Friday, March 14, 2025

Flash Fiction Friday: Flashes of Inspiration No. 24


 

#24 "The REAL Sleeping Beauty"

Prompt: Aurora woke up not after 100 years, but 1000 years. The first thing she saw was...

.... A thin shaft of light shining through the collapsed rafters. The sturdy metal bed frame, complete with posts at all four corners that once held up the canopy around her bed, was the only thing that had prevented the collapsed roof from smothering her completely.

Aurora rubbed her face and sat up carefully. Not another living thing stirred in the space around her. What had happened after her birthday? The last thing she remembered was withdrawing to her royal bedchamber when the festivities of the night before her sixteenth birthday had ended. She shifted carefully, trying to see past the dilapidated barricade. The blankets beneath her felt gritty and gossamer-thin. Snatches of a melody ran through her head… Another memory! Just before everything went blank, she did recall hearing a strange sound! What did it mean?

“Hello!”
“Shh! Quiet, you dork!”
“Why do I need to be quiet? It’s not like there’s anybody who can hear me in this abandoned castle! ECHOO!”
“SSHHH! Remember how Mrs. Tooley said it could be haunted?”
“Cut it out, Jessica! It’s not like any ghosts are going to attack us just for making noise! Come on, let’s climb up here and see if we can make it into the tower!”

Aurora’s heart beat rapidly. People! Two girls, it sounded like. Were they here to rescue her?
Desperate, she found her voice and called out, “Help!”

Dead silence followed. Then one of the girls said, “What animal was that?”
“Come again? I didn’t hear anything.”
“SHH! Quiet—listen!”

Aurora, emboldened by the voices getting closer, yelled again, “Help me!”

“Jess! It’s coming from the tower!”
“But we can’t get there! The wall collapsed and took out most of the stairs! Besides… How could anybody get up there if nobody’s been here for a decade?”
“That we know of…”
“Hello!” the girl named Jessica called. “I hear you!”

“Please!” Aurora begged. “I’m trapped and I can’t get out!”

“How long have you been in there?”

“Pardon?”

“When did you find this castle?”

Aurora frowned. “Find? I live here! This is my home!” She pressed against a board, feeling it give slightly at her touch. “I seem to be buried under a mountain of wood! The ceiling of my bedroom must have collapsed.”

“Ugh—oof!” Aurora could hear boots scraping against stone, the sounds of struggle. She decided it was worth struggling too.

The young princess searched around the perimeter of her wooden shell for the weakest point, and began shoving as hard as she could until the board snapped off, letting in even more light. Aurora could stick her whole arm through the hole, but she still couldn’t escape.

“Dude!” she heard Jessica gasp. “I think something just busted a hole in that pile of wood there!”

Hastily, Aurora thrust her arm through it and waved. “It’s me! I’ve been trapped in here since… I think since my birthday, and now I’m trying to get out!”

Jessica’s friend snorted. “That’s ridiculous! Who brings a girl out to some castle ruins for her birthday?”

Aurora withdrew her arm and looked around her bed, wishing she could see more than just her immediate area. “What do you mean ruins? When I came into this room, the castle was still standing. Surely it’s only the roof that has collapsed.”

The two girls were so silent, Aurora panicked that they might have departed.
“Umm,” came the voice of Jessica’s friend, “This castle hasn’t stood for… at least a few centuries! When did you say you got here?”

Aurora sighed. “There you go again, talking as if I wasn’t born here and lived here with my father and mother, the King and Queen, my entire life!”

“Whoa! King and—you’re a princess?” Jessica squealed.
“Wait a minute!” her friend interrupted. “Who are you?” Her shadow brushed over the hole Aurora had made, but she was still too far away to see her face.

“My name is Aurora,” stammered the princess.

More scuffling sounds, and Aurora could hear the girls whispering to each other. “Hello?” she queried. “I would really like to get out of here if I can. I think I’ve been asleep, but I have no idea for how long—“
“A thousand years,” Jessica answered, nearly stopping the very breath in Aurora’s lungs.

“W-wh-what did you say?” choked the princess.

“Your name is Aurora and you’re a princess who’s been sleeping in a castle for several centuries… I’m pretty sure this means—“

“Holy crap, Jess!” her friend yelped. “We’ve just discovered the REAL SLEEPING BEAUTY!”

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Did you enjoy this tale? Head over to FLASH FICTIONS for more "Flashes of Inspiration"!

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Reader's Review: "Set In Stone" by Frank Morin


Synopsis from Amazon:

Impossible choices. Explosive magic. Brilliant humor.

Connor is cursed . . .

In Obrion, that means he must obtain patronage from a high lord prior to his sixteenth birthday, or face execution.

Connor turns sixteen tomorrow.

