Blog Reader Appreciation Day Merry-Go-Round

Wordless appreciation is okay too. I'm really glad we're friends.

This ... is fascinating! It makes me wonder what else is afoot there. Like some kind of wilderness hunt-and-find game, with creative writing!

Okay, you got me. That is totally how I'd respond to that situation. *hugs* You know me so well!

I'm really enjoying the trend of exercise fiction, too.

The Crystal Cube

I gaze into my crystal cube. Images flicker and shift, their star-blue light spilling across my face as I watch them. The voices sound tinny and distant, but I can make out what people are saying.

“Did you finish the story yet?”

“Yes, just now. Do you want to read it? The witch is –”

With a bit of magic, I nudge the cup of coffee so that it spills over the manuscript. How many times have my characters done something similar to me? This writer doesn’t even know that I can watch back. I cackle as the dark liquid devours the embarrassing scene.

* * *

The silket covers bunch under my hands as I gasp awake. Outside the viewport, the familiar star-smeared darkness leans near.

“What is it?” my lover murmurs. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say.

I was dreaming of a planet. My naked feet danced on the wet green grass as water fell from the sky. A huge yellow star cut through the clouds and carved the light into its seven colors, bending a rainbow across the sky. The smell of the mud excited me, told me stories of the life thriving within it.

“It was just a dream,” I say, laying my cheek against the cool smooth viewport. I never go planetside. I’m a spacer, born and bred …

But I can still smell the rain.

* * *

I write. I write, and the wind fills my wings with booming thunder, swift silken power lifting me upwards, soaring toward the stars. I write, and the words fill my mind with fire, snapping and crackling. I write, and I dance weightless and laughing over the floor of night, trailing nebulas like scarves.

I write, skipping from world to world, touching them with my fingers, stirring lives as I go. Like this, like this, it’s as if I’m running my hands over book spines or bolts of fabric or fragrant blooming flowers – I move them, sample them, and they move me too, in little hidden ways.

I write. I am the traveler and the trail and the distance between. I am the world and the walking and the wonder. I am the storyteller and the story. All of these things are real, all of these things are fable, and all of these things are part of me. Words are my crystal, my ship, my spirit.

* * *

Calliope laughs, stirring the pot of ideas. She licks the spoon and turns to her sisters. “What do you think?”

“Needs more salt,” says Melpomene, and reaches for a sparkling jar.

********************************

That sounds fascinating. Asian material can be challenging to handle, but it's fresh to a Western audience -- less overpicked than European material. Asian steampunk sounds nifty. There doesn't seem to be much of that.