No Farmworker Would Have Dreamed

  • by jenthe rest of his orchestrated performance
  • moving in slow, sensuous circles
  • playing vixenish games
  • You dolt! You’re freezing!
  • mock anger crystallized into the real thing
  • he heard a very feminine “oo-oh!”
  • no farmworker would have dreamed

No farmworker would have dreamed that one of their own kind would have success in the high class world of cruise ship performers, but here Bubba was, standing in the wings, wearing his elaborately spangled costume, waiting to make his high-seas dance debut. He heard a very feminine “oo-oh!”, his cue to take the stage and begin moving in slow, sensuous circles with the other dancers around the female singer. The air conditioning was turned up full blast to cope with the heat generated by so many bodies exerting themselves, dancing and singing on stage, playing vixenish games backstage.

Finally it was Bubba’s moment to shine. The singer was singing her angry song, telling all the men how worthless they were. Bubba swooped in, just like they’d rehearsed it, and swept her high into the air above his head. But in that instant the singer’s mock anger crystallized into the real thing.

“You dolt! You’re freezing!” she hissed to Bubba.

After that Bubba found it difficult to go on with the rest of his orchestrated performance, but he remembered the other farmworkers who looked up to him, and that gave him the strength he needed to go on.

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Our Kids Should Probably Not Read This Post

r-avatarRune Skelley novels contain sex, most of it on the unsavory end of the scale. It’s not that our happy, well-adjusted couples don’t have sex. They do. We just don’t talk about it because it’s boring. And also, we don’t often choose to write about happy, well-adjusted couples. When I say that the sex is boring, I only mean that it’s boring for us to write about and would, therefor, probably be boring to read about. The happy, well-adjusted couples having the sex find it pleasurable and satisfying, which is part of what makes them happy, well-adjusted couples.

There are authors that can make that kind of sex exciting to read, but Rune Skelley is not interested in being that kind of author. Rune Skelley is interested in being a big ol’ pervert. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at the prompts here on the Skelleyverse that have the sex tag. But don’t say you weren’t warned. It’s a heap of unsavoriness.

At the end of 2013 when we did our blog-tidying, we were a little surprised to discover how many of the posts got slapped with the sex tag. I mean, we know we’re both perverts. We’ve been married forever. We know each other pretty well. We just didn’t realize how often our dirty minds bubbled to the surface. It was, shall we say, educational.

Another way that our prompted writing differs from the writing we do for our novels, is that in our novels, the happy well-adjusted couples have sex, they just do it off camera. We let them have their privacy so that we can go peep through the blinds at what the more morally challenged characters are doing to each other. In the prompts, there doesn’t seem to be any vanilla sex at all. It’s either kinky and disturbing, or non-existent.

And to think there was a period of time when we read these aloud to our critique group on a weekly basis. Yes, including the ones featuring the Loch Ness Monster, the explosives, and even the whorehouse and the balloon full of live bees.

As I Walked Past the Boot Department

  • k-avatarthe Russian seemed to almost deflate
  • in a silver sequin hunting outfit topped with a plumed hat
  • turned my blood to icy slush
  • it hurt more
  • ivory fans, flamenco shoes
  • past the boot department

As I walked past the boot department of the Vladivostok Marks and Spencer, I beheld a sight that turned my blood to icy slush.

Igor had found me, and there he stood in a silver sequin hunting outfit topped with a plumed hat, in his hands ivory fans, flamenco shoes on his tiny, awkward feet.

The Russian seemed to almost deflate as my horror manifested as mad cackling, and it hurt more to see his disappointment than it had to pull out the arrow he shot into my buttock in Prague.

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We’re Internet Famous!

r-avatarOur good friend and occasional collaboration partner Reggie Lutz has a blog where she chronicles her writing life, her journey to self-publishing, and her baking adventures. She also interviews the most brilliant and creative people she knows, and recently added us to that illustrious list. Check it out to learn our deepest thoughts on collaboration, motivation, escalators, and breakfast foods.

Reggie is our hero. She is a social media boss, has several publication credits, and even won a writing award. And she still takes our calls!

Look for a guest post from her here soon, and in the meantime go buy this book to get a taste of her beautiful madness.

Winter Had Been Going On For So Long

  • by jenamid a gush of bright blood
  • into the shepherd’s hut
  • thought snow, felt snow, smelled snow
  • her husband is even more wonderful
  • dreamlike and dim

Winter had been going on for so long, I thought snow, felt snow, smelled snow in my clothes where I usually smelled my husband’s cigarettes. It was depressing. Add to that my hopes of motherhood disappearing amid a gush of bright blood in my underpants this morning and my mood was pretty bleak. That’s when my sister called to brag about her family. Her children are darling little angels, she assures me every time, and just this morning little Sally was playing with her Fisher Price farm set and put the little baby people person into the shepherd’s hut and called him Jesus. Precious. Of course I envy my sister. Her husband is even more wonderful than her children, whereas mine always has this look in his eyes that is both dreamlike and dim.