Not to worry, he has a plan. Although it doesn't take into account little things like 'accidentally' setting the local lord's mansion on fire or his town getting invaded.

Armies clash, superhuman Petralists step out of legend, and layers of deadly intrigue shatter Connor's simple life. Caught in the middle of the conflict, he cannot understand why both sides are so interested in his curse.

If he stays, he dies.

If he leaves, people he loves will die.

Some birthdays are like that.

And there's this girl . . .

>>>>>>>>

My Review:
Eight years ago, I attended my local ComicCon and had a blast navigating the Artist's Alley section, particularly the area that specifically pertained to books by local authors and other writers and booksellers. I perused many interesting titles (which I ended up buying as ebooks a few weeks later) and received a lot of promotional "swag" items like bookmarks and postcards. One such was for Set in Stone, and therefore on the next ebook-buying "binge", I included it in my purchases. It then sat in my TBR for the next few years, overtaken by so many other books I read in the interim, as I watched that list of "Books I owned but have yet to read" grow longer and longer! But at long last, the time arrived when I would read it!

I was a bit apprehensive going into it, since some of the reviews I read complained about certain character arcs and made it sound like a trope-laden hodgepodge of plot holes and cheap escapes, fan-service type stuff... but I did want to give it a fair shot, so I kept reading. At least none of the characters were too insufferable at the beginning!

I really think reading about the inspiration behind the story, learning that it grew out of a storytelling improvisation session with his 11-year-old child really helped reframe the story as one geared toward the middle-grade reader, and from that perspective, it was a great story! I very much enjoyed the concept of the Petralists, the world-building centered on quarry-work and "unlocking" latent superhuman abilities based on different types of stone. I love that it almost felt limited in this first book, as it provides enough of an introductory foundation that promises payoff in the form of even more development in ensuing sequels. Yes, I did note the character arc that annoyed the other reviewers so much, but in the context of "this is a story meant for middle-graders" I didn't find it so terrible--and there were some tropes I was expecting to see that didn't happen, so I was definitely happy about that!
The variety of personalities in the cast of characters was awesome. Everything from the strong, solid, stoic type; the bubbly, exuberant type; the arrogant and overbearing type; and the dedicated, dependable type can be found in these pages. It does get to feel a bit long and dragging at times, if you're going in expecting a quick, simple, straightforward story like most children's novels. This is very much "epic fantasy for preteens." I really got a lot of "Ranger's Apprentice" vibes from it, if I'm being honest, and some of the chapters were actually shorter than others, so it makes the story feel like it's going by a bit faster when the action and movement is slow.

Set in Stone is an ingenious middle-grade novel that starts off on a unique premise, builds its world well, and manages to be highly entertaining just when the reader's attention is starting to drift. I'd rate this book a granite-steady *****4.5 STARS***** and if you're someone who enjoys finding new middle-grade fictional worlds to explore, OR you know a middle-grader who would love a new epic fantasy series to really get swept up into, I would recommend you pick up Set in Stone and see if it excites your imagination as much as it did mine!

Further Reading: (YA Adventures/Epic Fantasy/Young Heroes/Strong World-Building)
The Fair Folk Chronicles--Jeffrey Cook and Katherine Perkins
        -Foul is Fair 
        -Street Fair 
        -A Fair Fight 
        -All's Fair 
The Bhinian Empire--Miriam Forster
     -City of A Thousand Dolls 
     -Empire of Shadows 
The Portal Prophecies--C. A. King
     -A Keeper's Destiny 
     -A Halloween's Curse 
     -Frost Bitten

Friday, January 3, 2025

Happy Birthday To The Upstream Writer!!


Happy New Year, Upstream followers! I have so many updates since the last time I posted any kind of update at all... which was last year in January. So... This becomes a new birthday post for you all!

Life Stuff


First off, health-wise, I've seen much improvement since my sleep apnea diagnosis last year. A year of getting deep sleep every night has made a huge difference in my energy levels, namely that as long as I get a decent amount of sleep, I'm no longer fighting fatigue every waking hour as I was before!

Personally, I've been doing all right in the two years since my brother's passing. There are times when the grief hits me, for sure, but I find myself able to move past it more. It definitely helps that we've welcomed not just one but three new nephews into my family in the last year. They are all adorable and thriving in their respective families.

That being said, my summer wasn't nearly as productive as I wanted it to be, since I had some very strange muscle spasms on two separate occasions. In July it was my back that suddenly went out very randomly, rendering me nearly immobile for an entire weekend. I could lay down to sleep, but the transition between sitting and standing, and also moving around was very painful. In August--during the family reunion where I got to meet all my nephews at once--I ended up straining my bicep which almost completely immobilized my arm and gave me a great amount of pain for several days. That one lasted a week or so, in which I had to restrain my arm in a sling and thus I didn't really have the bandwidth to do a lot of writing.

