I'm Moving!

Not literally. Unfortunately.

After much deliberation and contention with Blogger, I've decided to make the shift over to WordPress. I'll continue my quest to writerdom here.

Adios!

100 Words #7

In her darkest hour, Providence loomed in the shadows. Begging, pleading, and tears all appeared fruitless; she would never have peace again. Growing up, His love had coated her throat and flooded her ears. Never had she questioned or felt alone - but now? Darkness was so thick and opaque, it threatened to let nothing through. Desperation clouded her mind, preventing the world from hearing her frantic pleas.

How she longed to feel the gloom shatter with warming light! To feel all of her worries wash away with His powerful grace! She believed in His power, why was it not enough?

100 Words #6

There is something noticeably missing & off in these. I can't figure out what for the life of me, except maybe that I'm trying too hard? Bah.

She whisked the pan with the finesse of an expert, and heavy, spicy aromas tinged her nose with each flick of her wrist to taunt her taste buds. Prior to Antonio's saucy cooking class, Carla swore to never spend another second of her life in a kitchen again. Perhaps it was the way his "r"s rolled gently off his lips while demonstrating the proper mixing technique that caused her to reacquaint herself. Or the rhythmic way he moved about the cooking space, as if the spatula was his tango partner. That was probably it – after all, she is only human.

100 Words #5

Agile fingers sprinted across tender silk, smoothing away wrinkles and remenants of ash. Outside, murmurs of activity snaked under her door as a reminder of the nights festivities, for merely steps away gathered a crowd like none other, eagerly awaiting her arrival. If nerves were flowers, her stomach was knotted in roots. Rather abruptly, a keen wind smothered the crackling fireplace and she was bathed in reflective silence. "The show must go on," she sighed. Glancing at the photo of her dearly departed mother for strength, Emma swallowed her nerves and unearthed a taut smile. "The show must go on."

100 Words #4

A shadowy menace oozed through the city on a hungry trek for vengeance. Debris cascaded down in frenzied patterns, masking the shrill screams echoing across the waste. They pleaded for rescue, for mercy, for answers. The only response resonated through menacing rumbles of the citys implosion. Where was their savior? What had they done to deserve such cruel injustice?

"MOMMY! JACK BROKE MY BARBIES!"

In an instant, warm light surrounded the battered patrons, caressing their broken spirits. Had their prayers been answered? "Jack! Leave your sisters toys alone!"

"Awww, mom!"

"Don't argue."

The erroneous destroyer was defeated! They were saved!

---

I use an app called iStop Writers Block to come up with the prompts for my 100 word challenges. The "challenge" subsection generates random things to have happen, words to use, concepts to deploy, etc. Today's was "Destroy a city in 3 sentences." Just for fun, here is what I originally had. I still feel exceptionally rusty, but I think it's getting there.. slowly:

Debris cascaded down in frenzied patterns, destroying all in its wake. Low, menacing rumbles erupted with each tremor as the city began to implode upon itself. Shrill screams echoed across the city, pleading for rescue, for answers, for mercy. The shadowy menace trekked slowly through, accounting for no survivors, on the hungry trek for vengeance.

One heavy foot after the other, one wrathful fist following the next. Where was their savior? What had they done to deserve this cruel injustice? Their world lay in ruin, and it just wasn't fair!

"MOM! TIMMY KNOCKED MY BARBIES OVER AGAIN!"

Their hero arrived!

100 Words #3

"I don't want to appear overly circumspect, but I believe we are being followed," Harry muttered quietly into a beer bottle, poised only inches from his lips.

Ben leaned back in his chair to stretch, and casusally glanced from side to side, as if looking for a clock. "Doubtful," he shrugged nonchalantly and returned to his scotch. "This place is a sausagefest."

Harry eyed his friend reluctantly, before grabbing a handful of peanuts and cramming them in his mouth. "If my wife is hiding behind a corner or under a bar stool and I'm caught, you're a dead man."

Bah! What to Write!

After years of barren story lines and non-existent plots, I have finally got the bug to write again - with stories to flesh out! Inconceivable! [And hey, I know what that word means!] The problem is deciding where to start, which to save for November, and which to merge. I was able to put two together about a week ago, but it's not enough for me to start. What else is there to do but outline them?

1. Blame it on the Weatherman

I have had this idea floating in my brain since high school. Over five years ago! Never has it been fleshed out. Once or twice it was attempted, but never successfully. Maybe this will finally be its time to shine? A story about Hell, in the form of a corporation and fronted by a rather likable Satan. A young man finds himself sitting in their receptionists office, given the general run down of his new job duties within the company. Problem? He was "decently religious" and has NO idea why he is there. Woven in somewhere is a large party at Satan's estate that absolutely crumples to pieces and the frantic search to find who is responsible begins. Each chapter was to be narrated by a different character, and their POV of what happens. I'd really, really love to flesh this out some more.

