Observations of The Urban Spaceman 
A chap who likes writing (and waffles) is running a competition for people who also like to write (though I believe waffles may be optional).
The premise? Write 200 words of anything except play, screenplay or poetry. Post in the comments over there, and wait for some fellow human beings to judge your worth. Should you be deemed SUPER worthy, you’ll win some stuff plus bragging rights. You could also put your achievement on your CV/resumé or college application forms, I guess.
You can see my entry here, and if some of the details are ringing bells in your noggin, it’s because I also wrote a little flash fic set in this fairy realm (which is from my WIP, Shatterstone).
Now you should go and make words happen. Huzzah for words!
(P.S. Did you check out my previous post on de-cluttering your inbox? Because this is my second blog post today. Gasp! If your inbox feels claustrophobic, go read what I wrote earlier.)
Getting email updates from your favourite blogs is a lot of fun, but sometime the sheer amount of Stuff™ arriving into your inbox can be overwhelming. For sites that update several times a week (or several times a day) it can be tempting to hit ‘Unsubscribe’ in an attempt to declutter your inbox. I imagine a few of my own followers occasionally groan at the number of updates they receive each time I post a new flash fiction or poem.
However! There are ways of reducing and/or better managing the number of updates you receive to make following blogs by email a more pleasurable, clutter-free experience. Here are a couple of tips you might find useful.
Themes: Horror, Demons, Suspense
Words: 993
It came in the night. A rage-filled howl shattered the peaceful air of the valley, screaming its promise of pain and death. Zihao’s eyes flew open. He pushed himself up from his futon and grasped the hilt of his sword. Fear clawed at his stomach; he fought against it, and won.
He slid down the ladder from his treetop hut. The demon’s taint was in the air, oily, charred, a bitter stench of fire and blood. It was faster than Zihao had imagined; piercing screams told him it had already reached the village.
Guanyin!
She felt it before she saw the first clouds shadowing the horizon. The gentle breeze changed swiftly, picking up speed, gusting through her feathers, urging her, fly! fly!
“Storm!” she screeched as she wheeled through the turbulent currents. “Storm!”
A thousand others took up her call, joining her dance on the swirling zephyrs. Far below, in the rocky cove, hunting seals heeded the call and moved to the safety of the shingle beach.
“Storm!” she screamed at the floating wooden animal beneath her. But the pale-faced creatures standing on it merely waved up at her, deaf to her warning.
A Bird’s-eye View
Every other Sunday I’ll be publishing a drabble about, or from the perspective of, a bird. This week’s bird is the ubiquitous Gull. What’s so special about the gull, you ask? Here are three facts which you may not know about this noisy, often annoying family of birds:
- Gulls can drink salt water! Their exocrine glands allow salt to be excreted through their nostrils, so whilst drinking salt-water is a big no-no for you and me, gulls manage quite well.
- Gulls are monogamous, and their mating bonds usually last throughout their entire lives. In this, they do better than some humans!
- Hybridisation between some species of gull is quite common, making gull taxonomy a particularly tricky subject.
I like to imagine that to the first European settlers reaching America’s shores, the sight of gulls nesting along the coast would’ve been a measure of comforting familiarity in an otherwise strange and dangerous land.
To view previous bird-related drabbles, click “A Bird’s-eye View” above, or select it from the Short Stories section of the menu at the top of the page.
Themes: Science-Fiction, God, War
Words: ~1910
“Are we doing the right thing?” Fran’s voice quavered around the laboratory. “He’s been gone for so long. What if we can’t bring him back? What if something goes wrong? So much has changed since he was last awake—”
“We’re doing the right thing,” Miner broke in. Brows furrowed, he stared at the computer terminal as his fingers danced over the holographic keyboard.
As she watched his fingers work, Fran marvelled at a new thought: when Adam had last been around, there had been no holographic keyboards. No holographic technology at all! How strange the world would seem to him now.