Writing


Which brings me to the full disclosure: I'm still not finished with Fugitive of Crossway. It's still not where I want it to be, it's still rough in many places, and although I'm going to give it my best shot, there is a good chance it will still take me into winter to finish it.

However, all is not lost, as I've managed to release three short stories in limited-run anthologies this year. The first was Genie in A Bottle, which has recently been delisted as it has finished its run. For that one, I wrote a brand-new story titled "Gears, Guns, and Guttersnipes", a version of the Aladdin story based on the eventual Book 3 of the Undersea Saga. (*Note: This anthology has been discontinued at this time; the short story may appear in a future "Tales From The Undersea Saga" collection!) The second was Cracked Fairy Tales, a theme that aptly fit my short story "The Dragon's Mark", a retelling of Cinderella I'd done a few years back here on the blog. (*Note: This anthology has also completed its limited run, hence you can either read the serial as it is here on my blog, or look for it in an eventual short story collection!)

Last of all, is Rose of Disgrace, for which I chose to polish up and tweak "The Prince and The Rose", a retelling of Beauty and The Beast in which the damsel character isn't noble, innocent, or charitable, although her name is ironically Charmaine--she is vain, selfish, and rude; all the characteristics normally attributed to the Prince who is commonly placed under a curse in the traditional story. I had fun changing up the archetypes, pitting a penitent-yet-cursed prince against a beautiful-but-arrogant damsel, just to see how things might turn out a bit differently. I feel like it turned out well and I can't wait for you all to read it! 

In conclusion, I haven't made as much progress on The Undersea Saga as I wanted, but the year hasn't been wholly devoid of writing!

Another change for me last year, which you may have noticed, is that for the first time since basically 2013, I chose not to participate in NaNoWriMo in the month of November. Honestly, it's been waning since before the pandemic, as the small band of local participants couldn't keep a regular "Municipal Liaison" for more than a few years, and nobody really seemed too keen to take up the role. Then when lockdowns happened, everything sort of unraveled and there wasn't any sort of structure to the community at all, so we sort of drifted apart.
This year, it seems the organization made the (in my opinion) rather unfortunate choice to associate with and subsequently double down to defend said association with a program that uses generative AI. I may not know much about such a concept--and I've used some image generators for cover mockups or character inspiration, but the aspect I disagree with is the notion of using AI programs to generate novels themselves, and the fact that such programs will often generate based on information gleaned from published works, often those independently published, without crediting or asking permission of the author. This is theft, and I don't approve. NaNoWriMo, in their response to objections to the association with the generative AI program, maintained that users of generative-AI writing software are doing so because they could not access the activity of writing without it, and those that object to using generative-AI to write whole novels are speaking from some kind of "privilege" that allows us to come up with our own original stories and plots and words, while generative-AI programs give "access" to those who somehow cannot do their own writing without it.
It's not privilege, it's skill. And injecting an AI generator into the process isn't going to develop the skill the same way writing organically does. What it may do is create an increased dependence on the program, while the fledgling writer's own ability to self-generate remains immature and undeveloped.
Therefore, I am convinced that NaNoWriMo is no longer a place for writers and story enthusiasts to band together and support each others' writing. An organization that defends the use of AI to generate whole plots and characters and writing in the name of "access" just feels like it's about padding the numbers and giving the appearance of popularity, of quantity over quality, and I don't agree with that.
Hence I'm just going to continue tracking my word counts and projects on WordKeeperAlpha, and not even bother with the NaNoWriMo site. I missed the heady rush of earning the fun badges, but at least I'll keep on writing my own words!

Anyway! Back to writing.

What's In Store for The Upstream Writer?


As we enter 2025, I'm coming to grips with a combination of unofficially (self-diagnosed), internalized ADHD (likely the source of a lot of my "airy" tendencies growing up), on top of the coping habits I fell into from undiagnosed sleep apnea... and I've got a few strategies I've started to implement to try and un-learn the ineffectual stuff and form new neural pathways to get me to a point of productive success!
I want to be more active in blogging this year. I want to make a return to Serial Saturdays--or at least make an attempt to finish what I've already started, projects like Fairies Under Glass and A Writer's Tale, to name a few. I'm even toying with the idea of revisiting the ReBible series and maybe adding those to Wattpad, thus reinstating Wattpad Wednesdays. In between, I'm hoping that edits on Fugitive of Crossway won't take as long since I'm not completely rewriting the whole thing a third time! 2025 could very well be my year, folks! (I know I've said that every year for the past three years... but I have a few things going for me this year that I haven't had before!) Perhaps with the completion of this main project, it will open for me opportunities to return to abandoned projects (such as at least two people who still bring up a desire to see "The Last Inkweaver" in print! Even though I haven't even touched that project since 2018!)
I also purpose to find a few more blog hops to do... I have one at least that I still need to fill out, but maybe I turn it into a blog series instead of trying to do it all at once? Still thinking about that one... Meanwhile, I had so much fun with the anthologies from this year that I'm considering finding other anthologies to participate with, while at the same time I don't want the new projects I might have to produce to interfere with progress on The Undersea Saga anymore! I'm done with distractions, it's time for FOCUS!