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Our New Stichomancy Generator is Live!

r-avatarWe’ve had our Four Elements prompt generator up for a while now, but we didn’t feel complete, as the composite dihumanoid entity that we are, until we established symmetry by adding a generator for our other favorite type of writing prompt.

Jen compiled an impressively large list of impressively odd text fragments from an impressive variety of sources. Kent coded an impressively random randomizer to pull things from that list. In honor of the fact that our stichomancy archive’s denizens come in all shapes and sizes, the generator is configured to serve up small, medium, and large prompts. We also supplied a little guidance on proper use of the materials.

You can reach both generators by using the buttons at the top of every page, but here’s a direct link to the shiny new Stichomancy Writing Prompt Generator.

Pro Tip: look for chances to “pivot” the prompt around a word or phrase that can mean different things. The original phrase probably has an obvious connotation, and by looking for other ways to parse it you’ll surprise and delight your readers (or at least make them roll their eyes at a pun, which is also entertaining!).

Enjoy!

“Even Backdating the Transaction”

  • k-avatarI thought he was taunting me
  • by altering their hormones?
  • the day before Liza’s 44th birthday
  • she blushed
  • costs him $9 million
  • assuming he stays in Middlesex County
  • backdating the transaction
  • a shy 13-year-old boy stood no chance

“Even backdating the transaction, this costs him $9 million, assuming he stays in Middlesex County.”

Such shop-talk, the day before Liza’s 44th birthday, embarrassed her. She blushed. A shy 13-year-old boy stood no chance. Jimmy cried out and fled the opulent room in terror, almost toppling the globe-shaped liquor cabinet.

“Jonathan, look what your boorish wind has done.” Liza shook her finger at the lanky accountant.

“I thought he was taunting me,” Jonathan murmured.

Could teenagers be made more tractable by altering their hormones?

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“You Look Sad”

  • by jenpush food at me
  • sad sunny sky
  • I’d grown horns
  • got dizzy, bent over, and waited
  • watered my plant with 7-Up
  • making your “babies”

“You look sad, Sunny Sky,” Stormy Cloud remarked.

“Maybe I wouldn’t if you didn’t alway push food at me like I’d grown horns,” Sunny snapped.

“Ever since you watered my plant with 7-Up…” Stormy trailed off.

“Oh! You mean the night you gave me the drugs and I got dizzy, bent over, and waited for you to fuck me?”

“Don’t say that in front of the babies!” Stormy cried.

“That’s another thing I’m sick of! You making your ‘babies’ the center of everything! They’re not babies, Stormy! They’re ferrets!”

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A Fresh Start to 2014

r-avatarHere in the Skelleyverse we focus on two things: collaboration and prompts. Thus, when we set up the blog we only created two categories. During the past week, while Kent’s been taking some time off from his day job, he and Jen revisited this simplistic setup and decided it was time to get more organized.

We decided to break things down into multiple topics, as you can see by the menu in the right column. There’s no longer a “Collaboration” category because all of our craft-related posts approach things from that direction. Like any other author, Rune Skelley must address the fundamentals. The new taxonomy reflects this. The writing prompts, too, got recategorized. There are different ways to do prompts, so we grouped ours according to how they were generated.

The other thing that we lavished some attention on is the tag cloud. It’s been expanded, but more importantly we winnowed out more than half of the tags that had accumulated since we started blogging here, consolidating some things, e.g., husband and wife replaced by spouse, and eliminating a few others by changing them into categories. The impact on the tag cloud’s personality is quite noticeable, and we hope you’ll enjoy using it to explore our strangeness.

In the course of this project, we reviewed every bit of content we have here. It was a lot of work, but it was fun, especially because we did it together (naturally) and cracked each other up for hours at a time in the process. Turns out Jen’s husband is really weird, as is Kent’s wife. We spotted some trends in the content of the prompts, which we shall analyze and report on in a future post.

Extradimensional Infiltration Won’t Affect Your Cerebral Output

  • k-avatarunless you are using vibrations for bones
  • your cerebral output
  • an irascible, tyrannical old coot!
  • I flipped my cape over him
  • — orbs as you call them —
  • gently adjusted the glasses
  • he gave a muffled buzz
  • as thick as a parrot’s
  • “I’ll never leave you, baby.”

Extradimensional infiltration won’t affect your cerebral output or the function of your eyes — orbs as you call them — unless you are using vibrations for bones or possess feathers as thick as a parrot’s. But that is assuming that all the usual guild-approved apparatus is present. I gently adjusted the glasses which protected my sight-orbs and fluffed my downy feathers. Jones had landed in trouble, not surprising since he is, in fact, a parrot, besides being an irascible, tyrannical old coot! He sat frozen on his perch while I and the other owls prepared for the mission to retrieve his marbles from the cosmic interstices. Occasionally he gave a muffled buzz, especially after I flipped my cape over him. His simple but adoring young — inappropriately young — wife, a very pretty flamingo, said, “I’ll never leave you, baby.” Jones buzzed again, and leaned forward precariously. There was no time to lose.

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