The darkness swells around you
It fills your heart and mind
Beneath your skin, you burn with fever
Stung by words unkind
You try to rise above it all
To take the higher ground
But insults drag you back below
Where silence stifles sound
They talk in whispers behind your back
Cruelly rumours spread
Ignoring them just doesn’t work
They breed inside your head
The bully’s power comes from meanness
The need to cause a frown
For the weak who cannot raise themselves
Put everyone else down
A metaphorical deep, dark place written for Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt. The photo is from Sue’s blog, The Daily Echo. Check it out!
Themes: Fantasy, Fairies, Myth
Words: 973
Mother and babe slept soundly, she beneath a grey blanket and the child nestled in a crib at the foot of the bed. The glass of the bedroom window pane fogged with the heat of Saoirse’s breath as she stared in at the pair. The sleeping woman was fair and beautiful, exactly Odhran’s type. He always picked the finest mortals to bear his offspring.
Saoirse shifted, working feeling back into cold muscles. The plates of her dragon-scale armour flexed to allow movement, and she subconsciously brushed her fingers along the hilt of her starfire blade.
Soon.
In her poem, “Superpower”, Jade M. Wong asks (probably rhetorically):
If you could have any superpower,
What would your superpower be?
And because I’m one of those contrary people who immediately has to answer rhetorical questions, I thought I would answer in verse!
Source: [Poetry] Superpower
If I could have a superpower
A power of any kind
Without a doubt, I think I’d pick
The power to read your mind
I’d use my power for selfish reasons
To get ahead in life
Win millions on TV gameshows?
Hell yes, I’d do it blithe
But I think, as well, I’d use my gift
To try and do some good
That coma victim, now her family know
How she sends them all her love
Fiction’s greatest crime detectives
Would have nothing on me
“Miss Scarlet with the axe, your Honour?
She thinks we didn’t see”
And come to me for help rehoming
Unwanted dogs and kids
“No sir, they wouldn’t treat ’em right
Don’t listen to their fibs”
Then I would make a name for myself
Tell folk what they already know
“Of course he’s cheating, look at his face!”
On the Oprah Winfrey show
At the end of the day I’d go to bed
Knowing I’ve done my best
Sure, I can lead a horse to water
But change is up to the rest.
Themes: Horror, Documentary, Mythology
Words: ~862
Season 1, Episode #8: The Wild Life
Co-hosted by Dr. Cynthia Wessler and Dr. Dave Kydel
Cynthia: Ask a man to name a fearsome animal, and you’ll likely hear Great White Shark or Box Jellyfish, perhaps Funnel-web Spider or some variation of Bear. Admittedly, they’re all great contenders for the world’s top spot in the fearsome animal category. However, Dr. Kydel and I have travelled all the way out to the depths of the Amazon Rainforest to introduce you to a creature that’s sure to start featuring quite heavily on that list.
Dave: As you may know, habitat loss in the Amazon basin is responsible for forcing animals into conflict with humans. Once, jaguar sightings were rare, but now the predatory large cats prey daily on children from local villages. However, there is one creature that has only just begun to emerge from the depths of this south American jungle, and that creature is the Cannileech.
Themes: Noir, Crime, Detective, Parody
Word Count: ~550
Detective Kitty Salva ran a manicured fingernail across her bottom lip as she contemplated the pile of char steaming on the bed in front of her. Some enterprising junior investigator had drawn a white chalk line around the pile, and every few seconds a few fragments of charcoal would trickle down in a black avalanche, blurring the white chalk to grey.
The sole witness to the… incident? Crime? Kitty wasn’t sure yet. But the sole witness, the baker’s wife, was currently exercising her right to be a crumpled, sobbing heap. Kitty couldn’t blame the woman. Hard enough to see a man burned alive. Harder when that man was Mayor of Yew Nork City. Harder still when the mayor was your lover, and your husband didn’t know about your affair. Kitty’s sympathy ended right there. As soon as Box News got wind of this, Mrs. B. Aguette would become famous for all the wrong reasons.
Glorken
The Urban Spaceman
Observations of The Urban Spaceman 
Things humans said