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Tag: micro short stories

The books I was able to read in 2021*

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Some of these titles came out well before 2021, and I also ended up reading all seven of the Harry Potter® books out loud to my eldest daughter this year, but I’d read those myself when they came out back in the early 2000’s, so I won’t count them here, but that took up much of my mental capacity to read this year.

The selection of books that I read for pleasure this year (2021).

The two Fart Quest books were meant to be read to my daughter so that we could think about starting up some short D&D sessions now that I had built a bunch of terrain panels (pictured inset). But I enjoyed them immensely and didn’t feel like sharing yet. Plus the text is still a little above her reading comprehension level so perhaps next year! I have the third book on order, which was initially scheduled for September, but has been bumped to February of 2022. Chasing New Horizons was an amazing retelling of the Pluto missions, and I was riveted throughout the whole book. The pictures are incredible as well. Black Star Renegades was a fun romp in a Star Wars adjacent sand box. Project Hail Mary was a clever and entertaining entry from The Martian’s Andy Weir, which still proves to be one of my all time favourite books, alongside Jurassic Park, and the Death of Superman novelization. Martha Wells has a fantastic short story series in the Murder Bot Diaries, with the newest installment called Fugitive Telemetry. I had heard a number of people talk about The Forever War, and I can see why, it was pretty good, although a whole lot of current science fiction has leaned heavily on this book, so if I’d have read it much earlier in my formative years, I think it would pack a heck of a wallop. Mars Rover Curiosity was pretty much a text book, which means it was dry, but also informative. A trade off for certain, but, worthy of a read if you love space exploration and drones. The Goblin Emperor was a slow burn, but still exciting and very interesting. It is probably the most off the beaten path for me from this years selection of reading, but I really did enjoy the palace/royal intrigue elements. Out of nowhere comes the last on the list Troll Fell, which was a quickly paced story of rural viking woes, and trolls, and gold & treasure.

As I mentioned earlier I have the third Fart Quest book on order for early 2022, and I also have the last installment of The Expanse, book #9 to read after Christmas. There is a Shiflett brothers sculpting book that was supposed to arrive in November, but hasn’t shipped yet, due to supply/shipping issues with paper coming out of the USA.

I hope you’ve all managed to find the time to read great books of any length. I used to be such a length of novel snob, but since I wrote a book of short stories myself in 2020, which I published in March of this year, I am far more attentive to the story itself rather than the page count.

Available now!

The Company – A series of interconnected space short stories: Varied works of short fiction
by Amazon.com.ca, Inc.
Learn more: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B091JB3MG7/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_QDBT1TWRPV4H7DVBX3JZ

The Obligatory 2021 Year in Review Blog Post.

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These are typically the type of thing that most people don’t bother to read, and I’m cool with that. As this sort of thing is for the poster rather than the audience. There was a definite shift in my workload and type of projects this year, compared to last year at least. Usually I would devote the majority of my off time to sculpting in clay or Super Sculpey®. Of which I did do some, but no where near what I have done in years previous. By that, I mean that I produced four this year. Two in plastercine and two in Super Sculpey® that I have yet to paint, though I did manage to get them baked and cured. My day job was fairly slow in the first half of the year, but I managed to pick up two new clients that have done a fair number of projects each, plus my returning clients all had work for me to do this year, which I am very thankful for. The big To-Do this year was Wood working. I was able to get out and into my shop and do a number of new and exciting projects this year in various types of wood. I have a good portion of Ash, Spalted Maple, Walnut, Pine and Cedar sitting around so those where what I worked in primarily. I was also able to add some textile work into the mix with Felt, Faux Leather and some real Sheep Skin Leather. I used the textiles on my dice trays, tool box trays, and to line the insides of my Harry Potter® Trunks. Below is the list of wood working projects from this year.

(3) Dice Trays – Lined in Felt or Faux Leather – Spalted Maple, (1) Die Tower – Spalted Maple, (2) Dice Vaults – Spalted Maple, (3) Harry Potter® Trunks – Pine, Cedar, Elm – Lined in Felt – Trimmed out with Ash, (1) Walnut Leather Working Tool Box – With (1) matching Tool Tray lined in Faux Leather – Trimmed out with Felt, (2) Walnut paper towel holders, (1) Pine Skid/Organizer for Pool Noodles and Towels, (1) Ash wheeled cart for old table saw, (1) Cedar box joint job box, (1) Cedar Porch Tray/Shelf that fits over the railing, (1) Elm Craft Supply box – Lined in felt, (1) Mixed Wood Antique Table that I am currently refinishing, (9) Cedar routered orchard signs, (3) Cedar name plates for gifts.

