Tag: Fey

  • Monday Morning

    Jackie heard the child’s voice before he saw her a thin high call that cut through his coffee and newspaper, straight past his earbuds and Morning Edition. Pulling the left bud free, he waited a moment.

    Damn kid didn’t appear. “Crap.”

    He stuffed his paper and his iPod into his satchel and rose, joints popping. Every time, every time he came to park, he got interrupted.

    “Maxie!” The cry came again and this time, he saw the girl. Thin and dark-haired, she had tear tracks dried to her face. She was as big as a minute and twice as cute, but unhappy as hell. How the hell was Jackie supposed to help? And who the hell was Maxie?

    He squatted down so he didn’t loom over her. “Lose something, sweetie?”

    She glared at him, all suspicion and mistrust packed into a four-year-old frame. Five, tops. “My cat got out.”

    He sighed. One of those mornings. Figured. He’d just gotten to the Op-Ed page, too. “What’s she look like?”

    “He!”

    Jackie blinked. “Pardon?”

    “Maxie’s a boy!”

    Her aqua jumper had smudges of dirt and a grass stain on it, but she seemed clean enough. All fresh dirt, anyway. “How about I help you?”

    “I’m not to talk to strangers!”

    Modern kids. “Do you have a quarter?”

    “What for?”

    “Well, if you pay me a quarter, I’ll help you. Then we won’t be strangers. You’ll be my boss.”

    She narrowed her eyes, considering. He waited, not rising, though his knee ached like a sore tooth from the position. Finally, she nodded. “All right.”

    They wound their way deeper into the park and found the cat cowering under a bush. He spit when he saw Jackie, but Jackie sighed and dropped his glamour for a moment. The cat blinked and then walked out from the bush, calm as you please.

    After he saw them both back to his bench, he sat down again.

    Ah, mornings. Coffee never tasted so good. He put his earbuds back in, fired up NPR, and paged through to the Op Eds. Now if he could just find a naughty child, he’d finally get some breakfast.

  • The Untitled Thingy

    This is my first post on the new rota by Noony

    I felt like writing something fluffy… this is the first part of…*mumbles* there isn’t much happening yet but don’t give up on me yet ^^

    Sybella moved from room to room, her footsteps echoing through the empty cottage as her excitement grew, every bright sunlight room seemed better than the last. Ducking through the last doorway she entered what was clearly the master bedroom, she took in the warm daylight illuminating the white walls, the old floorboards and two windows each with whitewashed window seats set into the thick walls. Moving to sit on the closest of the window seats, Sybella settled herself onto the beaten ledge and looked out at the surrounding landscape. Her grey eyes took in the fields surrounding the house, they were a rich summer tapestry of golds and greens highlighting the remoteness of the property, but what drew her attention was a ruin of a tower surrounded by a thicket of trees, squinting she peered at the tower with interest.

    “So…?” a business-like voice cut into Sybella’s thoughts. “What do you think?”

    Dragging her eyes away from the ruin she turned to look at Helena, the estate agent who had brought her to the cottage. Sybella broke into a smile “I love it” she gushed enthusiastically “I’d like to put in an offer at the asking price.”

    The estate agent nodded “I will talk to the owner and the exchange of contracts should happen before the week is out.” Barely pausing for breath she asked “Do you have any questions concerning the property before we continue further?”

    Sybella’s eyes had drifted back to the tower, she pointed to it “Who owns that?” she asked.

    Helena barely spared the tower a glance “That comes with the land” she said flippantly. “The previous owner must have let things go because the dilapidated old wreck in currently inaccessible” she sniffed “It’s probably extremely unsafe, I recommend tearing it down.”

    Something in Sybella recoiled at the idea of tearing down the old ruin but she nodded and followed the estate agent downstairs and out of the front door into the warm summer’s day.

    “I will let you know if the offer is accepted.” Helena informed Sybella locking the heavy wooden door with an old metal key. “Though I don’t think we should have any problems…” she strode off without saying goodbye and got into her dark car, her mobile phone already glued to her ear as she reversed out of the gravel driveway.

    Sybella looked at the old cottage with a smile, there was a charming faded coziness about the whitewashed façade that drew her, she couldn’t wait to move in.

  • What are your Writuals?

    I found this article very interesting, it’s great to have an insight intowhat other writers do to get in the writing mood and then what they do whilst writing too. I’d love to see what the Writer’s Retreat member’s writuals are *cough*hinthint*cough*

    “Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and Roald Dahl did it in sheds at the bottom
    of the garden. Shaw’s desk was famously on castors, so he could turn it
    throughout the day to get maximum light. Dahl even had one of his own hip bones
    sitting on the desk. Every writer will have their own ritual. Kerry McKittrick
    examines the modus operandi of some of Ireland’s favourite writers and asks:
    What are your Writuals?”

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7340217.stm

    Where are you?
    I write at home in my bedroom, usually surronded by the bits of scibbled on paper that contain my plot, character bios and obscure doodles of things to do with the story. Oh and Jérôme the cabbage patch is usually around somewhere.

    What are you writing with?
    Always paper for the plan and then my laptop for writing

    What’s the oddest object in front of you?
    I’ll take a picture, there are no words for its epicness.

    What are you listening to?
    The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance but it can be anything from that to Ludovico Einaudi. I can’t write with the TV or radio on though because people talking disturbs me.

    Is there anyone else in the room?
    No way, that would drive me mad.

    What time of day is it?
    The best stuff seems to appear around 3am but any time in the day seems to work alright.

    What do you look at when you’re looking for inspiration?
    Go on wiki-trails, for people who’ve never heard of it, you start on a random wikipedia page and then click on any link on the page that catches your interest. And generally stuff in my room or out the window that catches my eye, sometimes dreams can be quite useful too.

    What is guaranteed to remove your concentration?
    People talking and lack of tea

  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro; A review

    I chose Never Let Me Go and one other book to study out of a list of twenty others because I’ve never been struck by book like this in my life before.

    Ishiguro is more famous for writing The Remains of the Day which was met with mixed reviews just Never Let Me Go is. A feeling that life’s path is already set out for you and there’s nothing you can do but meekly follow what life expects is an uncomfortable issue for most people. Regardless of what we want to think, we are trapped by society, even the most free of us, we all need to work to live, we all get stuck in a terrible monotonous cycle of sustaining our existence. And this is why I believe some reviews are so negative, people see their own trapped acceptance of life in this book.

    But what is it about? Well the story revolves around three main characters Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, all three are doomed to die young because they are clones existing purely to provide organs to keep non-clones healthy, at around 20 they become “donors” and continue to have their organs taken one by one in a very ghoulish manner until they “complete” which is what the clones call death, once clones have “completed” their remaining organs are harvested and given to ill non-clones. The reader follows Kathy’s narrative all through her life starting at the mysterious boarding school Hailsham (aptly named) which tries to fight for a better world for clones, better living conditions and treatment but most importantly trying to prove the clones had souls. We learn that this movement was very popular until a race of “super-children” was created which made the whole of society shove the clones back into the shadows in fear and disgust along with all other genetic engineering.

    Kathy and Tommy make a weak attempt to avoid the fate waiting for them but ultimately they just sit back and accept that they are going to die. I find this acceptance to be the most powerful theme in book because I was practically screaming at the characters to run away, refuse to die or just do something. But they didn’t succeed, just as we never escape that cycle-like prison in life, their effort was small and now they accept death.

    “This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn’t about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It’s about why we don’t explode, why we don’t wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been” ~ M.J. Harrison, The Guardian

    So give it a read, chances are you’ll either hate it or find yourself touched by it.

    ~mlf