Blogmas | Mr. G (writing prompt)

Howdy!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Today’s post will be another story that I found online. It really surprised me how little Christmas/winter writing prompts there are anywhere! It took me so long to find ones that I liked to create something for you. The fact that I have one for you for this week kind of freaked me out, but once I read it, I knew it was going to be the one for me. The first thing that popped into my mind though was the Gingerbread man in the movie Shrek so I really hope you like this!

Originally, I was just going to use this prompt to create the story, but as I was dealing with the issues of trying to find a good one, my mom suggested that I talk about the Elf On The Shelf and its doings around the house at night. While I thought it was a good concept, I didn’t want to mess with my other one. After a couple of days, ideas started floating around in my head that combined both of them, so this was the ending result!

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Grandmother pulled the last tray of gingerbread men from the oven. Suddenly…

Hilda enjoyed her time with her grandchildren, so she decided to make it easier on herself and finish making the beloved gingerbread men at nine o’clock in the evening. The house was somewhat quiet as the only noise throughout the house was her humming and the occasional dinging of the oven. It was very relaxing to her to bake before everyone came over, but it didn’t last…

As she was pulling out the last tray of men from the oven, she began to hear a light rustling and even some grunting noises coming from the other side of her island. She put down the tray of freshly baked gingerbread softly before quickly locating a cast-iron pan from her shelf and gripped it hard.

“Is anybody there?” She said in her tiny quivering voice. “Don’t come any closer, I’m armed” the pan shook in her hands as shear terror rippled through her whole body. She took a step forward to see if she could catch a glimpse of the stranger down below. As she took the step, the floor creaked under her feet and she froze. By this time, a tip of a tiny red and while cap slowly appeared on the opposite side, climbing its way up unknowingly what he was walking into at this moment.

“Ugh, the things I will do for a little snack.” The little creature poked his long but little arms from below and his shiny head suddenly movable kept looking back at the drop he’d make if he wasn’t careful with his footing. Once he got his upper limbs over, he just crawled across the top to make things easier on himself. After safely making the journey, he sighed and stood up to wipe off the dust of his plain Christmas-y suit. Now he was clean but saw something in the corner of his eye and it made him turn around halfway to face a very terrified Hilda.

Ahhhhhh!

As Hilda screamed, she accidentally dropped the pan on her foot. She was conflicted to deal with the pain of her toes or the mysterious intruder. After several seconds, it dawned on her that this little man looked oddly like her elf on the shelf that she does with her grandchildren. So, she approached it slowly and said,  “Rascal, is that you?”

“Rascal? My name is not that ratchet disgrace. The name’s Mr G and you can tell your little hooligans that the next time you see them too.” He said as folded his long arms together.

Hilda was shocked that he actually talked back to her, in such a rude tone, at that. “That’s what the box named you, Rascal.” Hilda calmly said back as she slowly bent down to pick up the pan on the kitchen floor. “I must be sleep baking again. How are you alive right now?” She gently put the pan on the island closes to her body as possible, you know just in case she needed it.

“Well we’re supposed to keep our identities a secret but then I smelled the cookies from the ridiculous position you had me in on the mantle, and since I was going to be there until dawn, I figured I deserved a treat.” G said as he made his way over to the freshly spiced cookies that were finally cool to the touch. He grabbed the smallest one of the bunch and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, licking his fingers to make that the rest of the crumbs were off of his outfit.

At this time, Hilda was in a daze. She couldn’t believe that this seemingly plastic toy could be eating a real cookie in front of her. “There’s more of you? Will all of my dolls come alive like you too?” As soon as she said that, she began to fear them move around and talk in a rude manner like Mr. G, which would help explain the loud banging and creaking sounds coming from the living room and kitchen late at night.

“Eh, I don’t think so.” As he finished the cookie and pushing the last bit of crumbs off the edge as they landed on the floor. “Unless they are Santa’s helpers, but they look too delicate to be one of us.” G looked at him with love on his face. “I wish they were, they are so good-looking and I haven’t had a decent date in decades!”

She turned her head to face the most expensive dolls she has and back to the creepy little dude on the island. It was just too crazy that this “Rascal” would be alive in the middle of her kitchen, and oozing over her $1,000 dolls on handmade shelves. He shook his head before looking back at the tray again, debating another cookie, before heading back to his hideous spot until Hilda began to speak once again, “You know I can put you in a more flattering place, if you want.”

G looked at her with delight, and walked towards her and as he stood at the ledge, he put his hands up at her like a baby would wanting to be carried around, she hestianted a bit before taking the chance and cradled him inside her arms and put him on the coffee table where she’d eventually place the milk and cookies in a day or two, but for now it’ll be Rascal–I mean, Mr. G’s new placement for the night.

