secure this beckoning sunshine

The way of the wind
is to blow where it will,
though changed in its course
by sunlight and night
and by walls and by trees,
butterflies, seas.

( The way of the wind / is to blow where it may )



The Way of the Wind by Alex Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.



crossposted to sunbowpublications.com

I am woman.
I am here.
I am that which
all men fear:
that what he knows
is just not so,
and what is so
he cannot know.

The words ring clear:
Believe. Revere.

I am trans and
I am queer.
I am that which
all men fear:
that he is not
what he was taught,
that we have thought
and quite a lot.

The words ring clear:
Believe. Revere.



High Priestess I by Alex Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.



crossposted to sunbowpublications.com

The prompt call is CLOSED for prompts.

What you do:

You leave prompts.

Theme:

sun, sand, sea, and sky

What I do:

I write flash fiction and poetry to your prompts. I send free private copies of the results to the respective prompters. I post at least one of the results as a public freebie, and I post summaries and price tags for the rest.

What you do if you desire:

(1) Sponsor the prompt call by dropping money in the GoFundMe pot and saying it's to sponsor the prompt call and mentioning your Dreamwidth username. This gets you on my access list on this journal, where you can explore the donor perks tag to your heart's content.

(2) Sponsor a story by dropping money in the GoFundMe pot and saying it's to sponsor a particular story that I've posted the summary and price tag for. This gets the story in question posted publicly.

(3) Signal boost by linking to the prompt call from various and sundry. Leave a comment saying you've done so. This jumps your prompts to the top of my list.

Prompt me! Theme: sun, sand, sea, and sky

This prompt call is open until I decide to close it, which will be no sooner than the evening of Sunday August 3. CLOSED for prompts.

The prompt call is CLOSED for prompts.

Your dear authorbear is reliably informed that the only dependable way to get words on the page is to plant self in chair with hands on writing implement and write. To that end, I am holding a prompt call.

The theme of this month's prompt call is god[desse]s and deities. Please leave prompts about characters, settings, plot elements, and such related to that theme. Prompt me for anyone from Amaterasu to Lakshmi to Yahweh to Zeus, with a specific myth or without one, or give me characteristics of a deity or a religious practice and expect me to make the rest up. I will write poems and short stories based on your prompts.

This is an exercise in crowdfunded creativity. An excellent way to inspire me to do a thing is to pay me to do it; if you like what you see and you want to see more, feed the bear.

There are several options for feeding the bear:

1) Sponsor the prompt call. I have a Paypal button for donations. The recommended minimum donation is $1, because Paypal takes a fee from every transaction. Any Dreamwidth user who donates (make sure you mention your username) will be added to my access list (where I try to post at-least-weekly excerpts from my works in progress). Anonymous donations are of course welcome, but cannot get that bonus.

If donations reach $25—I'd say keep an eye on the ticker, but apparently tickerfactory.com's images are all broken—I will post a sixty-six-line narrative poem; this month it will be "The Selkie Sisters and the Dryad".

2) Sponsor a story. Each story will have a price tag, using a semi-pro per-word rate, rounded down to the nearest dollar. A two-hundred-word prose story will cost $5, a two-thousand-word story $50, comparable to what Duotrope Digest assures me I would make by selling the story to a semiprofessional market. Similarly, a poem of up to ten lines will cost $5, of up to twenty-five lines $10, of up to forty lines $15, of up to sixty lines $20, and a longer poem, we'll talk. When you sponsor a story (prose or poetry), tell me which story you want to sponsor—every time I complete a story for the prompt call, I will comment to the prompter with the title, the medium, a brief summary, and the price—and I will immediately post it publicly to this journal, with your username listed as sponsor.

3) Spread the word. Link to this post from any social media, suggest that people come and leave prompts, and leave a comment saying you did so. If you link back and you leave prompts, your prompts go to the top of my to-write list. If I see a new prompter or donor (anonymous people, sadly, do not count), I will post a free story; this month it will be the poem "Serenity Prayer".

Whenever I write a story to one of your prompts, I will send you a private copy of the story, via Dreamwidth PM to logged-in prompters or email to anonymous prompters who give their email (anonymous prompters who do not leave contact information cannot get private copies of stories). Please do not share it with anyone.

