Observations of The Urban Spaceman 
The messages from the Earth came in thick and fast over my spaceship’s communications dish.
“You’re too fat to be a model,” they said to the young woman with a healthy BMI.
“He’s too stupid to learn,” they told the parents of the dyslexic boy.
“You’re not white enough to be in movies,” they remarked to the struggling black actor.
“You’re too sinful for church,” they opined to the gay couple.
“You’re too disabled for baseball,” they told the amputee veteran.
“That dress makes you look big,” they laughed at their larger friend.
“You’re too old to go back to school!” they told the Grandpa who’d sacrificed for them.
“Your ideas aren’t interesting enough to be published,” the said to the dedicated writer.
I shook my head and prepared a new message to send to the Earth. Short and simple, the message simply said:
Believe in yourself.
I pressed ‘send.’
.
Sometimes it’s easy to Criticize, and even easier to let that criticism bring you down.
His fingers brushed down the inside of my bare thigh, a touch both sensual and teasing. I felt it most in my spine, a shock of something like static that made every cell in my body come alive, tingling inside me right down to my toes. A sharp intake of breath caught in my throat; he noticed, his lips curling at the corners into a coy, Mona Lisa smile
God, he was beautiful!
Could men be beautiful?
My fingers trembled as I reached out to sweep back a dark curl of hair from his deep brown eyes. As I toyed with the stray lock, he brushed his fingers upwards, reversing their downward sojourn, grinning mischievously at my unexpected gasp.
Leaning forward, he brought his parted lips to my ear, his breath burning hot against the cool skin of my cheek. “I meant to ask before… is this your first time?”
I shook my head as my cheeks burned for a new reason. “I’ve been with girls.”
Delight lit up his eyes. “Then it is your first time.” Leaning forward again as his fingers quested across my thigh once more, he pressed the lobe of my ear gently between his teeth, and my trembling started anew.
“Will you be gentle with me?” Even to my own ears, my voice was a half-terrified whisper. A self-recrimination immediately bubbled within me. Coward.
He shared that beautiful smile with me again. The smile that’d wrapped a strong, gentle hand around my heart and led it straight on to an unstoppable roller coaster ride.
“I’ll do better than that.” His lips sought mine, drawing out a long, slow kiss before he let me pull away to catch an elusive breath. “I’ll teach you how to be gentle with me.”
.
The Urban Spaceman isn’t a hopeless romantic, but is hopeless at writing romance. As far as improvement is concerned, it’s a case of “I’ll take any practise I can get!”
Today’s practise at How To Be A Better Romance Writer was prompted by the WordPress Daily Prompt: Tremble.
It was a slow, rhythmic stroke; hypnotic, in a way. Her hands, soft and delicate, kept a pace so steady that I could’ve set her in place of my piano’s metronome.
I watched the emotions play across her face, and her hazel eyes—filled with deep fascination—barely blinked as I studied her. One corner of her rosebud mouth twitched, as if trying to figure out how to smile.
Her hum filled the air; a tuneless thing begat by a simple desire to express herself. She hummed the same way to the piano’s song, the music touching her in a way few things could.
The black and white rabbit sat still on her knee, its nose twitching, fur rising and falling as its tiny lungs sucked in air. I reached out to stroke its ears, and my hand brushed hers. Breath held, I waited for the tears. For the scream. For the shrieking tantrum.
It didn’t come. Moisture filled my eyes, and I silently thanked the rabbit for the gift it had given me. Here, like this, with the small, soft animal to keep her calm, she let me touch her—just a little, but it was enough.
.
Written for 6th Feb’s WordPress Daily Prompt: Lovingly
Blue eyes scan my face as I open the door
Familiarity fills them,
She’s seen me before
At her chair by the window, I sit by her side
Leaning forward in whisper,
She starts to confide
“Do I know you?” she asks, and my heart races on
“Yes, Mom, it’s me—”
“I remember, my son.”
I give her the flowers that I bring every week,
Her favourite, I tell her
The lilies so sweet.
We talk and she asks how I’ve been since last time,
I smile and I lie to her,
“Everything’s fine.”
She calls up lost memories of Benji and Claire,
My son’s laughing smile,
My wife’s plaited hair.
I tell her they’re well, that they’re happy, like me,
She doesn’t remember
The car; the tree.
At the end of my visit, I kiss her lined cheek
“I’ll see you again, Mom,
the same time next week.”
As I leave the nurse tell me that it’s been a good day,
I nod, time will tell
If the memory stays.
.
Written for the WordPress daily prompt, Recognize. Image source is here.
Today, one of my favourite bloggers, Inkbiotic, invited readers to answer some personal questions. I’m going to answer the questions here, then ask my own readers to answer the questions, who in turn should ask their readers for answers. It would be great to hear from new bloggers as well as oldies!
If you are a blogger, how would you describe what you write about? Are there specific themes you stick to or a style you use? (feel free to add a link)
Good question! I have three main themes.
Tommy looked up as the front door opened and his parents strode in, faces full of smiles as they carried a large cardboard box between them.
“RoboNanny, deactivate and recharge,” Mommy said. Tommy’s artificial guardian acknowledged the order and retreated to its recharger, tucked away in the closet.
“Mommy, is that a present for me?” Tommy asked as he toddled over to his parents.
Mommy’s smile deepened, and Papa picked Tommy up, holding him at table-height so he could see the box there. A picture adorned the box; a boy, like Tommy, was sitting at a table whilst a family beamed smiles at him.