2. Untitled Action Piece

This all started with one of my moms coworkers, a pilot with what is quite possibly the most amazing action hero name out there, save for Indiana Jones. Except it's his real name. FANTASTIC. Anyway, he heard I liked to write and has been begging for a story ever since. Problem is I have never ever ever written an action story nor a period piece, and am completely overwhelmed at the thought of it. One night, we sat around a firepit and concocted a ridiculous and fantastical story for him, but I could never put pen to paper for him. Ever. Then I remembered a reoccuring dream I used to have as a teen about being stuck in a forest with a very adventure-themed plot line to it. He could totally fit, and I've wanted to make more of the dream for years upon years as well, but I have absolutely no idea how to turn it into something feasible and... not lame. The research that would be needed as well is kind of daunting.

3. Use Them, Then Lose Them

Fairly close to a memoir, a story of a young girl who throws everything away to follow a military member, and the absolute ridiculousness that then follows. The crazies, the uncertainty, the learning to trust your heart and instincts, etc. Though I'm not really sure how ready I am to crank it out.

What I really want to do is dive into Blame it on the Weatherman - but what, then, would I be left with for November? Going in cold turkey is terrifying! Then again, I suppose there is still plenty of time for something to come up. Decisions, decisions...

100 Words #2

Crisp, chilling wind ripped into her very soul, fueling the fire. As goosebumps exploded across her body, two sizable fists formed in her lap. Fighting the hatred that was surely emitting out of her eye sockets, she settled her intense gaze upon the candle, letting its flickering flame serve as a mask.

Lies, lies, and more lies. Pain in her heart and in her gut was almost unbearable. Each word was a vicious stab in the back. A bosom buddy should never announce such detestable information. He was her Patrick. Her lover. Her world. Never again could she be trusted.

100 Words #1

Steaming, hot coffee and cigarette smoke clouded her view of him only slightly. "I don't get what your problem is, that is one beautiful piece of man."

"Trust me, you don't want that," she responded, amused. Cream swirled through her coffee as she spun her stir stick. "If it's too good to be true, you know it is."

"That's poppycock! The only people who say that are the ones who don't get any. Oh!" As the smoke cleared, a strapping man turned around, revealing two rather perky additions to his pecks and rosy lips, matching his perfectly manicured nails. "....Touche."

On Nature

Nature has taught us a few things: mind the number of leaves on your organic toilet paper to avoid organic rashes, poking Da Bears on facebook is NOT the same thing as poking a bear in the wild, mosquitoes love sugar water (thanks, Linsday Lohan!), and perhaps most importantly of all - NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER mess with a mama bear/wolf/lioness/bee/squirrel/dear/insert-additional-animal-here. You will not win. They will claw and mangle your body to death before your grubby little human hands have removed themselves from their cub/bee/squirrelette/Bambi/other-name-for-a-baby-animal. It's science. Or something. But we all know it.

Why, then, do we think this concept is lost on humans? Why do we think it is ok to take someones child, threaten to take their infants, steal their precious little munchkins and NOT step back to think, "Oh, my. I may really anger the mother. My life just might be in danger. NO WORRIES! We have opposable thumbs! My life is safe. To steal the child!" False, my friends. A resounding FALSE.

A particularly ignorant human being threatened my beautiful Princess. The shining, sweet, incredibly polite, rather stubborn-like-her-mommy, incredibly easy going and magnificently beautiful little gift that I carried for the most miserable nine months of my life and fed from my body for another long six. The women who gush about how great pregnancy is? Hate them. But I digress.

So, this particular human being who had been absent, granted partially through no immediate fault of his own due to job/government obligations, dared to take my child. Not only dared to do so, but LIED, only days prior to attempting to steal my beloved, and swore he would never. Yet there I was, in a cold courtroom in February, listening to a lawyer attempt to tell me I was an unfit mother because I left her father, and should therefore lose the beautiful wonder I had spent agonizing amounts of time creating in my body, COMPLETELY ALONE. Again, I digress.

What then ensued was months of custody battle, because he had run out of excuses to delay the actual divorce proceedings. Nine months of dillydallying had come to an end, and the only way to drag it out longer was to attempt, then, to take my child. Bad move, buddy. Do not anger the Mama Bear! What ensued were tortuous months, where at one point I genuinely believed they were going to take my baby girl because of his... rather agressive lawyer; of anger, hurt, and total disbelief that this was ever in play. The emotions that came bubbling to the surface were never out of any attachment to her father, but rather out of the raw natural instinct to protect my child any way I must.

