Eating Authors, and a Big Deal Patreon release

Have you heard of Eating Authors? Every Monday, author Lawrence M. Schoen poses the question: "Tell me about your most memorable meal." And this past Monday, April 29, it was my turn! Many thanks to Lawrence for having me, and I was also happy to comb through my food memories and see what I produced.  Lots of fantastic posts are there, and it's easy to spend quite a lot of time reading about other people's awesome meals!

In other news, the first of the month (as you may or may not know) is Story Day on my Patreon! This month, I have the pleasure of sharing with my patrons my short story "Purity", which was a finalist for the 2017 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award. I'm a little shocked that I didn't blog about it at the time, but honestly, "finalist" is "close, but no cigar".

But, the site is still up for that year, so you can see the proof:

So, for $1, you can read the short story that came this close. The author notes, as always, are free. I really like this story a lot, and I'm happy to finally have it in the world, and maybe get some eyes on it. So, tell your friends!

Speaking of friends, here's a picture of Ulrike and her best dog friend, Nova, at the dog park the other day.

Flash Fiction Finalist (or, Close But No Cigar)

I post every once in awhile about how I take part in Janet Reid's 100 word flash fiction contests. Well, after some stiff competition this summer, I still didn't win, but I was a finalist for the final one of the season.

Even though I haven't gotten mentioned a whole lot, I do try to enter each one of Ms. Reid's contests. Writing a story in 100 words, beginning-middle-end, is damn hard. It's a writing muscle challenge, to be sure.

The words to include were: remove, escape, away, lull, spare  (can use the word as part of a larger one)

And this is what I came up with:

When Becca was removed from her family and set up in our spare room, she was too old to be a kid and too young to be on her own. The only comfort she accepted was the lullaby of Grimalkin's burbling purr.

A person's ghosts are hard to get away from, but she was almost okay. Then the whispers started again. The knocking. Grimalkin hissed arched-back at empty corners, a tuxedo asterisk.

We labored over her escape plan, and there was no margin for error when we sent her off to prom, barred the doors, and set the fire.