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Week two of my story prompt experiment using Create a Story, a prompt book I got in the discount section of Barnes & Noble. I'm doing this primarily as an exercise to keep myself writing, and to do some writing that’s perhaps a little different than what I normally do. For this prompt, I selected a page from the historical section (pg 9). To be fair, I'm not really selecting, like any good gamer, I role a die for the genre (there are ten), and then another which I add to the page number for the start of that genre to get a random pick from that section. As a plus, I get to use my dice! The prompts are very brief, and for an additional challenge you can include a handful of specified words. I will be trying to include all the words recommended for each prompt, since it's meant as an exercise. Sometimes a word just won't make sense for a particular story and I may skip one here or there, but I will always try to include them The prompts are the whole content of the book, so it's not really fair to print the prompt itself... but I encourage people to guess in the comments.  Closing the LidThe pharaoh was dead. What was left was ritual. Established. Though he had passed young, the child King Tutankhamun had shaped what was to happen next, restored many temples and much of the old rites. Thutmose had heard stories of that tomb. Some said there was a curse and even some of those whose work was to preserve the ka, the soul and spirit, for the afterlife had been said to suffer for their work on the boy king. Thutmose didn’t believe that. Perhaps this time the tomb was no pyramid, but their pharaoh was destined for an immortal life—a life that required a great working that the ka recognize it and return. Every part of their work was important. A scribe had worked with the vizier on the announcement to the people. By the time it was read to the people, the work to embalm the body, to wash it and prepare it, had begun. He’d helped remove the organs to be dried out and placed, lungs, stomach, liver and intestines, in the prepared jars. They worked upon a pharaoh. Preservation was so imperative that the jars had been made long ago, to be ready for this. The heart remained. The ka lived there, and so it must remain. But the body itself too had to be dried out. Thutmose had been waiting. It was hardly possible to be patient. To wrap the body was a great honor. If it was done wrong, the body might not hold together when the ka returned to it. To his hands this honor fell. For all the many days the body spent drying, Thutmose agonized over it. He’d wrapped bodies before. Many, even. But to be the hands to wrap a pharaoh? To someone in his place, those were the true riches in life. Not jewels or gold or servants locked away that the afterlife be a place of comfort. The knowledge that his hands were trusted. That his skill was trusted. Of course he was subject to the ritual. A tool of a priest wearing a mask of Anubis. To the priests, perhaps to the pharaoh too, his job was less important than the endless stream of words and ceremony that surrounded what seemed every moment. But when the time came, and the others had finished stuffing the dried out husk that had been their pharaoh with linen to hold his shape, it was still Thutmose who held the bandages and wrapped, slowly and meticulously, inch by inch, limb by limb, layer by layer, covering the body in linen and amulets until it was so safely and meticulously wrapped that the pharaoh’s immortality would see him covered in linen forever. The priest in his mask never stopped speaking. Privately, Thutmose wondered how he managed that in a mask with no way to drink, but said nothing, wishing not to speak a heresy that might undo his careful work. They lifted the mummy into the coffin. It was done. Once again 500 words with the title. Anyone catch the more awkward instances of trying to fit in one of the words? Any guesses as to what the prompt was? Hope it was interesting at least. Onward to next week, where the category for the prompt is life experience.
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As promised, I'm starting my story prompt experiment using Create a Story, a prompt book I got in the discount section of Barnes & Noble. This is just an exercise to get me writing regularly again, but maybe it will be interesting for folks. In any event, it's got to be more joyful than any of the terror that is passing for news these days. For the first prompt, I selected a page from the romance section (pg 59). The prompts are very brief, and for an additional challenge you can include a handful of specified words. I will be trying to include all the words recommended for each prompt, since it's meant as an exercise. The prompts are the whole content of the book, so it's not really fair to print the prompt itself... but I encourage people to guess in the comments.  Missing the North StarJulian leaned against the counter. The bright light of a beautiful day from the kitchen window did nothing to clear his mind. Even the air inside the house felt heavy, clouded, like a pea soup fueled by thought. Just moving through the tiny distances from kitchen to office to bedroom in the tiny cabin he’d meant to have rented for a week and had been in since fall sapped his drive. He’d spent the winter here. It’d been a thought. To wander the woods. Searching the beauty of the wilds. To seek direction in nature, where the heart of wonder grew. Every day was vibrant—the cascading color of the leaves edging to the frozen cold landscapes of snow and the hooting of the owls in the night. Julian felt only betrayal. On this day, like so many others, he tore himself from the tiny cabin and drove the long twisting route into the nothing of a town that was the closest hint of civilization. Here in the middle of nowhere, the town was nothing. Not even a stop light. There was a general store, a gas station, a small diner—and a bar that was busier than any of them, at least after work hours. Once the drive out might have brought Julian some satisfaction. Instead, he wondered about his feeble path in life. The store keeper greeted him warmly. His supply needs were known and gathered—the bags waiting. He paid the man and started packing the bags into his truck. This place had been his everything. Like a dream. He’d drawn it that way, painted magnificent landscapes. It was like the beauty around him stirred his soul, painting wild, like a dervish, with the brushes making strokes more eloquent than a poet stirring the soul with verses. Those paintings meant he could afford to wallow for six months or more. But it grated. He’d been young and filled with inspiration. Where had it gone? Julian gripped the edge of the truck. He could feel the energy sapping away. He knew where the inspiration had gone. He might have translated it through this place, but the real heart of his artistry had been a person, not a place. A person he’d neglected. A person he’d taken for granted and left alone until they felt unwanted. A person who left him for someone else. It was his fault. “Hey mister.” A firm hand gripped Julian by the arm. “You okay?” Julian spun, pulling his arm from the grip, and his breath caught in his throat. Stunning. It was a young man, perhaps twenty three. His bare chest was smooth, in the fashion of the day, and marked, over the heart and toward the shoulder with an elaborate tattoo of a compass rose. Julian looked up from the tattoo into sinking depths of sparkling blue. He could feel the weightlessness of drowning as he grew ever more lost. Was it a sign? How did one find their way? “Hi.” 500 words with the title. Not so bad. I hope people enjoy it. Did anyone suss out the prompt? What do you think? Let me know and I'll post a new one next week.
