Menu

Subscribe

InterNutter

Indie writer seeks audience with an audience. Paying customers welcome. [pronouns: ze/hir] Daily free stories happen because it is an excellent counter to Writers' Block.

Burpengary East http://www.cmweller.com 12673 posts

Challenge #01610-D149: Long Live the Leader

A single powerful person who is convinced of their own Rightness with no thought of introspection or means of restraint is dangerous, moreso to others than to themselves. -- Anon Guest

Jack didn't just believe in the Leader. He had a firm and unwavering Belief in the leader. Jack was wont to Believe with all his heart and soul. Though he still prayed to the God of the holy works, the Leader was the next best thing to a foretold coming. The Leader was the greatest man to ever live. The Leader was going to make this nation great. The Leader was going to fix everything.

Jack was so convinced that he convinced his family and friends. Most caught the fever, but some still little-b believed. But that was not a concern because the Leader was now in charge. The Leader was in the best place to fix everything that had gone wrong.

And the Leader certainly got things done.

Continue Reading

Prompts remaining: 14 Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!

Drama Llama, go away...

So let's recap on some of my most recent stressors:

  • Chaos falls over and bumps her tooth
  • Grandma wouldn't shut up about how this would definitely lead to a lifetime of mouth abscesses
  • The rising population of right-wing nutjobs who want to make a certain group of religious devotees illegal, thus playing into the hands of..
  • The rising population of pseudo-religious devotee nutjobs who want to blow everyone else up
  • My own mother sending me a "non-complimentary" beta-read instalment... and then insisting
Read more »

Challenge #01609-D148: We're So Much Better Now

There are pieces of Historical Machinery, there are Collections of Musical instruments and some lucky souls get to care for them, keep them running and in the case of stringed instruments take them out and play them so they sound right. -- Anon Guest

They say the Archivaas collect everything and never throw anything away. This is very close to the truth. Most Archivaas know the impossibility of saving a physical version of everything and keep digital plans, instructions, or copies. The

Read more »

What do I do to myself?

Roughly 12:30 AM, this morning. I wake up to the sensation of Beloved getting up in the literal middle of the night to go do something. I even heard the bedroom door open and close.

So after half an hour of trying to get back to sleep, I send Beloved a "WTF" text and really work at trying to slumber. In another half hour I roll over to discover Beloved by my side as if they had always been there. Sound

Read more »

Challenge #01608-D147: Repent Now...

[Name] sighed and turned back to their paperwork. In the scant few minutes they’d been talking with the other person, the paper seemed to have multiplied. It was breeding. There was a giant paperwork orgy going on right on their desk, and it was all they could do to fill out forms faster than they were produced. -- RecklessPrudence

They say paperwork is hell. They don't have the half of it. Imagine the largest offices in the world. Floor after floor

Read more »

Achievement Unlocked:

Figuring out how Sections and resettable page numbers work in Pages. All this necessary so that numbers don't turn up on the preface pages of the print version of Kung Fu Zombies. When that's done, I get to do all the jiggery-pokery necessary to make sure my name and the book's name is actually legible on the spine.

And only THEN can I shill the fuck out of this noise and hope that more than one person buys it. [Dear lovely person

Read more »

Challenge #01607-D146: Hermit Permit Pending

"To be honest, I hadn’t planned on the whole Dark Lord thing. It just sort of happened." -- RecklessPrudence

It's not easy being a hermit. Especially not when random adventurers get lost and mistake your cave for a dragons' lair or the entrance to the goblin caverns or something of the ilk. I had to learn a few spells just to protect what little I have from their greedy hands. It takes days to make a decent bowl. And the rogues

Read more »

Tropes That Annoy Me: Hypergendered Fat

Think about all the overweight people represented in our media. Now think about all the overweight main characters. What do they have in common?

Well, if they're not Jack Black, who can actually get away with the Overweight Antihero, then they are excruciatingly well-dressed. Neat as the proverbial pin.

The ladies (far rarer than the men) are aggressively cute. The stand-out example is Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds. She is the girliest of girly girls, despite being in a STEM discipline. Every

Read more »

Challenge #01606-D145: Miss Handling

"You place too much trust in me, I think."

"Until you can place more trust in yourself you may rely on mine in you." -- RecklessPrudence

Rael got the shock of his life just being invited to someone else's home. Five seconds inside the door, he got one big enough to turn his entire body silver.

Officer Lyr Marken, Subchief of Security for the JOAT sector of the Elemeno, had just handed him her infant daughter. With nothing more than a negligent,

Read more »

Smol Dramas

Once again, I have to rant about a few things because life is hellishly inconvenient and everything costs too much and I slightly want to scream.

First up - ISBNs.

So I was thinking that once you got an ISBN for one book, you could use the same ISBN for the SAME CONTENT. I couldn't find anything about this on Lulu, but Smashwords insisted on one, so I thought I'd better check with Lulu just to be sure.

And dummins me went

Read more »

Challenge #01605-D144: Articles of Beauty

Us humans have skin lotions and hair straighteners/curlers - what do other species do to improve the Outer Alien? -- Anon Guest

There are things you can sell anywhere. Popcorn, for example, is the only known deathworlder food that is so inoffensive that it can be sold to Havenworlders. Many more things change uses between species.

"What is this liquid?"

"We call it 'varnish'. It's a clear polymer coat that adds shine to static surfaces."

Continue Reading

Prompts remaining: 15 Submit

Read more »

Tropes That Annoy Me: I Have Brothers

It's usually a feature of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but sometimes your Action Gal explains her usually manly feats with "I have brothers". The brothers are almost always older, and numerous, and our female lead has learned to hold her own against them as some form of survival skill.

Sometimes, there are no brothers, the mother is usually out of the picture1, and the father "didn't know how to raise a girl" so did all the boy stuff with her.

Read more »

Challenge #01604-D143: They Grow So Fast

How about one where Aliens are stunned at the absurd growth rate/ regenerative properties that humans seem to have. Either for something as small as fingernails or hair needing constant maintenance, to 'how did that child grow a full METER in the ten years I was absent?!' -- Anon Guest

Human Steff had reproduced. Live birthing was trauma enough for most of the crew, but the idea that humans could be small and fragile was overwhelming. These mammals had to be

Read more »

Tropes That Annoy Me: The Fighting Fucktoy

If you want to know all about the Fighting Fuctoy, you won't find much about it on tvtropes.org at all. Nope. For that, you have to go to sites written by, and run by exclusively female authors.

Or you could absorb this picture:

[Artistry care of Kate Beaton of Hark, A Vagrant! fame. Link leads to her Strong Female Characters series collation]

Any attempt to put this sort of thing up on tvtropes results in, I presume, a phenomenally unbelievable amount

Read more »

Challenge #01603-D142: Eat Snax

"Fat grubs in butter sauce." this was from a Lizard culture's idea of Snack Food. Humans have popcorn, crisps, peanuts etc. So how about one of those Snack Food van equivalents that caters to various species, and make a good living thereby. -- Knitnan

Eat Snax the sign blared in potentially noxious colours. Underneath, a more staid sign discreetly told the observant that this was a suggestion and not an order. Inside the ludicrously small booth, a popcorn popper was doing its

Read more »