Before she left his view for good, he spoke one more time to her. “Hey, if you could, please do not tell those little idiots about me being alive at night? Although it would be fun to scare them for once in my life.” She looked at him and smiled, signaling that she’d keep quiet for him. Afterwards, he suddenly looked away and became so sincere in his plastered smile on his face. The end.

So what did you think of this little story? I thought it was adorable! Would you like to see more of these types of stories during other holidays? 

Blogmas | Bad Kitty (writing prompt)

Howdy!

I was really in the mood to write some holiday inspired stories this year as my original idea of double the amount of Christmas albums didn’t exactly pan out, so I thought maybe this would be a better option for myself!

I found this prompt on Pinterest, and the site where you can visit to see more is Holloway’s Hideaway. As a cat owner, I thought this was just the perfect prompt for me to do. Although I have to say, none of our cats (including Oliver) are never inside long enough to take an interest in the actual fully decorated Christmas tree. My sister and brother-in-law’s cats are another story, they came home one night to find that somebody might’ve been stuck some place and managed to take the lower half of the tinsel off the tree entirely as there was a long strand lying across the floor.

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They watched endlessly as the family cat began the assault on the newly decorated Christmas tree.

We start our story in a family home out in the country, the closet town is about 15 miles so the people that normally live in the house, don’t get very many distributions unless it’s grunting noises from the cows getting comfortable outside in the stable. Other than that, it’s relativity peaceful.

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and the family has their daughter Karri and her children staying over for the festive time. Bob, the patriarch of the household is the last to go to bed but first he silently checks up on everybody in the guest rooms to see them queityly dreaming away in their beds. He notices that the family cat Bozo has made himself a nice little bed in between his daughter’s legs, which made him smile because he knows how much Bozo misses the family being around the house constantly. After overseeing the rooms, he slowly makes his way into his own bedroom to fall asleep before the real fun begins.

Unfortunately, he made a bad mistake by leaving the bedroom door of Karri’s room slightly open. Bozo wasn’t necessarily getting a good night’s sleep with his former buddy, he was getting popped on the head and at the last, she rolled over both of her legs together in a tight squeeze that caused the cat to snap and start growling at her. At this time, Karri was in and out of consciousness and heard a growl coming from below her legs. She turned around halfway to see a furious cat missing half of its tail. She began to look around the headboard in case there was a bug of some sort and he was warning her about it, but nope. As soon as she made the turnaround, her legs spread apart and the cat took off running out of the room!

Bozo got the entrance of the living room before stopping to lick himself at the tail to make sure everything wasn’t damaged or worse fluffed up more than usual. He thought about trying out the kid’s room but figured that was a death trap waiting to happen, so he decided to stay out of those rooms completely.

Since it would be Christmas tomorrow, the children talked their grandparents to leave the twinkle lights on so that Santa would be see them from the patio doors. Bozo was over nine years old, he’s been around Christmas trees before but for the first time ever, the lights were enchanting to him. They were almost like a siren calling out to him, and once he saw them, he immediately was put into a trance-like state and began to sniff the pines and ornaments from both the past and present. The smells were intoxicating for the old cat, he suddenly lost control of his body and got up on his hind legs and started to pick at the wires of the lights and fluffy strand of tinsel that surrounded the tree from top to bottom.

What puzzled Bozo was the fact that he wasn’t interested in the nativity scene that was about two inches from his back paws. He has a history with rubbing up against them that would result in knocking one or two down but for once he turned his attention to the actual tree itself.

Despite being colorblind he quickly figured out the lights were three wires fused together to create a small but strong band. When he was a kitten, Bob’s children used to feed little Bozo small bites of Twizzlers’ so he mesmerized that twisty pattern and just assumed this was a special treat all around the Christmas tree. He began to chew on the cords and with his sharp teeth made some tiny puncture marks along the bright lights. He wasn’t very interested in the lights themselves, as they were slightly warm on the roof of his mouth, the wires were cool to the touch so there wasn’t anything to worry for that.

Once he realized that he wasn’t able to swallow anything with each bite, he decided to walk around on his back legs to the other side but still the same result happened. Bozo grew frustrated, he hated to be teased with his food, especially his treats so then he became radical with his decision to sit back up and lick the sides of his mouth, all the while still looking up at the tree, contemplating a good spot to try next and he latched onto a spot directly in the middle of the tree, where all of the glass and memorable baubles were placed.