At least one of the stories resulting from the prompt call will be posted for free, so y'all have a better idea of what you're getting into.

At the end of the prompt call, I will post a list of all the unsold stories, to simplify life for anyone looking to see if you might want to sponsor something.

This prompt call will last until the evening of Sunday, April 13 until I damn well feel like it is CLOSED. Fills will appear as soon as I can manage.

Leave your prompts here! This month's theme is god[desse]s and deities.

The fishbowl is CLOSED for prompts. Fills will be trickling in over the next week or so.

Most of the time, writing is a solo activity. A writing fishbowl (as ysabetwordsmith shows) is writing in public: 'under glass', as Harlan Ellison has been known to do, sitting in a bookstore window and writing an idea provided by an audience member.

This is my bookstore window.

The theme of this month's fishbowl is music and song titles. Please leave prompts about characters, settings, plot elements, and such related to that theme. I will write poems and short stories based on your prompts.

This is an exercise in crowdfunded creativity. An excellent way to inspire me to do a thing is to pay me to do it; if you like what you see and you want to see more, feed the storyteller.

There are several options for feeding the storyteller:

1) Sponsor the fishbowl. I have a Paypal button for donations. The recommended minimum donation is $1, because Paypal takes a fee from every transaction. Any Dreamwidth user who donates (make sure you mention your username) will be added to my access list (where I post at-least-weekly excerpts from my works in progress). Anonymous donations are of course welcome, but cannot get that bonus.

If donations reach $25—keep an eye on the ticker—I will post a one-thousand-word prose short story; this month it will be "Suddenly I See".

2) Sponsor a story. Each story will have a price tag, using the same semi-pro rate as above, rounded down to the nearest dollar. A two-hundred-word prose story will cost $5, a two-thousand-word story $50, comparable to what Duotrope Digest assures me I would make by selling the story to a semiprofessional market. Similarly, a poem of up to ten lines will cost $5, of up to twenty-five lines $10, of up to forty lines $15, of up to sixty lines $20, and a longer poem, we'll talk. When you sponsor a story (prose or poetry), tell me which story you want to sponsor—every time I complete a story for the fishbowl, I will comment to the prompter with the title, the medium, a brief summary, and the price—and I will immediately post it publicly to this journal, with your username listed as sponsor.

3) Spread the word. Link to this post from any social media, suggest that people come and leave prompts, and leave a comment saying you did so. If you link back and you leave prompts, I will use one of those prompts. If I see a new prompter or donor (anonymous people, sadly, do not count), I will post a free story; this month it will be the poem "this is why I tell stories (let it crumble)". "this is why I tell stories (let it crumble)" is posted! Thanks, itsamellama!

Whenever I write a story to one of your prompts, I will send you a private copy of the story, via Dreamwidth PM to logged-in prompters or email to anonymous prompters who give their email (anonymous prompters who do not leave contact information cannot get private copies of stories). Please do not share it with anyone.

At least one of the stories resulting from the fishbowl will be posted for free, so y'all have a better idea of what you're getting into.

At the end of the fishbowl, I will post a list of all the unsold stories, to simplify life for anyone looking to see if you might want to sponsor something.

This fishbowl will last until the evening of Saturday, December 14. Fills will appear over that week and the following.

Leave your prompts here! This month's theme is music and song titles.

on clear winter day
wind blows chill in curlicues
dry leaves spin around

snowflakes fall to damp the ground
earth too warm for sticky snow

This is a story from the universe of my novel quartet in progress, Blow That Trumpet Gabriel. Consider it canon.


( Jyoti stood alone )



By the Light of the Moon by Elizabeth Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

( The doorbell dinged, and Hitomi looked up )



Speaking in Flowers by Elizabeth Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Alice blue jeans and indigo blouse
navy blue denim and cornflower top
pale sky blue glacier, bright ice blue sky
cobalt blue gentians
azure blue gentians
violet blue gentians
emerald grass and sapphire blossoms
with all this blue
around me and you
how can I be blue?



Lavender Blue by Elizabeth Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

( Karen just wants the whole issue to go away. )



Where Should This Music Be? by Elizabeth Conall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.