Super Quick and Wonderfully New!

Here are some of the writing prompts from earlier in the year that I wanted to share with you all. We've had an influx of new talent on Wednesdays, and even though this next writer can't be with us this semester, I wanted to share his wonderful work.

Man grasped dangerous

By Beau

“Man grasped the dangerous bone, the rib. Eve.” Ester pronounced the line doubtfully.  She didn’t like this kind of poetry.

“There is a theory, you know, that the bone from which Eve was made was not a rib at all.  ‘Rib’ is a euphemism for a part more, um, intimate to a man.”  Riley looked sideways at Ester as he drove.

“What could be more intimate than ripping a bone out of your side?,” she asked, turning toward him in the seat and poking him in the ribs.

“That would be the os baculum. Do you know what that is?” Riley had spent a year in anatomy school before giving up on being a doctor.

“The bacon bone?” she offered, playfully.

“Nope. The penis bone.” Riley smiled as she wrinkled her nose.

“Is there such a thing?”

“Walruses have them.  And opossums.”

“Men don’t have a penis bone,” she pronounced.

“Not any more.  Eve took it.” 

 

This one is from Angela

"This part is dangerous," Kenetis Master said with a chuckle.  The carpet dropped suddenly, and Kora's stomach flipped.   "You can do it," the man insisted.  "Drop it, then recover.  Go on."

"How is this a useful skill?" Kora demanded.

"Letting go-- not so much, though at some point you'll want to give control to another Technician in a stressful situation.  But the recovering, stopping the fall-- that's what you'll need to learn.  And you're good, my dear.  You're already good.  Show me."

Kora nodded and took control of the carpet.  Something in the Master's quirky grin made her want to prove herself.  The carpet dropped. 

And kept dropping.

Kenetis Master gasped, and she felt him struggle to take back the carpet, but she resisted.  The fall stopped, not suddenly with a jerk, but gently, softly, and then began once more to rise.  

The quirky smile had returned to the Master's tan lips.  "I told you you were good!" he repeated.   He took her hand and grasped it to his chest, and once more her stomach flipped.  

I'm looking forward to seeing many of you this Wednesday. The theme for March is Non-Human Romance, but of course, feel free to bring any of your work to share. See you all soon!

Good Afternoon, Friends!

A few bits of news and then I'll post some writing from one of our members.
1. Our next meeting is on February 1st. The theme for the month is time travel.
2. If you haven't seen Karen and Josh Leet's non-fiction book, Civil War Lexington, KY: Bluegrass Breeding Ground of Power, you can check it out (and purchase) here.
3. Several writing events are coming up in the next few months, including Script Frenzy, and Camp NanoWrimo. The National Ten Minute Play Contest has moved to the end of the year, so we can revisit that in the fall.
4. We've had several new regular attendees, and I'd like to give them a shout out for being such awesome additions to our group. Thank you Beau, Jay, and Pat!

In December, the theme was: stories that feature a favorite author. Karen gave me permission to post this on the sight, so here it is.

Five Authors in Search of a Character

By Karen Leet

"Back off, Koontz - I saw him first," warned Stephen King.

"You think you're so big and bad," Dean Koontz snapped back. "Just because every bleeding book you write makes a TV series or a blockbuster movie. You're not so big - I could take you down a peg or three or four."

"Yeah," King sneered. "You and what army, buddy?"

The old master stepped between the horror yuppies in time to prevent mayhem and/or bloodshed between the two best selling authors.

Edgar Allen Poe cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "I might not have been a best seller, but in my day, I rocked the literary world."

King sneered in silent scorn. Koontz ducked his head in a sort of reverent awe.

"That you did, Master Poe," Koontz acknowledged and glared at King. "You set the stage for the rest of us, and anybody with half a brain - who can't act to save his life - admits that."

King's frown caused Poe to hold out both hands to keep the two best sellers apart.

The woman watching laughed. "Oh come on, boys. Not one of you have a clue. Can you make teenage girls squeal in delighted terror? Can you stop middle aged women in their tracks and sigh fro lost youthful opportunities? Can you pull in mega bucks every time?"

She crossed her arms and smiled a huge Cheshire cat grin. "Nobody outdoes my Twilight series, boys -- you might as well give it up. The character is mine, all mine. Look at him. He's perfect for me - pale, bloodless, heartless, hopeless. What teenage girl wouldn't pass out cold at the glint in those colorless eyes? Besides, he's a mass murderer - I definitely need one of those."

"Get in line," Koontz snapped.

"In your dreams, Vampire Princess," King agreed.

"Now, now," Poe soothed. "Let's stay civil about this."