Once finding his prey, he took a couple of steps back from his original position and crouched down to the floor, never breaking contact with his special spot. He was ready and used all of his energy to leap across the room to land at the wrong spot and he realized how bad he calculated his misfortune and when he went to climb the rest of the way, the hook of an ornament stab him in the padding of his right back paw and he let out a high-pitched meow, suddenly spooked he jumped off of the tree for good but not without it falling down with him.

He landed at the corner of the tree so when it fell in front of him, he wasn’t injured by it too much. There were small droplets of blood that came off the bottom of his paw but all the floor contained was a dark green mess with golden-sparkled tinsel and rainbow colored lights that were slightly dimmed as the plug was almost out of its socket in the wall. There was also shattered glass on and underneath the disgraced tree. Bozo was stunned as he just stood in front of him. The puzzled look on his face continued as the family, who were awaken by the sheer thud and glass breaking, ran into the room with their mouths open wide looking at both the mess and the unsuspecting cat at the side.

So what did you think of this? Tell me a story about your cat (or dog) ruining something very beloved to you? How do you keep your animals away from the Christmas decorations in your home?

Will I Do NaNoWriMo Again This Year?

Howdy!

It is almost that time for National Novel Writing Month or  “NaNoWriMo” as some people like to call it. For some writers, they live for this time of the year but for the rest, it’s something that they absolutely dread. I can understand both sides, if you enjoy it, I feel like you are good at being pressured and able to write everyday on your story, but I also know why others fear it too. If you have a very active social or work life at the moment, writing is literally the last thing on your mind.

As for me, I’ve had it in my brain since April, after I wrote my post about not being able to participate in CampNaNoWriMo that I should probably do it, but honestly I don’t see the point in it. I don’t want to force anything that doesn’t want to appear to me in dreams right now, you know what I’m saying?

There is hope though as I am using Pinterest to help me generate the characters and overall setting of my story. I’ve been looking into different people’s photos and have developed a clear picture of my female characters: Angela and Star. I am still having issues with my main character Heath, most because I have a general person in mind but he looks relativity younger than I want him to for my story so I’m trying to keep an open mind to other messy blondes. And Brace is my “complicated” character and he’s always been that way, so finding him has been quite a challenge for me! The others will come eventually at least that what I’m hoping will happen!

Another thing that I’m busy looking into is how to do outlines. I feel like finding the right way to figure out how I want things to go, is the key to my success on completing my first draft. I have a board on my profile for my favorite blog posts, and since November has been coming up, other writers have been writing posts of tips and how-to’s for aspiring NaNo rookies. I have three blog posts that talk creating an outline for their stories and I will have them listed below!

• Should You Outline Your Novel?
• How To Create A Scene-By-Scene Outline
• How To Outline Your YA Novel

Now if you are thinking about joining NaNo, I have some posts I did last year, if you’d like to look into them. I wrote three updates and I had shared some of the websites I was using to attempt keep my pace together, maybe they will help you out too! I’d like to make a point to say, that I didn’t make it to the end of the month and I explain why that happened in the final post, but I was still fairly impressed with myself on what I did get done.

Am I Still Working On My Novel | 2 Week Mark | Am I Finished Or Not

Before I go, I just want to say good luck to everyone that is doing NaNoWriMo this year! You may not hit your word count everyday, nor will you like everything you’ve been working on, but I can definitely say that’s all part of the process! After it’s all over, you can revisit it, and you’ll see that you produced something awesome. 🙂

Have you ever thought about joining the NaNoWriMo party? What is keeping you back from writing your story?

Writing Prompt: The Assassin

So… This is not my regular “Monday” post but I’ve given myself a few days to think about how I wanted to go with this prompt and as much as I was tempted to use my current WIP (work in progress) story that I’ve tried to write since November 2016, I wanted to go in another direction and use my other idea I that have had stuck in the depths of my brain. There’s a lot of stuff back there, so the fact that it’s wanting to be up front is a bit crazy!

I found the prompt on Maris McKay’s blog again, and it was “The fireworks cover the sound of breaking glass. They climb out the window and start running with a grin on their face. Today is Independence Day.” I used the prompt in a different way than expected but I hope everyone still enjoys it 🙂

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I honestly don’t remember how I got here.

All I know is that I’m tumbled over on a very hard surface, the dirt on the ground seeps into the fresh cuts on my body and burns as I attempt to sit up again. I have to use both of my arms with the rest of the strength left in my body to move around. Once I flip around to my back and rearrange my lifeless legs forward, I began to wipe off the excess dirt off my arms and legs and look at my surroundings, searching for my chair.