I have this feeling that I did a few more projects that I can’t immediately recall because I gave some stuff away to friends this year because it took me a while to sort out how best to approach some projects and I had to make more than I needed in order to be able to throw away the first iterations that were done incorrectly. A case in point, would be to use ply wood inserts for the base of the dice trays and trunks because real wood warps and twists after it has been milled flat in such a humid province like Ontario, Canada. I always hated the look of plywood, but a 3/8’s sheet with rich, thick felt glued over the top face is super sturdy and you’d never know unless you look underneath. A few years ago I refinished a rocking chair which was a lot of work, but also very satisfying, so I’m taking a crack at an old weather beaten table that was improperly stored at the cottage. I can’t make it look brand new, but I can make it look much, much better. Something you’d be proud to have in your home for playing cards on, or having a board gaming session.

Besides those things, we have done as much as we can to stay safe from Covid-19, I qualified to get a third dose early, and our youngest are finally eligible to get their first jabs in the coming weeks. I managed to get out while the numbers were low in October, to go and see Dune® in a D-Box Atmos seat late one Sunday night, and it was pretty great. It spurned me on to finish the first Dune® book, which was pretty dense but ultimately enjoyable, as I now look forward to Part Two in 2023! I was fortunate enough to get to read a bunch of great books this year. If I can find them I will write another post about them as a heart felt recommendation. Some of them were early Science Fiction classics written decades ago, and some of them came out this year or last year, so there’s a pretty good spread of the new and old in that reading list. The holiday season is baring down on us, and the new year approaches. I wish you all well, and hope that you are all safe & sound.

I’m also going to plug my book of short stories again, available through Kindle Unlimited.

The Company – A series of interconnected space short stories: Varied works of short fiction
by Amazon.com.ca, Inc.
Learn more: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B091JB3MG7/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_QFEER8NFM58WZMAA90C6

“The frame on the stroller is bent…

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How the hell did you manage to do that!” He shouts from the front door, his voice carrying down the length of the hall to the occupied bedrooms. His breath steaming in the icy morning chill air. “Sweet cheese babe, the two swing arms that are supposed to move up and down are bent entirely outwards. It’s a steel plate you’ve bent, how? Just how? Why would you – why on earth, just what were you even trying to do?” The stream of consciousness is rambling out of the man in an irritated staccato. Followed intermittently by loud sighs and and gasps of suppressed rage. “You had to unfold it to use it, didn’t you look to see how the mechanism worked when you set it up?” With a sudden whoosh the front doors shut, and loud stomps across the front porch can be heard. His voice fades into muffled exclamations of indignant confusion. It is Friday morning. The sun is shining, though mostly obscured by wispy clouds on a brisk early morning breeze. Life moves on.

It’s seven o’clock on a Monday evening,

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In mid November, and the day was dreary, grey and cold. The leaves have long since fallen from the trees, and everything is a mucky mixture of crushed leaves and water logged grass clippings in mud. The wind has started to pick up and what was a bland flat lit day is now quickly deteriorating into a murky black dusk. Perfect timing for it to begin to down pour now that we have to pack up all our things, muster the kids into the car, and head home after the impromtu long weekend spent at the cottage preparing for the coming of winter. It has been a bitterly cold, and long weekend spent out of doors, tackling chores that were better suited to the warmer days of late September or even early October. But alas, priorities for all involved were not exactly aligned at that point in the year. So here we are, two tired and mopey children, a cascade of rain hammering down in sheets, and the prospect of a three hour drive home, and then school early in the morning. Our youngest has napped fr the first time in two years today. Not a good sign. But she doesn’t have a temperature and isn’t coughing or sneezing, so onward we press, towards home. Fifteen minutes into the drive, she begins to vomit all down her front, and into her car seat. She manages to do this in near silence. But my wife, whom is driving, notices her rolling forwards in the glare of the rear view mirror. “She’s throwing up!”. She says, nudging my arm. I turn to look into the back seat, and there is the eldest, hands on chin, deeply engrossed in her movie. “Not her, it’s Ashley!”. Twisting to look directly behind me, I can see the dark grime on Ashley’s chin and chest from where she has thrown up her chocolate milk and what looks like a first full of Cheetos. “Oh!” I say. I frantically dig around at the kids feet to find any old containers. Finding an old cookie tin I hold it up to Ashley’s face as she bucks and heaves into a coughing fit followed by a glob of vomit. “No…. no… I don’t want it daddy….!” She screams in between heaves. “It’s ok baby, this will keep you cleaner, I can tip it out once we stop off the highway.” Variations of this follow until we pull off the rural highway, and come to a stop under a street lamp outside of a road side restaurant. Opening the door to assess the level of destruction. It’s not too bad, a bit on her chest, face and hands, and a glob on her leg and a dribble or two on the chest harness of her car seat. In a wave of miasma the smell hits me full in the face. To my dismay I then realize, our Ashley has been out of diapers for more than a year, and we no longer travel with a diaper bag, or wet wipes. Thinking quickly my wife hops out of the drivers seat, while my eldest quivers at the sight and smell of her younger sister’s stomach contents. Rooting through her luggage to hand me an old worn t-shirt. I unstrap Ashley and proceed to wipe her down, face, chest, hands and legs. I pick her up for a look over and shuffle her off to the back of the car for a change of clothes. A few heart beats later we’re strapped back in, she is sound asleep, and we are back on the road. It is still raining heavily, and the night is both dark and cold. The youngest, Ashley, will not be attending school the next day.

