Flash Fiction: As Promised

This was written as part of a writing workshop at Convergence. The prompt was: Giant Flies Invade Norway.

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I remember the day. They came down from the sky in swarms, their hum like the drone of thousands of C130s. The nation was entirely deaf fro 3 whole days afterward.

My mother was tending the garden and I was in the barn feeding the animals. I ran to the door just in time to see one of them swallow her whole. In my nightmares I can still see the look of cruelty and disdain in its multifaceted eyes.

Hildegaard, the cow, saved my life that day with a mighty swish of her tail. I will never forget that cow. She was delicious.

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What can I say? I have a farm girl's sense of humor.

2 strikes

Argh. I am simply tired and disgusted from my recent dating attempts. The first? Funny, good looking (in a hippie/outdoorsman kind of way), totally married. The second? Also funny, also good looking, kind, smart, incredibly quick witted, another novelist, even employed, but not dating (or at least not interested in dating me). And the worst part? He was so nice about it that I can't even be pissed at him about it. We have a time set up to start a writing group.

I hate this. It makes me feel horrible. Because you know what? I know how fucking wonderful I am. I am sexy and cool and really smart and kind and beautiful (though not employed, but that can be fixed in time) and I am so fucking frustrated that nobody else seems to see that. Or at least they don't see that in a romantic light. Either way, it's frustrating.

Then I start to doubt myself: maybe it's my weight. I mean, I'm not a land orca, but I'm not even close to being Kate Moss. I am a little on the heavy side. Afterall, both of my last two (skinny) boyfriends were kind enough to point this out. "Angie, honey, you are sexy, don't get me wrong, but you could be more sexy if you lost some weight. I mean I'm worried about your health." I don't get much lighter and still have time for a boyfriend. If I were to workout enough to lose the weight that they wanted me to, they would have been all pissy because I wasn't spending enough time with them. And as far as my health goes, I'm working on it. Moral of the story: Never ever tell your girlfriend that she should lose weight. The dating world is difficult and it is very difficult to keep up your self-esteem and ward off complexes.

I did promise a friend that I would publish some flash fiction that I wrote this past weekend on here for her reading pleasure and I will get to that some time in the next few days. In the meanwhile, thanks for listening to me moan, blogosphere, and maybe I'll try to post more consistently again.

But I mean really, for shit's sake, I can cook, sew, ride and shoot. Why the hell am I single?

Middle of novelling, sorry if I haven't been around

I figured that since I was online today and reading Athena's (now private) blog, I should probably make a post myself. I feel like I've been doing relatively nothing since I got out here but eating and not really sleeping (don't fall asleep until 3, wake up at 5:30, fall back asleep and wake up at 9). However, I did start my newest novel yesterday (I have already written one that I need to revise and half of one that I compressed into a short story). I think my parents think that my priorities are f*cked up. Maybe. I don't have a job, but this novel is going to get finished.

This new one is a mystery novel. It's meant to be the first in a series but right now I need to just focus in on this one. I have scheduled it out so that it can be done on July 14 (yes, precisely, I am a Virgo afterall). I write by word count, so I make a goal for so many words every day and then I have an overall must-be-to-this-count daily total. If I fall short of my daily goal, I have to be almost to my here by this date goal. My goal pretty much every day for the next month and a half (I have given myself Athena's wedding day and 2 days over the 4th of July off) is to write at least 1220 words. Not very many. Yesterday I made it all of the way to 2022. I was glad to see that I overshot my goal though because I have decided to write this novel by hand in paper and pencil (wooden pencil, not mechanical, my favorites are the Dixon Ticonderoga Woodgrains) and then type up my progress as I go along. I will not count the handwritten pages and I add stuff when I type it anyway, so the official word count is on the Word document.

I think my parents are both impressed and afraid of encouraging me on something that they think is destined to fail. They haven't allowed themselves to hope yet. I have. This novel is going to rock: the character is fun to write and the story is interesting. After I finish writing this one I will revise the other novel. While I'm polishing this novel for submission, I will be shopping out my other novel and writing short stories and poetry. I don't care if I'm not the best, I'm still awesome and my writing is worth selling.

P.S. This is my 150th post. Yay me!

SoDak and Hangovers

I made it safely out to SoDak yesterday. Safely, but slightly hungover and tired for most of the drive. I feel much better today after some sleep and a shower.

Athena decided that it would have to be her bachelorette party on Thursday night because it was the last time the two of us would be together before the wedding. I think I used this as an excuse to overindulge a bit and then on Friday, when I would rather have stayed at home in my pajamas and watched bad movies (the Indiana Jones Trilogy is one of my hangover favorites), I had to drive 700 miles.