The building is huge, but barely hanging on to itself. The windows are shattered and ceiling tiles are slowly pulling apart from each other and floating away by the wind outside. I quickly realize that I am in an old hangar that now holds the most random things, I knew about the junkies but not the large metal elements, that look like could be the innards of airplanes and cars. This should be interesting trying to find my wheelchair in this mess! As the thought creeps out of my head, an older man is standing in the back with a blank expression on his face.

“I’m surprised you’re alive!” He shouted while cleaning a metallic can in his hands. “I mean, considering that guy was kicking the living shit out of you.” He tosses the can into the fairly large stack of junk plastered up against the wall. He finally sighs and starts to work over to me.

“Well, I would be up by now, if I could find my chair.” The woman says, with a groan as her sides were certainly in a lot of pain right now. She was pretty sure one of her ribs was broken, but he didn’t need to know that.

The man stopped and looked at her funny, “what chair?” he said as he began to look around the place and search for anything that even resembling a chair of sorts. He did find pretty clean white car outside, but before he wondered who that belonged to, the blonde and bruised lady in front of him in the distance took his attention back to the fact that she was now looking for something in this pigsty.

“It’s mine.” She said as he continued to admire the car. “Also, I use a wheelchair to get around, and before that asshole started attacking me, he pulled me out of it and threw it somewhere in here.” At least I hope it’s in here. This statement made him look at her with a puzzled again, but before he could say another word a noise behind her startled them in the back of the place.

******

Kady turned to her left side, but not before taking out what looked like three dark sticks from the side of right boots. That’s when the man noticed a gun located directly at her back around her waist on a  thin belt once she removed them and began to scoot on her hands, softly around the crooked maze in front of her.

Bang! Bang!

The mystery man took shelter, using the mess around them but realized she was exposed and defenseless, so unless she had a cool magic trick to make with those things in her hands, she was done for and his job was done. As he crouched down on the ground, he watched the scene play out between the two of them.

“Who’s there?!” Kady said, as her hand full of three lightly green colored darts laid in the palm of her hand behind her. “Roy, is that you coming back for more?” She knows if she’s not careful that she will not win this fight either, she thought about using her gun, but she doesn’t want to cause any more damage then she already has, so these are her only lifeline right now.

“How are you not dead Kady?!” A deep voice echoes off in front of her, and she takes a guess on where he could be located, and hopefully she’s right. Roy sounded a bit shake-y, like he knows he’s in trouble for offering to go after her in the first place. “You know I don’t want to do this.” He speaks again, wanting for an answer from her, but it’s quiet. He knows that’s never a good sign.

Swoosh! Clung.

He gasps loudly, staring wide-eyed at the pine tree lookalike dart stuck on the tin metal wall in front of him. The man is covered in sweat from head to toe, and he knows she’s close to him. He also knows he has some of her blood splattered onto his clothes but that’ll help prove to know he killed the #1 enemy on the block. However, he knew he needed to move or she’ll try to sneak up on him, which is what she did in a way, especially when the second dart arrived in a bad spot.

Ahh!

“Fucking bitch!” He shrieked as the next dart landed at his lower backside. He quickly wondered if they were laced with toxic poisons, but he didn’t want to dwell on that too much this time as he pulled it out with a fast tug and began to slowly walk away from his position.

Kady is lying on the ground directly behind a now groaning Roy. “Why were sent to kill me Roy? You better tell me, or I can reserve this last target for your head or your heart. It’s your choice.” Kady said as she scooted across the room, on her hands, her legs leaving inconvenient dragging marks as she continued on to her mission.  Finally, she spots an opening toward her right arm, but instead of striking the beast, she decides to change things up and patiently waits for his response.

“Marcus wanted it done.” He explained, with a sad tone in his voice. He was afraid of what he heard Kady could to a man who turned on her. “He said, after the fourth of July and we would get our independence day, and be free of you.” Wrong answer. He knew that wasn’t the smartest thing to say to an assassin but he was in lots of pain and it just came out. “He said, you were a nuance and that you wouldn’t be the only one. He’d go after your whole league.” Roy finally broke down into tears and collapsed on himself but was frightened again when Kady appeared on the other side of the crate like wall between them, with one last dart tightly locked in her hand.

Kady quietly smiled at him in the same way he did before running for cover. Roy tried to get up once last time to runaway from her but it wasn’t going to happen with his injury, so he knew he was an easy picking.