“That’s right, precious,” Mommy said. “Since Papa and I can’t give you the real brother or sister you’ve always wanted, we thought we’d give you a Robo-Sibling. This one’s a boy model, but if you want a sister, we could always take it back and get it exchanged.”
Tommy grinned at the thought of his own brother. For so long he’d wanted somebody to play with, and talk to, and share stories with. Now he had a brother, and he would be the envy of all his only-child friends.
“C’mon son, help us unpack your new brother!” Papa said.
…on fanfiction.net!
This page is created as a visual aid to assist writers in using fanfiction.net’s text editor to its best effect when inserting a spacer/line break to change scenes. If you have no interest in fanfiction, then… *waves hand* this is not the blog post you’re looking for.
Though, you might still find some of this useful for general fiction writing.
What is a scene?
A scene is a smaller slice of a chapter, and a scene change is a mid-chapter break which denotes some sort of shift. This could be a change in narrator/POV, or a change in location, or time. It’s a visual clue to the reader that “things were happening this way, and now they’re happening that way.” Not all chapters need scenes; sometimes a chapter may involve only a single scene which flows well.
Why does fanfiction.net not like spacers/line breaks?
I don’t know why. It didn’t used to be this way. Back in 2008, when I first started using it, I used a line of asterisks to shift my scenes. Then, without warning, asterisks became some sort of faux pas. It screwed up my formatting and required an edit of every story I’d ever written, including one that was 600,000+ words long.
Major ball-ache.
I don’t like the way ff.net wants the writer to use its line breaks, so I make up my own. The easiest is a centralised line of standard characters, like so:
This is, to me, the most aesthetically pleasing way of separating scenes. It gives some nice white space to either side of the spacer, and makes it readily apparent that there’s a break of some sort.
Other authors prefer to use different methods, for example:
This one is less appealing to me, since it’s more visually jarring, but it’s a very quick and easy way to insert a scene break.
Finally, the way that ff.net wants you to do it is to use the ‘horizontal line’ function on its own editor, which I have conveniently labelled with a big red arrow below:
It really does help if you Save your work in the editor, then re-open it, just to be sure it’s saved whatever change/line break you’ve used.
The reason I don’t like the built-in horizontal line so much, is because if you do a quick scan of a page that uses them, it doesn’t have the same “visual break” effect as a small spacer. I.e., it still looks like one big block of text. Not too bad if you’re writing 1k-3k word chapters, but if you’re prone to going larger on your chapters (5k and above) it can appear daunting to a reader. Here’s an example of the less visual ‘blank space’ offered by a horizontal line.
Good luck to all ff.net writers out there!
The cornfields listen
Their growing, ripening ears
Deafened to feed us
Today’s daily WordPress prompt is Yellow.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw the email arrive in my inbox. Those magical words unfurled before my eyes. Flash Fiction Challenge. Another Friday, another challenge.
I clicked on the email. Drummed my fingers on the desk while I waited for my antiquated work PC to cope with the strenuous task of displaying a bunch of text in a browser. God, I hate my work PC.
And yes, there it was! Chuck Wendig—author, gamer, blogger, father, pen-monkey, bearded guide to the masses of hopeful writers—wanted us to write about… rebellion.
That soaring, swooping feeling inside my chest tanked like a stone. My invisible heart-pilot ejected right before my heart it the ground and exploded into a bazillion tiny fragments.
Rebellion?
I grasped inside my mind for something suitably rebellious, and drew blanks. I imagined all the wonderful stories my fellow authors would be coming out with in the next few hours and days. Exciting tales of protest marches and acts of political terrorism. Maybe Greenpeace would kidnap Trump and sacrifice him to our glorious whale overlords. Maybe famous Hollywood movie stars would refuse to be cast in roles until TPTB agreed to diversify. Maybe chickens and cats would unite to overthrow humanity. Those are just the kinds of stories you get, when you follow Terribleminds.
Normally, I pride myself on coming up with decent ideas, contributing on a weekly basis when I’m able… or a yearly basis when I’m not. Now, my brain, powerhouse of my imagination, had let me down.
Well, screw you, Chuck! I thought to myself. I’m not gonna write about your stupid prompt. I’m gonna write about… a torrid love affair between two politicians of enemy states who secretly love each other and want their countries to be one big super-state.
My fingers burned their way across the keyboard as my protagonist, Ronald Hump, made wild, passionate, mad, steamy love to his counterpart, Alamir Rasputin. Never before had such decadence been committed to word. This is gonna be a best-seller, I told myself. I’ll call it… Fifty Shades of Hump. It would eventually be a movie. Two movies. Three! My story would be banned in every country south of the Lapland and north of Antarctica. Having it banned would definitely drive up sales.
As I came to the end of my work of art, I re-read it. Then, I realised it wasn’t so much a story, as a series of interconnected sex scenes of a very explicit nature. I mean, there wasn’t even a plot. Just sex.
I guess I’m not cut out for romance novels.
With a sigh, I hit the ‘delete’ button on my masterpiece. Watched the words and bits disappear into nothingness.
Sorry, Chuck, I thought to myself. Looks like I’ll be sitting this one out.
He plucked a flower from the meadow
and wound it through my hair.
He made a crown for me, his queen,
each flower woven there.
When he left, he took my crown;
he told me, “Luck it brings,”
My heart lives in that meadow still,
now this queen has lost her king.
.
Today’s daily WordPress prompt is Simple. And thanks to Jade M. Wong, I’m feeling a little romantic. But also bittersweet, and I still can’t seem to get out of the habit of killing off all my characters’ love-interests.
It’s a work in progress.
Glorken
The Urban Spaceman
Observations of The Urban Spaceman 
Things humans said