"Ha!" Stephenie Meyers laughed. "These two together couldn't find a definition for the word if Webster himself got out of his grave to help. And, say, Poe, speaking of being dead, dead, dead, aren't you..."

"Never mind that," Poe cut her off. "We need to work this out. We've got one character and five of us wanting him." He glanced at the silent member of their group and asked, "You are here in search of a character, right?"

The silent author nodded vigorous agreement.

"Yes, well then, let's find a fair way..." began Poe.

King interrupted. "I say, lets' do a King Solomon - and they claim I don't have any religion - hmmph. I say we chop our character into five equal portions - dibs on the heart!"

Koontz sighed. "You just don't get it," he told King. "The point of the Bible story is..."

"Who cares," king snarled. "I get the heart - get it, Poe? The heart is mine and I'll tell no tales!"

Poe bowed his head. Koontz leapt at King, grabbing his rival's throat with clawed fingers. Meyers dove into the fray, pummeling both King and Koontz.

The silent author glided forward, led away the hapless mass murderer, humming happily. "Oh, my," said prim and proper Jane Austen, "you are such a wonderfully brooding fellow - exactly my type!"

In a day or two, I'll get you more caught up on writing prompts from meetings, but I wanted to pose a question to my writing friends out there. Let's say you have the characters, but you are in need of the story. What do you do?

Well, hi there!

This is just the post that precedes the real post. Contrary to popular belief, all the fish in the bowl are STILL ALIVE and we have in fact, had growth among our ranks!
So. Tune back in this afternoon for some writing prompts, news and other tidbits sure to stimulate the writing bug in your soul.

Howdy, Folks!

I want to get right into the nitty gritty, but first just let me say: LFWG is Awesome. If LFWG were any awesomer, it would explode.
Karen has had two books published recently, titled Yard Monsters and Food Intruders. They are so beautiful, they make my heart sing and my stomach wobble, and are perfect for middle grade fans of grossology. They are available from Amazon  here and here.
Because two books is not nearly enough for our wonderful Karen, her book (co-authored with her son, Joshua Leet) Civil War Lexington:Bluegrass Breeding Ground of Power is available for pre-order here.
Our very fine Stephen Zimmer's latest, The Seventh Throne is now available here. LFWG came out in force for his book signing at Joseph-Beth, and a fine time was had by all. Plenty of give-aways (which were mostly won by Angela and her family) capped off a fun evening.

Now on to our last meeting, which was held on August 17th.
Two new faces joined the ranks and we very much hope that we didn't scare them off. Welcome to Deborah and Betsie! For our writing prompt, crayons were drawn out of a box, and writers had to use the color names in their writing samples. Here they are!

World's Worst Color
By Karen

I refuse, absolutely refuse to wear that awful shade of green yellow - we call it Windstream green. Almost any other color is better. Even Tickle Me (Elmo?) Pink, though I'm not going to call it that. I like Pacific blue best - my favorite color.

So guess what color everyone got me for my birthday? You guessed it. Windstream green. I got dishes, cups and potholders in that disgusting shade of green yellow. I got 2 shirts, 3 pair of socks, a notebook, set of desk holders for pens and a robe - all in Windstream green. Worst of all, I can't return any of it - or burn it either. The kids would be so disappointed - heartbroken. So I will be wearing the worst color in the world from now on - seasick green, bilious green, baby diarrhea green.

Maybe they'll wear out fast - I can only hope- or maybe spill ketchup on them? It's worth a try anyway.

Pacific Blues
By Angela

"Well, that just tickles me pink!" Mom shouted.

"I held the phone away from my ear. "Really?"

"Sure. A cruise - you'll love it! The stiff sea breeze, the endless blue of the Pacific..." Mom waxed poetic.

I snorted. "By myself?"

"It's a cruise for two, Jeannie. You should take... someone."

"You, for example?" I didn't try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. The idea of a Pacific cruise with my mother was unspeakable, if not unthinkable.

Last time I went on a cruise," she mused, "your late father and I had wild strawberries at the Captain's table..."

"My late father? Had to remind me he was dead didn't you?"

"Shut up, Dear. No, don't take me on a cruise. You'd only ruin my good time flirting with all the unattached men. Take a man yourself."

"Which one?"

Mom chuckled. "Let out you've won a cruise, and you'll be able to take your pick!"

Untitled
By Deborah

She sat on her porch, watching the grass as the green yellow of drought began to show the signs of hardship. The heat! They'd moved here to follow her husband's dream, He'd always wanted to be a cattle farmer. The green had begun to yellow soon to be brown, dead. The trees were beginning to look bare. Distance seems to grow further the hotter it got. The pacific blues of her home helped her beat the heat.

She made her way to her tickle me pink kitchen. Her favorite color, her personal domain in the house, still made her husband cringe.