“Tell your boss that if he hurts anybody else, I will kill him.”  Kady said with one last jab, the dart stabbed him in the upper thigh and watched him wince in pain as his leg started to rapidly bleed through his jeans. Now, with her mission sort of finished, she asked him one last question. “By any chance do you know where my chair is?” She said in a charming voice. All Roy could do was obey and point north and watched her fade away from view and heard her grab ahold of the chair that was tipped over on its side, and gradually climb in it and once she was safely seated, she began to collect her darts but once she made it back to Roy for the last one, she slightly pinched the end of it and watched him groan on the floor, not so confident now. She pulled on it and once out, she wiped it on his shirt and slid them back into her boot. “You’ll need to think twice before messing with me Roy.”

After rolling away from the wounded Roy, she found the older man who had ran back into his office and was suddenly terrified of her now. “Call an ambulance for him, okay?” She calmly said to him, while he could only motion a nod to her. She nodded back and lifted the front of her chair over the cracked concrete and went towards her car. She smelled the fresh air as she searched her keys inside her other boot and it clicked twice, unlocking the door. She parked her chair by the front seat and wrapped her arms around the side of the seat and inside of the car to pull herself in to sit down. She quickly took the brakes off and folded it up and threw it in the backseat before starting up the car and closing the door to drive away.

So, what did you think of my “little” free write of the week?

Writing Prompt: The Dying Phoenix

Click picture to go to the website!

I swear I surprise myself every day! I haven’t been so inspired to write any stories since my last one in March, but I was literally scrolling through Pinterest and I found this and I had something within me and I just decided to roll with it. I’m treating this like a free write, so don’t shocked if you see any mistakes on here, okay?

The prompt banner says, “Write the story of a magical creature missing their species’ key feature (a siren without a voice, a unicorn without a horn, a dragon without fire, etc). At first I was inspired by the “a siren without a voice” but then I thought about looking into other mythical creatures and remembered Phoenixes and thought this would be kind of cool to explore a dying phoenix. So I hope you all enjoy this little story!

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I am dying.

We are all dying in our nests, awaiting to be reborn, and discover new worlds among men. It’s a lifetime achievement to be present in every birth, genius invention, and war. You are there as a sign that the circle continues and never ends, you give the humans hope for their future, but what happens when you are the one, who is constantly dying and on the urge of never awakening? There’s no direct answer to that, but yet I am living it.

My name is Sonnet. Yup, that is my name. It was given to me by my master, Edmund Groose (Gross). He was given a phoenix for his 44th birthday, after being ill for some time. He thought of me as a good sign, as phoenixes are generally always dying and coming back to life, but I was never a good luck bird to him or anyone else for that matter.

He told me while I was perched inside the bar in my bronze cage, that he gave me that name for his love of poetry, as he was infatuated with my brightly colored feathers, of purple and green. I looked like a peacock more than a phoenix honestly. I was to be his companion for 14 years, which is the exact lines of a written sonnet. After his untimely death, I was sent away to another master, and another, and another after him.

In all I had a total of 14 masters in my lifetime.

Now you might think this is unusual, but I never once died and was reborn with any of them. I was a young bird at the start and lived out the lives of the people around me, but was never the spectacle of the other phoenixes of the world. While I aged throughout the decades, my colors started to fade but never exploded into a ball of fire at the end of the day like some many others, I stayed and suffered through the fiery pain inside.

I was never unhappy with my situation though. I was going through what some many others were, I was slowly dying and I actually relished in that feeling. I was always afraid that once I made my first rebirth, if I’d still have my memories of my previous owner? Would I still want to look outside the window into the morning sunrise and be given freshly caught fish from the sea? I often wondered if I’d still feel the same as I always had after I came back and lived again.

The world had not changed too drastically from the time I was given to Edmund Groose in the 1800’s, as I wasn’t exposed to too much, as it was illegal to have such an exotic bird of my kind but I was basically a family heirloom to the Groose family. I never left the house or roughly my cage in the corner of the spare bedroom. It was a dark and gloomy room to let such a magnificent bird sleep, but when I was let out for some excercise, the room itself was big enough to fly around the columns on the walls and even sit on the windowsill to absorb as much sunlight as I could to hopefully bring back my beautiful hue on my body and even my spirit, but over time I realized that it wasn’t working and that I was officially dying for good.

The pain is beginning to be too much for me. I can hardly stand up on the bar at the top of my cage. The cage I was originally in, is breaking apart at the seams right along with me. I no longer have the strength to stand up, as the heat of the fire within me is burning the muscles and bones in my body. My feathers are slowly decaying, one by one falling and drifting down to the floor. Once there, the green shade had turned into a black and fragile texture to the touch.

I hope I die and never come back, for I’d like to be the one phoenix that never rises from the ashes. The enigma to other birds of my species to be afraid of what could happen to them, but the question remains, would they accept death or divert altogether?