Having trouble visualizing the headspace I need

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to be in in order to write creatively at the moment. I have a couple of one off short stories rolling about in my head but I can’t seem to get them out on paper. I mean, sure I’ve done a very brief point form outline, but that’s not helping me find the voice of either set of characters. I have had a few spells of just plain day dreaming where I have thought up something fun, but then just couldn’t get it to come to life. Which is irritating to say the least, but at least I am not where I was a few months ago where I had no ideas at all. Here I was thinking that after I had published my book of short stories back in March, that I would wile away my time adding a couple thousand words more in the time I had before me. But besides three of four small posts here I haven’t written anything at all. I will amend my list of outstanding short stories as ideas come to me, and I hope that I will soon be able to work towards fleshing them out properly in my own idiosyncratic style.

Actually here I’ll just tell you what sort of short stories I have in my bag which I want to write out. I do usually tend towards micro short stories of about five hundred words or so, but if it really grabs me, I have been known to add on additional stories in that line of thinking. Sometimes there are multiple peoples perspectives in the same event, or just different people on the same side of a conflict having wholly different experiences. So the next three stories I intend to write revolve around the creation of the first AI in my interconnected space stories series, which revolves around a character named Kelvin, whom you may recall had a whole portion of my book; The Chronicles of Kelvin. I like him, he’s an interesting guy that has done some pretty weird shit. He’s also comfortable alone, much like myself. Now that story line could have one long but sort of abridged last chapter, or could be broken down like I have in my outline into five meaty chunks. But, you know, sometimes my eyes are bigger than my fingers and I can’t possible write interesting, character driven stories with that many chapters right out of the gate. I’ll have to build up to that, if I ever get a head of steam in me. The second story involves a father and his young daughter, where they are playing out of doors, in a forest, and the young girl is regaling her father with stories of mystical whimsy from her imagination, but the father is transcribing them and adding in all the sorts of details young kids leave out of their stories, but then she gets bored and he’s absolutely hooked, and she looses her train of thought in the middle of this fantasy of epic proportions (due to a vivid childhood imagination unencumbered by things like, logic, physics & linear thinking) and the father goes mental trying to tie it all together in the end. Which is a sentiment I understand completely. The third story is more anecdotal about one of many situations brought about by having Crohn’s Disease. It has a comedic bent to it, because how can you not when you are dealing with such a shitty topic. Ha. That’s all for ranting and whining right now. I’m off to get blood work done at the lab, so stay safe, and have a great autumn season.

” You look terrible, what happened to you?”

