristol; the sort of night that gave birth to strange, vivid dreams and stranger imaginings when one looked up to the huge, luminous orange moon. As the carriage bumped and shook it’s way along the coach-road,…Read More »
Fidelity
Imagine, if you can, a silence that is not the absence of sound…
Let me start again.
Imagine a silence that is not nothing, not what they call a ‘vacuum’, but a collective hush. Every being, animated or not, green and growing or fast and flitting or hiding in…Read More »
Tiny Twitterfictions
She was careful as she picked across the rubble to where he lay gasping, spurting his life. “If you thought me delicate then, I was. Not fragile, no, that was what you made me.” She touched him sweetly, leaving the scent of rose and resentment behind her.
Love wasn’t something…Read More »
Shall Never Be
As the days went by, Zinnia found herself more and more taken with the idea of being a wife. She hadn’t yet come to the idea of motherhood yet, but skirted around the edges of the idea as it began to timidly tiptoe into her mind. She…Read More »
Hands
Today….
My hands are coming off. I can walk to a cupboard I have in a tiny little room behind the kitchen….and after I slip through the soft whispering curtain, the little room makes my nose twitch as the dust motes and smell of cinnamon settle on my…Read More »
Muireann Takes Her Fill
This was written for Clockabye. It’s horrific and dark and I don’t know if it’s particularly well written, but I fretted over it for weeks, so there you go.
Be warned: There is death in this, and some sex, but that’s peripheral. There’s blood and gore and what I wouldn’ t…Read More »
Microfiction – Baroque
No-one really knows Mister Claypole’s first name. If you asked anyone who works under him in the theatre, any of his managers of patrons or whores, they might scratch their heads and speculate. George? Andrew? Donald? For some reason they will all give you the names of saints, and they will all forget to…Read More »
Microfiction – Victorious
Lindsey is a stage magician, at least he was. Now, he’s starting to suspect he may be a conduit for infernal secrets, but hasn’t let himself think about that enough to be properly alarmed. Before, he was a proper sort, if somewhat scattered. And sometimes he is that again, if he leaves his…Read More »
Microfiction – Visionary
Desire is a strange thing. Time can sharpen, dull, and twist desire, but want never dies. In three millenia of life, this is the only lesson Lucky Welles has ever learned.
—
Euphemia Horbruth is grand, imposing, out-sized. Her favorite niece has always, she thinks, been the contrast to her – small…Read More »
Microfiction – Fractured
Clock lives inside his Engine. His Engine lives inside a large warehouse with thick stone walls, but Clock doesn’t live in the warehouse. He sleeps under the timekeeper and he reads the morning paper under the database wheels, and he sometimes lays across a board set over the large system…Read More »
Salt
When the first wave came, we were ready. We had anti-radiation agent, and we holed up in the basement. We weren’t worried at all. The government would come through soon with scan-raids and life would get back to normal, like it always did. Only this time, the trucks didn’t come.
We ate the animals first, after the…Read More »
Perfume
“You smell like…” his nose was pressed into the crease where her hip met thigh, and she bit her lip – hard – to stifle a giggle. It tickled.
“I smell like yer mama’s perfume.” Her voice was harsh with stolen cigarettes, but he looked up with awe and thought it beautiful. “You didn’t!” But…Read More »
Lowri
Lowri ran in the hills and killed sheep and ate them for her breakfast. According to Dafydd, his sister had bested pirates on the shore, bandits on the road, and robbers at the hearth. She’d run to the Gower and back, she’d swum in the ocean and scorned the tides, she’d caught…Read More »
Romance in Three Acts
By the by? This is so ridiculously full of symbolism and allegory and trope and oh my god, all that good stuff that if I even tried to annotate it, the annotations would be tem times as long as the story. If there’s…Read More »
Phantasmagoria
“So what’s this shit do?”
“That just makes ya feel all…all gooey. S’nice.”
“And this shit here?”
The darker stuff? That’s the good shit. Like rambo-speed only no crash, s’great.”
“What makes it darker?”
“Fuck should I know? S’got somehtin’ on it. Think it might be the beetles. I always see ‘em on it…”
“Betcha it’s…Read More »
Too Much
Too Much is a little piece I wrote about Moll and Theo, two characters from The Victorious, one of the settings on Clockwork Lullabye. Is flowed out of my easy and sweet, and I’m a bit fond of it. As it’s filed under ‘erotic fiction’, I expect anyone who oughtn’t…Read More »
….When clouds come twogether
When clouds come twogether…
…in a symphonic sort of broo-hah-hah
and ie stand amaxed, thoughraly
watching, wah-cheeng
as they gl+eyed
a cross the mainstage uv
my vizun
and I oneder
if theh no
and if eye could sea
what they were dooihng
ware they ahr going
swoosh!
swish!
ahnd thi cloud-horses righd
and…Read More »
May 14, 2010 at 2:47 pm
There is absolutely no question about it – if you write, you are a writer, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! Not only that, but you’re published! Small things, maybe, but everyone has to start somewhere. You’re writing, and you’re sharing the writing with the world – as far as I can see, that’s pretty amazing.
May 14, 2010 at 4:35 pm
That’s one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever said to me. Thank you. Thank you so much!
July 21, 2012 at 1:12 pm
You have great facility with words and an obvious and incomparable love for them. Whether you’re paid to write or not, you enjoy language and expressing yourself, and it’s very kind of you to share that. Thank you!
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
-Ray Bradbury
August 6, 2012 at 10:56 am
Thank you so, so much for this comment! It makes me smile to read it.