Ficly Making a Comeback + Mount Doom Status Update

"Mount Doom Status Update" sounds both ominous and awesome at the same time!  I'll keep it quick so I don't bore everyone - basically I have the project working as expected on a daily basis and runs like a charm.  I'll make a full post sometime on the weekend (when I get some time) and share the full project files and everything; I'm kind of thinking of tweaking it to tell me only when I've hit major landmarks - but more on that later.

The other day, my good Internet friend (from a considerable distance) Wil Wheaton re-posted a story he had written, at the time inspired by listening to Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars; this time, inspired by the death of David Bowie.  It's a pretty good story for 1024 characters.  I enjoyed it, and so did many others - his post inspired people to write prequels and sequels of their own in the comment section.  I haven't read through them all yet - I'm going to have to try to catch up with them and read them all later.

I posted at the end of 2015 about the ficlets that I wrote back in the day.  For reasons I won't get into right now, I had to delete my External Monologues podcast - I have all of the audio files, and I'll get around to re-posting them.  But I don't think I'm going to continue with it, at least not for the moment.  Apologies, if somehow you were following it.  Bringing things back on point, I just find it odd that some of these things that I've dug up are floating back to the surface at another completely different point on the web.

Apparently, there's a new website called Ficlatté.  I haven't browsed around it very much, but I think it's something I'd contribute to.  I expressed a desire a while back to get back into writing these, but I feel more apt to do it when there's a built-in audience already.  I think I'm going to just personally label 2016 the Year of The Ficlet.  Let's see what I can cook up in the next year.

External Monologues Episode 05: World Series Memory + Storage Unit

Another episode of External Monologues!  There's not much of note in this episode, except that I created a pretty  cool (I think) audio production of a short story I wrote back in 2010.  You can read along with the story here, because I also decided to record it using an older tape recorder.  Because I can.

The music used underneath the story production was Small Hours by Alasdair Cooper, and I got it from www.freemusicarchive.org.

iTunes
Direct Download

Thanks to Zencast.fm for hosting the podcast!

New Story

I put up a new story on ficly.com - you can take a look at it here:
http://ficly.com/stories/23804

It's an idea I had a long time ago, and until now didn't think to write it as a ficly piece.  I've got another linky-type post coming up later.

Storage Unit

I've decided to dabble a little with Ficly.com - a place where you write a very short story (1024 characters - not words).  It can be an original story, or you can write a prequel or sequel to anyone else's story.  It looks like a really awesome community.  I put this up just a few minutes ago: http://ficly.com/stories/22665 - I wrote and edited that piece in about 15-20 minutes.  I think this is going to be a good place to practice both writing and editing.

"Storage Unit"

We won the auction for the storage unit at 3PM; we had to have it empty by 4PM. Easy, right?

We should have seen the signs right off the bat: none of the other bidders seemed very interested in bidding on the unit. It’s like they knew, and they didn’t want anything to do with it. I thought we had just lucked out and got an amazing haul.

At first, Todd and I thought we did hit the jackpot. We found all sorts of antiques from the ’20s – the 1820s, that is. Everything was in pristine condition. We were going to make a killing. And we only paid a buck for it all!

That’s when we found the chest. We thought we hit the mother load, the haul that would make our year. You never find something bad in an antique chest.

Todd carefully pried it open, and I felt a chill shiver its way down my spine. A terrible smell assaulted my nose, and I retched immediately. But the part that had me running for the hills was the bandaged, rotting hand whose fingers were gripped tightly around Todd’s fat neck.