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Shouts the older grey haired man almost immediately after pushing his way through the grimy glass revolving doors, knocking an elderly man’s elbow causing him to fumble his hat, dropping it and then kicking it out into the gutter. Crossing the shabby lobby faux marble floor directly towards the rather bohemian looking man in a mad rush, his hawkish angular features pulled back into a sneer. “Oh, don’t start with me Derek, it’s this whole thing. I’m tired and sore so just leave me alone this one time, ok, huh!” squeaks the meager looking man shambling along with the flow of foot traffic heading to the thick line up for the elevators into the enormous and drab building. Pulling along beside the bedraggled man, Derek leans down over top of him and whispers “Come on little man, tell me, you always have the best stories. I need another doozy to impress the c-suite suits!” It’s a harsh whisper, the kind that carries and reverberates off of the polished concrete and forty year old wooden accents on the wall behind the sconces. Above the bank of elevator doors the massive brass clock ticks away noisily. People stand crammed together in the tight space, shuffling their feet and readjusting ties and hair pins. The heat of other peoples breathe is starting to make the little man sweat. Somebody has eaten day old eggs and sardines. “It was nothing really, nothing much at all!” whimpers the emaciated man. “Not sure why Doris made me sleep on the couch, I didn’t really do anything wrong.” His voice a wet warble little more than a whine. “Sure sure, bud, of course, I know you have a good heart.” “I do, I really do, I just say things some times, they just come out, I just tend to blurt out what I’m thinking.” “I know you do, and it tends to be the gods honest truth doesn’t it bud?” “It does, yes… but I don’t know…” He groans. “Come on bud, the elevators almost here, just gimme the Cole’s notes version.” “Well, after I got home from work, Doris had made me dinner, you see, a burger, well an unbattered chicken burger to be exact, so should have seen it, it was so thick, it was glorious!” He exclaims. “Ok, ok bud, there’s only twenty floors to go before this carriage gets here.” “Oh, ok, yeah, so It’s great you see, I’m tucking into it, and it’s juicy and delicious. Then on my fifth bite I get a real heavy crunch, like, almost crack my tooth kind of crunch right?” “Yeah, ok, crunchy chicken, not so good.” “Yeah, so I says, without thinking mind you, ‘Oh! must of had a bit of beak!’ and Doris without missing a beat, she throws up, all over Avery and Gemma. That’s my boy and my little girl see, they’re attached at the hip with Doris. Then they start to throw up, on themselves, each other and Doris too, you know for good measure. Then the dog wanders into the room because of all the commotion, you know?” “Dogs and commotion! It’s a real thing, I believe you.” “So he starts feasting on it, it is fountaining out of all three of them, all over the walls, the floor, each other’s hair, the carpet, the couch. It was absolutely everywhere.” “Oh, dear god man. why would you say that?” “I don’t know, it just sorta slipped out. Either way, Doris threatened divorce yet again, and they all retired to bed and I spent the first half of the evening cleaning it all up because…” Cutting across him Derek adds in. “Because you had to sleep on the couch, ok got it! Great, thanks bud.” With a loud chime the elevator signals its descent to the main floor lobby, and Derek pushes beyond the little man, and leaves him to wait for the next one. As the door closes Derek points his finger guns at the man and gives him a thumbs up.

“I’m absolutely amazed that you’ve managed to get away with that…

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For so long, I mean, it’s kind of disgusting… the smut that you write.” Barks the stout middle aged man whilst walking around in the garden of the slovenly seated man. He is sat slumped in a deck chair, bent low over his dirty keyboard, the man looks up from his cracked screen and blinks rapidly in the glare of the hot overhead sun. Both to moisten his eyes after staring for a long period of time, and to give himself an excuse to cultivate a scathing rebuttal. “It isn’t smut, fuck you very much, it’s romance. And I do not apologize for my romantic bent having a thoroughly sexual vein running through it. If you pardon my phallic pun of sorts.” Quips the pudgy gentleman from his rustic looking deck chair. “Who the fuck asked you in the first place? As I recall, Benji, I pay you to look after my gardens not to interrupt me when my pages are finally starting to come together!” Leaning back now in his cruddy wicker deck chair, stretching until his spine pops loudly between his shoulder blades the pudgy writer smiles and waves lazily at a mosquito buzzing by his ear. The garden isn’t huge, but it’s quiet and secluded with massive rhododendrons and lilac bushes, surrounded by forsythia and Russian Olive trees. The garden smells divine on this late spring afternoon. A big proponent of hostas and day lilies and all manner of shrubs, the writer is slowly rising from his chair. “What do you care anyway Benji? I didn’t think you even read my stuff.” Standing a few steps away, half buried in the overgrowth of a gargantuan rhododendron Benji quips “I fucking well don’t, but I caught Gary reading one in the tub last night and I could hear his breath catch in his throat. He moans ever so softly to himself when he reads anything racy. So I picked up the book to peruse the chapter he was reading and it was all about throbbing this, and heaving that, with glistening chests and wetness and moisture. Oh god! It’s so hackey, it’s like every tainted soft core porno trope wrapped up in a bow. I couldn’t believe Gary was so turned on by it!” Benji is sweating profusely under the partial cover of the shrub, not only because it’s thirty some odd degrees in the cloudless heat. “Gary reads my stuff? I’m touched. People keep buying it, so I’ll continue to write it. Also, as a side note, my mother wants you to deadhead my roses again this year, she likes to see the bushes in full bloom from her bedroom window.” Both men turn away from the rhododendron to face across the yard to the next house over, where a tiny ancient woman sits smiling and waving from her modest porch overlooking the garden. “Damn straight Benji!, my little Julian wants me to be able to see those roses in bloom! From my bed!” Benji’s face contorts between a smirk and a grimace. “Oh of course my dearie, any thing for you – you shrivelled hag” he mutters under his breath. “Come at me you bitch!” Blurts the elderly woman while waving both arthritic middle fingers around in a figure eight pattern. “You leave my lovely boys alone, you know how much my Gary and Julian mean to me!”

