Day: January 12, 2019

Page 238, Line 1

Fandango1 Comment

Here’s another one of The Haunted Wordsmith’s page and line number prompts. The way it works is that we’re supposed to grab a book…any kind of book…and flip to the designated page and then to the specified line — in this case, page 238, line 1 — and take the quoted line and use it in a story.

caf3afc4-42af-4d06-9282-5c9dee4b7349The book I chose for this exercise is “Murder on the Mind” by L.L. Bartlett. Line 1 on page 238 reads, “and I found the second victim. While I spoke.” So given that, here’s my story.

Detective Rob Hayden stepped into the living room where his partner, Detective Jim Morrisey was examining the corpse of the first victim. “I just came up from the basement and I found the second victim. While I spoke to the officer who was looking around down there,” Hayden said, “I felt a drop of liquid fall on my hand, looked up, and saw blood stains on the dropped ceiling panels.”

“Is it….”

“Yeah, it’s Samantha.”

Morrisey shook his head. “This is going to be surfacing some bad memories in this town, Ron.”

“Tell me about it,” Hayden acknowledged.

“There are more victims to be found, I’m sure of it,” Morrisey said. “This guy turned into a real sicko ever since he joined that radical, political splinter group. I’ll head up to the attic. Take Flynn and check out the storage shed out back by the river bank.”

“Will do, Jim,” Hayden said.

“And watch out for booby traps,” Morrisey warned. “This lunatic’s greatest ambition is to create as much terror as possible. Nothing would surprise me when it comes to this perp’s sadistic nature.”

In addition to Teresa’s Page/line number prompt, this post was written for the following one-word prompts: Michael’s Writing Prompts (Samantha), Your Daily Word Prompt (memories), Word of the Day Challenge (splinter), Ragtag Daily Prompt (river), and Daily Addictions (ambition).

Missed Opportunity

Fandango13 Comments

0cdd80f3-2c76-421d-aa10-121ba7172140I have no musical talent whatsoever. I can’t play an instrument (other than a kazoo). I don’t even know how to read music. But I do appreciate music.

On the other hand, I like to think I have a way with words. I fancy myself to be a writer. Okay, maybe not a writer, but a blogger who writes using words.

But getting back to music, when I was a lot younger, like back in high school back in the Sixties, I loved instrumentals, musical records without lyrics. If these instrumental songs resonated with me, I would sit down, pen in hand, and compose lyrics to the songs, sometimes related to the song’s title, and sometimes totally unrelated.

Once I finished writing my lyrics, I would put the record (one of those 45s with the big hole in the center) on my record player, set up my cheap reel-to-reel tape recorder, and record myself singing the lyrics I wrote while the instrumental song was playing.

I admit that my singing voice left a lot to be desired, but when I played back the recordings with me singing lyrics I wrote, for my friends, they were always pretty impressed. Or maybe they were just being kind to the dorky kid who would sit down and write lyrics to instrumental songs recorded by other artists.

Unfortunately, it never occurred to my pragmatic self at the time that there was a career to be had by being a lyrics writer, or a lyricist. All I would have had to do would be to hook up with someone who could write the music, and oh what a team we could have been. I could have been Bernie Taupin to Elton John. Oscar Hammerstein to Richard Rodgers. W.S. Gilbert to Arthur Sullivan. Tim Rice to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Oh well. Live and learn, right?

Written for my one-word challenge, instrumental.

SoCS — Art

Fandango14 Comments

For today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has assigned us the smears “art.” Linda instructs us to “talk about something that’s hanging on your wall,” she says. “Add a picture, if you’d like.”

6FE6C3AE-7020-4934-8DDA-CF35759F3E83.jpegOne of my favorite artists is M.C. Escher and one of my favorite works by Escher is Hand with Reflecting Sphere, also known as Self-Portrait in Spherical Mirror. It is a lithograph that was first printed in January 1935. It depicts a hand holding a reflective sphere. In the reflection, most of the room around Escher can be seen, and the hand holding the sphere is revealed to be Escher’s.

I’ve previously posted about my love for Escher’s work in THIS post, where a few other of his lithographs are included.

Another artist whose work I enjoy is René Magritte. He was a Belgian surrealist known for his witty and thought-provoking images. He depicted ordinary objects in an unusual context, challenging observers’ perceptions of reality.  Here are a few of his paintings.

My wife is partial to Erté. Born Romain de Tirtoff, he was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté, from the French pronunciation of his initials. He was one of the most well-known fashion illustrators of the 1920s. His designs included dresses and accessories for women; costumes and sets for opera, ballet, and dramatic productions; and posters and prints. Here are some examples of his work.

FOWC with Fandango — Instrumental

Fandango29 Comments

FOWCWelcome to January 12, 2019 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 “instrumental.”

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.