Untitled
By Me

It was the Greens again, and betting on them would be a huge payoff. Carl strutted over to Book and held out his ticket. Book's nose looked like a wild strawberry stuck on his face. Ridiculously small. Terribly red. The cadets buzzed around them, crowing madly in their triumph. Book handed Carl his lettuce and smirked at him. "You wanna put that back on these guys or are you taking another team?"

Carl didn't want to answer where the winning team could hear, so he just smiled and scribbled 'Pacifics' on a scrap of paper and handed it to the giant man. He peeled a few bills off his growing wad and handed them over.

Cadet Blues
By David

Sea sick, home sick worse

Pacific, blue seas for months

The recruiter lied

For next month, we've chosen the theme: Villains (MWAhahahaha!). Write up some antagonist fiction and bring it on down to the next meeting of LFWG on September 7th.
In the mean time... is anyone feeling the need to get together next Wednesday (August 31) even though there is no meeting? Maybe at a coffee shop or restaurant? Get back to me and we'll set something up.
Happy Evil Writing, 
 Jessica

Updates and Info from the long lost Fishbowl blog!

It is July. The end of July, even. So I shouldn't be telling you just now that the theme for July was Memento Mori, should I? I should have posted info from the last two meetings already. I should have posted writing prompts and assignments for July.

Sorry, friends. I turn into a pumpkin in the summer time.

Instead I will post writing prompts from the July 20th meeting, give you the theme for August, and (hopefully) get those creative juices flowing with an assignment.

David was in charge of the writing prompt on Wednesday, and here's what he brought us: "The bright Light, the tunnel, the floating up and seeing one's own body...ya da ya da ya da....How could we have been so wrong? about all of it. Would it have mattered? If I had only known....."

Red Scare
by David

...that the world is really ruled by the lady bugs. Crimson armored terrors enslaving all lower life forms. The second circle insects obey without question, carrying out their orders with brutal efficiency. Silent. Secret. Deadly work. The people lived in the light for so long and then the darkness.

The red darkness that blotted out the sun. The swarming pestilence that devoured the food, They had even converted all their mighty machines to run off fuel from crops. Easy targets. Naive prey. It took a mere decade. Total annihilation. The age of information and technology set as the red sun rose in the morning.

Untitled
by Jack
 I'm drawing a complete blank. And perhaps that's it. A complete blank. At the end of it all. It's what you see just outside your field of view. Nothing. Even if there is a hereafter of some sort, why would I understand it any better than I do the here and now. I see an afterlife of angsty, confounded angels and spirits, no more content, no more blessed or damned than they were in the world they left. Do angels have therapists? Wellbutrin? Do they sleep well or do they lay awake, get up from their clouds to go lay on the sofa in their celestial living rooms until daybreak?

 Untitled
 by Angela
 Screech...

"Dude!" The hand on my shoulder, my foot slipping on the curb. "It's your turn now!"

 "My turn?"

 " 's over. No need to cross now."

 Oddly, the morning fog seemed to obscure the street I needed to cross.

 "Dude!" the stranger repeated. "Go back, not ahead. There's nothing there for you now," he indicated with his head.

 "I've got to get to the bank..." I began.

 "No you don't. Not anymore."

 "What? There's been a financial disaster?" I joked -- ok, half-joked.

 "No need for money here."

 "I wish!"

 "Dude. That part is over. This is the next part."

 Despite the fog, light began to dawn. "What, I'm dead then?"

"Dude, what is death?"

 I chuckled. "You forgot your own line," I quipped. "It's 'What is truth?'"

 "Right. anyway, there's no street here, dud, no light, and no need to cross anything."

 "So what do I do?"

 "Go back," he said.

 "Wait... don't I get to go toward the light?? Did I screw up that bad?"

 He grinned and now I saw the glint of a gold tooth and the shake of his dreadlocks. "You're one of us now. The darkness and the light are both alike."

 Untitled
 by Me

 If I had only known it wasn't about the CGI effects, the floating Peter Pan  moment. They were there to be sure. The most important thing -- the sound.

 I could hear my mother's voice. She was crying and singing at the same time. I felt I had abandoned her. Betrayed her. I could hear the words of the song "You are my Sunshine." Was it memory? Was it now? I could hear the sound of cars rushing past, but it wasn't cars after a moment. The sound resolved itself into the sound of flights of wings. Thousands rushing in my ears, but her voice underneath it all pulled on me, pulled me down. Carried me away. And the betrayal vibrated down my fingers into my eyes and throat. As they vibrated there, they burned away, and my greatest failing burned away also. The wings rushed through me and I was good.