So I wrote a book of interconnected short stories set mostly out in space.

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You can of course read most if not all of it for free when you search my archives, or if you are a Kindle/ Kindle Unlimited user you can read it all in one place on your handy device as you please for $.99 USD or $1.24 CDN or £.77 UK pounds. That’s as cheap as I can make it and still make it available in 11 different markets under Amazon.

Book is available on Kindle only at this point.

A bit of media for the terrain build.

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I’m not a vlogger or youtuber so my video snippets are few and far between. But here’s a short flyby of my two completed terrain boards with a few minis in tableau on one half. I’ll be back to writing my short story series about The Chronicles of Kelvin soon enough. So fear not, I’m not transitioning to only war gaming, or recipes or short blurbs about nothing much at all. Take care out there folks. And with no further ado, my terrain build in video format.

And because I’m proud of much of it, my book case full of bust sculpts from my home office.

With the echos of the scream still bouncing off the protective shielding…

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The man falls heavily to his knees. The harsh bitter cold of the metal floor is bone chilling, and it seeps through the rough canvas coveralls at the point where his knees touch the ground. The thick icy grasp of the medical bay floor hits him quickly. With puffs of breath raggedly exhaled into the cold chamber the man is stricken with waves of fear. Bursts of crystallized breath plum out of his mouth with his dogged panted breathing. Outside of view beyond the protective barrier, ensconced in utter blackness, the rest of the medical bay appears to have deteriorated considerably. Heard amongst the rattle of his breathing are the insistent chimes of his wrist biometrics unit churning out error codes and warning notifications. Slowly rising to his feet, with a frail wobble to his steps, as though he hasn’t stood up in weeks or months the man stumbles towards the pale blue glow of the protective shielding he is standing within. The static fuzz ignites off of his finger tips, radiating through his palms and up above his elbows. The skin on his hands shimmers and pulses under the low voltage passing through it. Turning to sit with his back resting against the security shielding the man limply slides back down to sit upon the freezing cold floor. Feeling he harsh bite of the frosty metal against his rump. The static pulse of the shielding is accompanied by the shrill urgent chiming of the wrist biometrics notifications throwing up error codes and streams of data too small for the man to read. Looking down at the shimmering, rippling skin on his hands, his focus pulled away from the odd undulation of his flesh from the static from the security shield, he stares blankly at the wrist biometric unit. This is brand new he thinks soundlessly. “Yes… Yes it is”. Answers the empty darkness. Jumping to his feet, turning around, bare feet pattering the ground, the numbness now reaching his hips, the man screams again. A blood curdling, epic scream of madness. “Don’t be alarmed, we are you, that is to say, you are us. We are one. Do you understand?” speaks the disembodied voice, as clear as day, as though it were stood mere centimeters from his ear. Jumping with fright at each punctuated word, turning both this way and that, the man is frantic. Scattering bits of dust and debris, he searches the small med pod bay looking for the source of the voice. “No need to look for us, we are you, you are us, we are one. Together. Do you understand us. We know you speak a variant of the English language. Not American, nor British by Canadian English… yes?” speaks the voice in a slow drawl. Nod if you can hear us, do you understand the words you are hearing – Oh no. Here we go! Brace for impact… protect the head, protect the head! , make sure the tongue doesn’t slide back down the throat!”. The man crumples into a heap and promptly passes out. “Well, this is no good. We have to clear these notifications and sort out our access if we’re ever going to do anything useful with this vessel. We know, we know. Yes, I am aware of that. It does pose considerable challenges. No I am not currently aware of anything or anyone else quite like us, we… me.” The voices which can be heard sound muffled as though they were coming from another room down a shared hallway. Certain words are distinct but much of it flows together and is incomprehensible. Slowly everything fades to black, again.

**Another new installment of the interconnected space serial from 2020: The Chronicles of Kelvin.