Day: November 3, 2018

Let’s Roll

Fandango5 Comments

7CBCE4C9-CA3C-4860-8008-F4FE4C8E5068Detective Ron Hayden was basking in the warmth and the glow from the bonfire. It had been a long day and he was considering heading back to his apartment to snooze for a couple of hours before meeting his girlfriend for dinner. But before he had a chance to exercise his plan, his partner, Jim Morrisey, came out of their car to let Hayden know that the two of them had been called to assist the uniforms at a sudden onslaught of neo-Nazi protesters who had suddenly converged on the park across from city hall.

“If I have to cancel yet another date with Cindy,” Hayden said, “she’s gonna torture me.”

“Ah, such is the life of a public servant,” Morrisey said, as he started the car and switched on the car’s lights and siren. “Let’s roll, detective.”

Written for these one-word prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (bask), Word of the Day Challenge (bonfire), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (snooze), Daily Addictions (onslaught), Scotts Daily Prompt (torture), and Your Daily Word Prompt (public).

Weekend Writing Prompt — Translucent

Fandango12 Comments

7E77D2F2-CCE5-4CA6-BFF9-3DC03BFAE0B4You tell me you’re transparent

And that what I see is what I get

But there hangs a strange curtain between us

Which is far more translucent than transparent.

(Exactly 29 words)

FCE0A05A-C777-432E-964E-B254915646BEWritten for Sami Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt. The challenge is to write a poem or a piece of prose about the word “translucent” in exactly 29 words.

Time To Write — Politics as Unusual

Fandango15 Comments

65FABB36-29AC-4D35-9CF2-1C97B924E983“What happened?” Jane asked her husband. “Oh my God, what happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Archer said.

“Nothing?” Jane exclaimed. “Look at yourself. You’re eye is swollen shut and is turning black. Your lip is cut and bleeding, as is your nose. What the hell, Archer?”

“Just a slight altercation with a guy at the office,” Archer said.

“An altercation? You mean a fist fight,” Jane said. “With who and about what?”

“Dan, my cubicle mate, was late because he voted this morning on the way to the office,” Archer explained. “He asked me if I had voted yet and I told him that I had voted by mail last week. Then he asked me who I voted for. I told him that I learned a long time ago to avoid talking about sex, religion, and politics at the office.”

“Okay, but then how did this happen?” she asked, pointing at his face.

“He kept pestering me about who I voted for, so I finally told him,” Archer said. “And that’s when all hell broke loose.”

“What exactly happened?”

“He was pissed. He said that my vote canceled out his. Then I said that since I voted before he did, his vote canceled out my vote. Things went down hill from there.”

“But how did things turn physical?” Jane asked.

“I dunno,” Archer said. “He said I was unpatriotic, called me a globalist, said I believed all the fake news, and that I wanted illegal immigrants to overrun our county.”

“You’re kidding!” Jane said. “So he hit you?”

“Well, I might have said a few things back at him,” Archer admitted. “And suddenly fists were flying. Our coworkers had to pull us apart and our boss sent us both home. We both got formal warnings and are on work probation.”

“I hope Dan looks as bad as you do,” Jane said, hugging her husband.

“Worse,” Archer said, a painful smile appearing on his face.

Written for Rachel Poli’s Sentence Starter prompt.

SoCS — Point Taken

Fandango14 Comments

CBDA963C-B68B-40D0-B4B5-97B4219E0024Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt this week is less of a word than an action.  She wrote, “Your prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is ‘point.’ Open a book on your lap, close your eyes, and put your finger on the page. Whatever you land on, whether it be a word, a phrase, or a sentence, write about it.”

This challenge proved, um, challenging for me because I no longer have any physical books. Every book I currently own is an ebook that is in my Kindle app on my iPhone. So I couldn’t exactly open a book on my lap, close my eyes, and put a finger on the page, could I?

Instead, I opened up the Kindle app, handed my iPhone to my wife, and asked her to randomly pick a book, open it up, pick a page in that book, and then pick a word, phrase, or sentence on that page, highlight it, and copy it. She did, and I pasted it below:

“One day he rose from his arm-chair, and went to his library in search of a book.”

This sentence came from the Victor Hugo classic, Les Misérables. It can be found in “loc 442 of 27004.” That means it’s fairly early in the book. In the first one percent, actually. I can’t tell you what the page number equivalent would be in the print edition because I don’t have a print edition of the book.

I asked my wife why she chose that particular sentence to copy. She told me that she thought it was apropos for the prompt that asked us to select a book and to choose a line from it. And she also thought that it held some irony in that I don’t have a physical library with actual books, but instead have a virtual library with electric books. Very clever, my wife is.

As to the context of the specific sentence she selected from the book, I have no idea. It’s been quite a few years since I read Les Misérables, and I’m pretty sure I’d have to go back and read at least a chapter or two before that sentence to figure out who “he” is and why he went in search of a book.

But I don’t want to do that. So instead, I am writing about the process of finding a random sentence in a random book so that I can respond Linda’s rather random prompt in a randomly stream of consciousness way.

FOWC with Fandango — Snooze

Fandango28 Comments

FOWCWelcome to November 3, 2018 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “snooze.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.