After discussing the idea with some of my friends, I realized that it would be silly to self-publish my first novel without even shopping it out to literary agents and publishers. So I am going to try to get it traditionally published first and then if that doesn't work (and it is fairly likely that it won't) then I will publish it online for all of your reading pleasure. I say that it's unlikely to be published, this is not because I think it is bad, this is just because it is very difficult to get a novel published when no one has ever heard of you before and you haven't even had so much as a short story published. I really don't care much for writing short stories (they never feel like they're done, done) but I think that I might have to in order to just get some of my writing out there so that I have a resume.

I am still feeling edgy today. I feel like something might go horribly awry. This always happens to me when I'm hungover. It just throws any self-worth I've built up straight into the toilet. This is why I've thought of giving up drinking before, but the problem isn't really drinking, it's drinking too much. I am going to try to stick to the two drink rule from now on. I just don't need to be undercut like that. I already have a hard enough time with self confidence. I finally got to the point this time that I thought that if I stick with it, I will definitely be able to develop my writing career and now I'm feeling wary. Wary and weary. It's not easy for me to build myself up and so to actually knock myself down and have to do it again just because I had to have another couple of drinks more than enough, well, it's just plain tiring. Encouraging yourself to pursue your dreams and not give up is hard work and I'm very grateful to all of my friends who help me out with it.

I'm not dead!

I have some stuff in the works lately. I am considering publishing my first novel online as I finish editing it. (I know it was supposed to be a romance novel, but it really isn't, don't be too surprised.) If that happens, y'all will be the first to know. I am also starting on writing my second novel which is going to be a mystery novel. I have an awesome main character, both loveable and hateable, and I am super excited about this. I figure that I will take the month of June and the first 2 weeks of July to write it.

In the meanwhile, I have been working hard at learning to skate better and being a booth monkey parking attendant. I really like skating. I don't know if I will make it into the roller derby league (partly because I don't know if I will be staying put in the Twin Cities for the summer), but I am so happy that I have a pair of skates and some really cool chicks to skate with that I don't care if I make it or not. And as far as your worries about bruises and aches: throwing elbows isn't legal, if you want to worry about bruising then someone should wrap up my shins just so that I can walk through my apartment, and muscle aches are one of those hurts so good things. I always feel proud when my muscles hurt because I actually used them.

I have decided that on Thursday I will be heading out to SoDak. I don't think I'm going to tell my parents until I'm about half-way across the state. Or I'll tell them Friday and leave on Thursday. I don't know. I just don't want a call at 7 in the morning, a scoffing reminder that if I don't leave right away I might not make it in time for supper. I like road trips; I don't want to be in a hurry.

Journaling, like blogging, only without followers

If y'all haven't gathered by now anyway, I'm kinda taking a break from blogging. Blogging every day in April wore me out a bit and I've got tons of stuff going on, but somehow I need to just be able to write about it without any feedback for awhile.

I'm sure I'll feel all important and publicly confessional again in the near future, but for right now I just need to slow down a little.

Roller Choco

Ok, so in the past week, a lot has happened. I have decided that I am going to try out for the North Star Roller Girls. That is what brought me to the club on Saturday night. Ok, so starting from the beginning: Last week on Saturday, I went to Free Comic Book Day at the Source. It was there that I first encountered the NSRG and found out that they were recruiting. I thought, hmmm, I always wanted to be a roller girl, and a new obsession was born. They were even handing out comp tickets to this Saturday's bout. Since then I have gone to a gear meeting where I figured out my skate size and what pads and safety equipment I need and I have spent a full 3 days now obsessing about wheels and bearings.

Saturday night Owow and I went to my first roller derby bout. I am in love. Now, I am not much of a sports fan. I don't get into football or basketball or any of those other sports. I like the Olympics. But when I went to Scotland a year and a half ago, I found out something interesting. If you put me in a pub where there is a soccer game being televised, I am capable of leaping out of my seat and cheering. I surprised even myself. The same thing happened at the bout. At first it was interesting; I was analysing the rules and how they were being employed; I was just trying to keep up. But by about 20 minutes into it, I was screaming my ass off. By the end I think I may have deafened a man that was sitting in front of me.

After the bout, we decided to go to the afterparty at the Ugly Mug in downtown Minneapolis. So after several very tense minutes of "if we don't find a parking spot in the next 10 minutes, we are just going home" (Owow doesn't like it when I deny him his punk-rock girl watching time) we finally found a spot and headed for the bar. I don't usually go to dance clubs on Saturday nights. There is a certain species of woman that I refer to (none to generously) as a clubho. They are exceedingly skinny, barely clothed and drinking as if their lives depend on it. I won't go into it too much more as I might be funny, but really these girls are just trying to have a good time and it's not their fault that they hit one of my buttons. However, it was hilarious to watch as the DJ announced that the Roller Girls were in the house and suddenly every skinny bitch in the bar upped her whoretastic game. Skirts got shorter, hips swung harder, and stick women tried to shake asses that were nonexistant.

Anyway, I am now just waiting for my damned skates. I ordered them last Wednesday and every day since then I have been watching for the UPS guy like an impatient eight year old.