There's a lot of negativity in the world right now. For someone like me, there comes a feeling of helplessness with that. Instead of focusing on what I can't control and what I can't do, I'm going to let my creativity loose. I'm going to allow fantasy and romance and love and fun and creativity to bubble up to the surface and make something great. But there's a problem. I'm woefully out of practice. I got hurt a few years ago... badly hurt. And the recovery has been very slow, a recovery not of weeks or months, but years. Writers exercise by writing, so getting my writing back in shape means writing more. I got a prompt book (I'm using Create a Story) and I'm going to go through it and try to do one prompt a week (somewhat randomly and not in order, though I'll identify the prompt for anyone who wants to follow along). Maybe some weeks the prompt will lead me on a longer adventure and it will take a few entries. We'll have to see how it goes. I'll be posting those entries here with the tag "prompts" (I may use that for other prompts as well, eventually). Maybe it will be a silly exercise I abandon in a month or two. Maybe I'll like it and prompts will continue for weeks or months at a time. I'm breaking a classic content rule here, in that I don't have a bunch of these done in advance, because part of the prompt is the staving off of the darkness, and for that I need to do them in real time. I will, when I can, try to produce one or two in advance to use for weeks where I simply don't have bandwidth or work is too busy—or heaven forbid, I'm on vacation. In the meantime, I think it's always useful to have a prompt solution, and this one is cheap and easy (I got it for $9 at Barnes and Noble). Eventually I may branch out into using something like the Story Engine Deck for these instead, but for now, I think this should work fine. Hope to see you at the first prompt by the end of this week!  Very excited to have out this month the first book of the Stouten Duet. Fortune’s Pawn will tell the story of missing brothers of our enigmatic chess master Brian from the Sam’s Cafe Romances. We know little of Brian’s family from the Sam’s Cafe Romances—only that he walked away from a fortune and left behind two brothers. Two gay brothers, each of whom dealt with living in the finance weaponized environment of Stouten wealth in very different ways. While Brian walked away, Brandon and Brice both remained. The Stouten Duet is their story. Brandon appears, briefly, in The Rodeo Knight. His story comes first—a prologue to our larger series, taking place before the bitter accident that leaves Russ so broken in The King’s Mate. Brice’s story will follow as a sort of epilogue, wrapping up the story and the world after the events of The Rodeo Knight. I hope everyone enjoys them both, and I’m thrilled that the first, Fortune’s Pawn, is now available in print and e-book from Amazon.  Fortune’s Pawn (Stouten Duet Book I)
Fortune As an heir to the Stouten family fortune, Brandon Stouten had anything he could want. But the girl his parents tried to foist on him for his birthday was a bit much, especially given that she had no idea she was being offered as a suitable bride. When Brandon balks at the unwilling gift, it causes a fistfight with her brother, and he escapes the party in the company of a tall, willowy angel of a man—a stranger who recognizes Brandon’s hesitance for what it is. When a night of comfort and wisdom becomes an ache in Brandon’s heart, he goes to the only man he knows will understand—the brother who walked away from the family fortune. Taylor Simmons has dressed celebrities and business moguls, but none of them ever filled out a pair of slacks quite as well as Brandon Stouten. Seeing an achingly beautiful and hurt young man, Taylor offers him insight and clarity that becomes a morning filled with passion—and regret. Famously conservative, the Stouten family would never give up one of their own to the demon they see in Taylor. Unfortunately for them, Taylor has no intention of letting Brandon go. This story takes place in the same universe as the Sam's Cafe Romances, with Fortune's Pawn taking place a couple years prior to The King's Mate. |
Ashavan DoyonWriter of the mysterious, fantastic, and the romantic. Sometimes sappy. Often angsty. Always searching for the sexy. Stories about men who love men. Categories
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