Reading


Speaking of focus... I had hoped to be able to read more in 2024 than I did in 2023... Which I succeeded, but not by much!

I managed to achieve 20 books read in 2024, which divides up to 6 indie reads and 14 "mainstream" books.

My Top 3 Reads for the indie books are as follows:

Number 3 is probably Alienation by S. E. Anderson. Not to say it's in any way bad at all, all 3 of my picks were the most stellar of all the books I read last year, but just compared to the other two, there was a lot more I liked, as you will soon see! You can read my whole review in the hyperlinked title, but let me just say that I very much enjoyed revisiting the universe Anderson has created, and everything about this sequel felt like it elevated all the elements I enjoyed about the first book! So I'm absolutely loving the Starstruck Saga!

Number 2 favorite indie read is You're Not Alone by Kelly Blanchard. I've almost reached the end of the Chronicles of Lorrek, and boy, what a ride it's been! This book also definitely wins the prize for "Most Direct Messages To The Author In All Caps Like I'm Screaming." Like, before I even finished the book, not even ten chapters in, and I had to set it aside and let her know directly what I thought about her plot! (But that's the best part about reading an indie book and following the author on social media, right?) Even now I'm remembering those extra-special twists that had me SCREAMING. If all eight books have been preparing me for the Big Payoff in Book 9, it's bound to be EXTRA big!

And finally, my favorite book out of all 6 indie reads for 2024 is: Time Tree: The Guardian by Lisa Rae Morris. I read the first book back in 2019 so it had been a while, but the moment I opened book 2 and started reading, the plot grabbed me by the scalp and absolutely didn't let up the whole time! I also ended up messaging the author with "screaming" texts, though probably not quite as severe as with the previous book. Again, follow the hyperlinked title for my full review, but this book hands-down was totally amazing and wonderful and I felt absolutely exhilarated when I finished it!

As for the "mainstream" books, I may have read a lot of Agatha Christie and whodunnit mysteries like Paula Hawkins, Alexander McCall Smith and Michael Crichton, but those aren't the ones that stood out to me.

Third place on this ranking goes to Amari and The Night Brothers by B. B. Alston. It's one of those Scholastic Book Fair purchases that came strongly recommended by a coworker, and I actually enjoyed it more than I expected to! It's a new magical world sort of a cross between Grimm and Harry Potter, a magical Divergent, if you will. The mystery centers around a girl named Amari searching for her missing brother and discovering her connection to the supernatural world of magical creatures, and a latent ability she didn't know she had, which she then needs to harness in order to defend the magical world and the non-magic world from being overtaken by chaos and destruction. Highly imaginative and very compelling!
Then in second place is Wild Robot by Peter Brown. I actually tracked it as I read it along with the third grade class at my job, so it definitely counted even if it wasn't on my TBR! I very much enjoyed the imagery, the perspective Brown uses in viewing the world through the eyes of a robot as well as an island full of wild animals. When the movie was announced I was super-excited... and then found it to be kind of a let-down with how far the adaptation strayed from the novel. Suffice to say, I genuinely think it was a very good book, and would recommend it to anyone!

My favorite read of all, though, comes from seeing promos of a serial adaptation (which has since been canceled and then eradicated from the streaming platform!) that intrigued me, and then learning from a friend who read the book and strongly recommended it to me: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. It's one that has long intrigued me, especially after the promos and watching the pilot episode. The show was very quirky, and I wondered if the book was just as quirky. As a matter of fact, it was. But not as quirky as the show made it out to be! The show actually skips over quite a bit of what made the book very rational and practical in its own way, and veers off into a massive tangle of something wholly forgettable and off-putting! But if you're the sort who wants to see kids reading books that challenge their minds and a plot that almost calls out the culture that just accepts what we've been told at face value... Then let me tell you this book is worthwhile and it's one of those "unorthodox" styles that I found very intriguing and irresistible!

That will be all from me for now. If you haven't read the books I mention and you want to, I encourage you to seek them out and secure them as soon as possible! I think I've got a much more reasonable reading goal for myself. I might even succeed in it this time, and with my overall year goal of FOCUS, I think I might achieve all that I want to do!

Meanwhile, thanks for coming along with me, and, as ever...

Catch You Further Upstream!