Today, my wonderful, bumbling lawyer awoke me with news he was off to a pre-trial conference with his lawyer to try and finalize all these details. No more delays, no more pushbacks, no more of the games they were trying to play to continue this mess after almost a year and a half later. Time to get to business and end it. I was able to sleep in, the beautiful sun was shining in my window, birds were singing, and my mind was soon about to have ultimate peace on this matter. It was a good morning. Not 20 minutes later, he calls again to inform me that his lawyer had agreed to sign some numbered form I didn't bother remembering the name of, and all would be over - read complete, ended, finito, no mas - in less than a week. She said they would agree to the terms, and signed a form proving it. It's done.

All of this morning, I have felt like dancing. Tango, salsa, waltz, booty dance - you name it, I probably attempted to do it out of sheer glee. This fiasco is over, and Mommy has come out glorious and on top. We have fought and yelled and tried to make nice and done stupid word dances all over the place to try and get what we want. But he forgot one very important thing. One seemingly insignificant, yet overwhelmings crucial thing - MOMMY ALWAYS WINS.

While I would have liked to, at countless intervals, rip his arms off and claw him to shreds for daring to take away my beautiful baby, I didn't. I held myself upright, because after all, we have opposable thumbs. He will still see her plenty, and she will always have her daddy in her life. But she will continue to be, and always will be, "My Cairo."

So, remember - the mama bear always wins. Rawr!

In the beginning..

... there was a keyboard. & a girl who had writers block for four plus years. Oh, the joy!

I have been attempting to write a book for the past several years. Attempting, and not making it past the first or second page. My third grade self would probably shove my face in dirt if she knew such things. Or WHAP! me with her pigtails. Either or. Thanks to the irregularity of work and the absense of my pint-sized mini me, I have decided now is the time to jump back in, head first. My plan, originally, was to finally enter in NaNoWriMo this year - after two years of "yes yes yes! .... no." - but I have been itching to start again. I suppose this will make due until November.

Speaking of, I am presently taking applications for the role of "Kick Melissa's Ass & Make Her Write This Damn Book" for the month of November. Seriously.

But where to begin? They say the best place is the beginning, but that generally isn't exciting. I was born, it was disgusting; I grew up, was probably a giant pain in my mothers ass. TA-DA! There went the first 18 years of my life, condensed into a sentence. I've been writing my whole life, that's not interesting. HOW I stopped - that has more of a hook to it.

At 18, I thought I was completely unlovable to the opposite sex. Clearly, I was not worthy of their time or attention. I blame Disney. For years, I grew up hearing that one day my prince would come and the world would be bright and shiny, and singing birds would walk me down the aisle into Happily Ever After. Prince Gorgeous would be on a white stallion and we would go gallivanting off into the sunset, nary a worry between us. Provided I steered clear of lardy octopuses, poisoned combs, and avoided talking forests at all cost. Sounds easy enough.

This did not come to pass. Probably had something to do with my intameable hair and my rather cynical wit. Regardless, I had finally met a boy at 18 who made me think I was a Princess and he was... well, probably just a peasant, but he worshipped me, so we'll call him an un-capitalized prince. The Princess and the prince-ish-thing-who-was-really-just-a-frog. "Froggy" for short. The Princess and Froggy. A pushy, self-centered frog who eventually assumed a dictoral role in my life via apathy and caused me to dislike existence... in not so many words.

Either way, my late teen years were saturated in naivete and deceitful bliss. After forcing pieces for so long, a person changes. I, personally, hated the person I was turning into and the world we'd created, amongst other things. What I probably hated the most was his condescending attitude on life. Anything I liked to do, LOVED to do, was not good enough for him. Laughable, in fact. Writing is like riding a bike; you'll never forget how to do it, but it'll take a few bumps and bruises to hop back in. Apparently, my bumps and bruises spurned mockery. Until, that is, he heard about a shipmate's wife who was rolling in dough with her erotica fiction. Oh, ho! By golly, if that wasn't the greatest thing he'd ever heard? What, this stuff his wife "attempts" to do could make him richer? Lash the whip! Tighten the cuffs! Mush mush mush!!

Needless to say, all this caused was anger. Good bye, writing career. Dreams I once had in full color and detail, dreams so exquisite they played out like a movie in my head, dreams so clear I could write them down for days - all gone. He sucked all the life out of me, and took my creativity just for spite.

That's not entirely fair or true. He did give me the most remarkable gift of all. Ish. But she's for another time.

Any attempt since then has been just that - an attempt. Almost two years free now, and it's still a work in progress. I feel I've come to a better place in life, however, and am able to pick it back up. Plus, with booku's of free time right now, what else do I have to do?

Answer: Nothing. Except that paper, that I will probably put off until the very last minute.

In the mean time, this will be my personal journey into fine tuning my skills yet again, so maybe... juuussstttt maybe some magic will happen. After all, Jack O'Bannon is requesting his story weekly. A pilot with the greatest action hero name ever should not be left waiting.