The Wordsmith's Forge

If you're running low on monsters, visit Nature Wants To Eat You.  Recommended for speculative fiction writers.  Not recommended for people with a phobia of ... well, anything in the animal kingdom.  

Dreamwidth has open enrollment in December.  You don't need an invite code to join now.  Here is post about some of Dreamwidth's cool features.

kajones_writing is hosting a call for prompts on the theme of Winter Festivals (Christmas, Yule, New Year, etc.).  You can give random numbers if you are not good at thinking up prompts.  Aim for any of the current story collections or go for something new; most of them are fantasy with some horror and science fiction options too, and there's even a Pagan fiction one.  Every prompt will get 500 words of fiction written.  You can buy more words with cash or with credits you have earned.  Posting links to the prompt call will also get you an extra 500 words, which you can apply to any of the stories from this session.  There are a bunch more individual and collective perks based on donations and other activities.

These are some posts from the later part of last week, in case you missed them:
Read "The Wrath of Trees" by Bard Bloom
Recompense for Culture
Rewarding Viciousness
Poem: "Old and Older Ways"
Read "Warming" by Skjam
Read "King(maker) Cake" by Aldersprig
Final verses in "Beggars' Night"
2011 Holiday Poetry Sale Followup Report
Sarcastic Font
5 Thoughts on Writing


The 2011 Holiday Poetry Sale was a success. We had more participants this year than last year, and raised more in contributions. There were slightly fewer poems posted, but that's because more of them were epics this year, so there is a LOT to read if you go to the followup report and click through the list of published poems.

Poetry in Microfunding:
"The Inescapable Agony of Being" is a $20 poem about aliens masquerading as human.

I finally managed to finish the holiday perks, so those are ready to mail today.  That includes the donor bookmarks for everyone who contributed to the Poetry Fishbowl, and the hardcopy collections for the k-fans.  I have some ideas for an expanded perk structure for 2012, courtesy of my_partner_doug.  More about that later, probably in January.

Given scheduled holiday activities, I expect to be much less available than usual for most of the rest of this month.  I'll try to keep an eye on things in my blogs but will have less time for email.  If you need to reach me, try LiveJournal messages.

The weather here is turning colder in fits and starts.  The cardinals are spending more time at the birdfeeders now, as are the mourning doves.  The sparrows come and go in big flocks -- you can see them flowing through the air, a wave shape made of individual little birds.

Happy holidays to those who are celebrating.