Quote For The Day 4-6-2017

I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

FLASH FICTION FOR THE PURPOSEFUL PRACTITIONER 4-2-2017

The challenge for Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner will open early Wednesday morning, March 29th. Allow the prompt to take you anywhere you want to go! (Limit your stories to 200 words.)

This challenge is open until 11:00 pm Friday night, April 7th, 2017.

Flash Fiction for the Practical Practitioner

The shoes sat in the closet for days, weeks, months, a year. No more superhero leaps and bounds. No flying the world backwards. No heroes, no villains.

Every day. Month. Year. I looked at the shoes. I should give them away. Banish them from my life.

Just like he said I’d tossed him away.

Sheet around his neck, flying off the roof of the porch. Hospital visit one. Slamming into a brick wall not leapt in a single bound. Hospital visit twelve. Spinning wildly on the tire swing, leaning back, hair in the dirt as he spun. Got up and fell down, cracking his skull on the corner of the steps. Visit thirty-two.

Visit fifty-four. Humpty Dumpty had a last fall. For once, they couldn’t put him back together again.

The doorbell rang. I closed the closet and walked through the empty house. Handing the keys to the realtor, I walked away. Free.

 

 

JSW (Just Start Writing) Prompts

Other bloggers have expressed an interest in JSW prompts. Like I’ve always said, the more the merrier. If the urge strikes you to write off the prompt, please feel free to do so. You can link back to my original post and I will reblog your story onto A Writer’s Life. Please try to keep your response under 500 words for the sake of the reader’s time. Also, please do not write anything unfit for younger readers as I have no idea whether any of my followers are under 18.

I am trying to get onto a weekly schedule, posting the prompt on Mondays. This would give you at least a week to respond. If you need longer, go for it. Just remember to copy the prompt into your reply.

So, that said, the prompt for this week is:

 

 

Quote For The Day 2-2-2017

Real life isn’t made up of heroes and villains. Just ordinary people making choices they have to live with.”
― Kat Kruger, The Night Has Teeth

Shhhhhush, Don’t Tell – My Secret Vice

Okay, I admit it. My secret vice is watching reality Cop Shows. I’m not sure why. It’s not quality entertainment by any means. Or pretty. Or quiet. Or most anything one might offer as a reason to watch these programs. Besides the improbable explanation that I was a police person in another life, the only logical reason I can give for sitting hours watching these shows is ‘I watch these shows because I am a writer.’

Most Cop Shows illuminate a life-style I don’t understand and don’t believe I will ever understand. How can people live like that? Drunk all the time. Drugs. Fighting. Blood. Just the general sense life is shit and they are moving towards destroying their lives as best and as quickly as possible.  Last night I watched the show Under Arrest. The ‘criminals’ screamed at the cops for the entire show. I don’t mean raised voices, I mean screaming at the top of their lungs, calling them all sorts of names, sure the cops were out to get them or just about anything rude, obscene or stupid that could come out of a human mouth.

These shows boggle me. People run and fight and struggle and lie as if it is the most normal behavior in the world. If the Police told me to lie down (which had never happened to me as one speeding ticket doesn’t account for pulling me out of the car at gunpoint – thank goodness ), I would be on the ground, not doing anything to make the Officers mad. I would be ‘Yes Siring ‘or ‘Yes Ma’aming’ every request or order. I might be crying, heck I would be crying, but that’s a far as I would go.

Back to that one speeding ticket in my life. I surprised the cop because all I said was, “No, I didn’t know how fast I was going, I was just hurrying to get the ice cream in the back home as soon as possible.” I was polite.  I didn’t argue. Hopefully, if nothing else, I gave him a nice break from arguing and cursing.

So, yes, those shows fascinate me. They are a peek into a life that I have never have, and hopefully never will, experience in real life. So if you happen to see me cuffed by the road, I hope you’ll know I was the politest arrestee ever. And it probably isn’t really me, rather one of the multitude of characters in my universe, born from watching my secret vice way to often for my own good.

Photo from IMDb website.

Quote For The Day 10-23-2016

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”
― Jimmy Carter, The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture

Quote For The Day 10-13-16

We’re all the hero of our own story.”
― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat    

Daily Post One Word Prompt 7-8-2016

False

The Neighbors, Part 1

There are those among us who live false lives. Nasty men. Vicious women. Forgotten children. You will never see them. They pretend normalcy; friends and neighbors and co-workers. Inside they are monsters.

Am I one? Some things are best discovered on your own.

They moved in in late July, one rusty truck filled with rickety furniture, broken plastic toys and a mangy dog tied to the tailgate. I watched for an hour, until the truck was unloaded, before heading out to welcome them to the neighborhood.

James, Jane and little Janice. Could smell them half my yard away.

I introduced myself without offering to shake hands. Who knew what I’d come back with that I hadn’t had before.

“You come a long ways?”

“From Phoenix.”

“Nice place, Phoenix. So I’ve been told.”

He shrugged, bored already.

Janice ran over tugging the dog behind her. I stepped back just enough to keep her from grabbing my slacks.

“Do you have a dog?”

“No.  I don’t.”

“Did you used to have one?”

I shook my head. “Don’t like dogs.”

Her face fell. The dog snuffed the grass, lift his leg.

Least he was on their yard. I’d need a fence, I decided. And soon.

 

Quote For The Day 6-3-2016

“Fear is a … it’s a weird thing, when you think about it. People are only afraid of other things, they’re never afraid of themselves.” ― Dan Wells, I Am Not A Serial Killer

 

Do you agree or disagree with this quote?  Can you be afraid of yourself? I admit I am on the fence, but at least it is making me think.

Quote For The Day 6-1-06

“A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster, did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?”
― Kristin Cashore, Graceling