Good job, everybody. Gold stars for everyone!
For the month of August, we have a CINQUENTA CHALLENGE (imagine awesome reverb here)! Here's the idea: Write a cinquenta (50 word short story) using at least 17 of these 39 words. Why 17, you ask? Because Angela said so. Why are there 39 words to choose from? Because each of the attendees at the last meeting gave a list of 10 words, but David and I both had the same word on our lists.

Any form of these words is acceptable: lunar, spin, hostile, irrefutable, point, mix, backhoe, torque, potent, transmission, candy, banish, paintbrush, greyhound, goofball, snowflake, grunge, inflammable, drench, Oreos, book, trade, human(ity), red, desecrate, time, exhaust, carry, clothe, light, montage, sample, bosun, cheese, undone, wire, linen, buoyant, pantomime.
You can send your cinquentas to me, or bring them to the next meeting. Have fun! Oh! And extra points if you weren't at the meeting but can guess which word appeared on two word lists.

See you soon!
 Jessica

Summer's no Bummer

Two girls and a guitar. And an iPad was a rousing success even if only one other person besides the two girls was there to hear the new song. The crowd went wild. Just for fun, we'll be performing the song again next time, just so everyone can hear it. More songs are upcoming: details at the end of this post.

The next meeting of LFWG will be on Wednesday June 15th. "Flowers" is the theme for June. David will (hopefully) be providing the writing prompt for next time. At the last meeting, Angela and I choose three random words form a random book on a random library shelf and used those words to inspire our writing during a ten minute writing prompt. There were, as I mentioned above, only three attendees, but the writing samples came out great. The three words randomly chosen were: You, Never, and Africa.

Here is Jack's work.
You've never been to Africa. Or Australia. Or freaking Canada for that matter. Why exactly do you have a passport? It is kind of handy when you're filling our W-9s. It's only one document which establishes both identity and nationality as opposed to one for each, typically a driver's license and a social security card, but those both fit in your wallet, much easier to pack around should you suddenly and unexpectedly get hired and need to whip them out. Likewise, crossing a national border would require a minimum six hour drive or a plane flight, not likely to happen on the spur of the moment to already have the damn thing. $100 and an afternoon at the post office gone. Some day, you say. Africa. Australia. Tibet and the Temples and the jungles and deserts and mountains.
*a note on Jack's handwriting: wow. It took me over a half an hour to decipher this and I'm not sure I got every word correct. Sorry Jack.

This is Angela's work.

"You never take me anywhere." she grumbled.

"What do you mean, I never take you anywhere? We went to Sears last weekend!"

"That doesn't count!" She glowered across the table, her arms folded in her typical pugnacious stance.

"What - you mean like a vacation? Didn't we go to Six Flags a couple of years back?"

"Four years," she corrected. "Four and a half. And Six Flags is only eighty miles up the road. I mean a real vacation. Like... Florida or something. Or New York. Or... hell, Africa!"

"Africa!" he shrieked - yes, men do shriek when properly motivated. "Who the hell goes to Africa on vacation?!?"

"The Holmans went to-"

"Oh, is that it?" The shriek had become an oral sneer. "Mark Holman took his teeny bopper fourth wife somewhere and you just can't let me forget that you might have been his girlfriend once if you hadn't settled for a taxi driver?"

This last one is mine.

"Africa is the place I go to in my head when you are being a shit."

"What!?"

"I'm there. It's savannah or jungle or whatever, and I look out over the yellow grass or vines and monkeys and you are not there."

"Monkeys live in South America, Sweetie."

"Monkeys live in my f-ing head if I f-ing say so."

"Fine. Monkeys, grass, jungle. But not me."

"Exactly. You would never put yourself in Africa."

"It's a third world continent."

"So?"

"Water. War. Famine... Ringing any bells?"

"I'm not there for real!"

"Still..."

"Look, the fact is that when you are a shit, I go to Africa."

"I heard you. ...so... ...um... like now?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."

For the next meeting of LFWG, I'd like to have another song ready for you guys. The last one turned into a very sweet little love song. For the next one, I'd like a break up/heartache song. Comment on this post with your ideas, broken heart stories and revenge fantasies, and I'll get cracking. Jack started the ball rolling for everybody with these words: "You can call me if you need somebody to blame. You can call me if you need somebody to shame." The more you tell me, the more interesting the song will be.

Happy writing, and sunny skies!
Jessica

Hearts, Flowers, Unicorns, and a Guitar

The next meeting of LFWG is this Wednesday at noon! The theme for June is FLOWERS. If you were at the last meeting, you know that we worked on a collaborative song, and GUESS WHAT? It will be debuted this Wednesday in The Fishbowl. I'll have my guitar, and Angela will bring her amazing iPad and play bass. So ya'll come!