“Hold Up There Jem”

  • by Kentproven he could take an ass-whipping
  • bitter cold assailed me.
  • a rush of fluid suddenly filling the back of my throat
  • fought it out with carsickness
  • “Hey. Hey. Hey!”

Tune in next time part 422      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Hold up there, Jem. It’s not time for that yet.” Jemma and Jemima both looked to him for clarification — was it not yet time to release me, or not yet time to wave hand-drawn mime erotica in my face?

“Our brother Jason here has proven he could take an ass-whipping on multiple occasions. Ain’t that the truth?” Jim put on thick insulated gloves as he spoke, then lifted a steel canister off one of the lab benches. He set it in my lap in place of Clyde, then opened the lid. Fog surged over the lip and flowed like lava down the sides. As the chill vapor reached my legs, bitter cold assailed me.

“Don’t hurt Jason!” Jemma cried. She tried to move the canister but without the mitts she couldn’t pick it up.

Jim chuckled. “Oh, I ain’t gonna hurt anybody, least of all Jason.” He popped the lid back on the canister and stooped before me to collect it. He stared me in the eye. “Ain’t that right?” Once the cryogenic hazard was cleared away, he instructed Jem and Jem to do more cobra yoga. “But this time, it’s all for our brother.”

Jemma and Jemima looked sad, but they obeyed and began their contorting, sinuous dance. I wondered why this ploy gave Jim such a wicked grin, but only for a moment. At point-blank range, with no mimes to absorb any of it, a double dose of cobra yoga was overwhelming. In seconds I was queasy, and then more than queasy, a rush of fluid suddenly filling the back of my throat. The girls were relentless, slipping into a trance as I fought it out with carsickness raised to the power of mystical snake venom. The nausea progressed to a kind of hyper-vertigo, and from there to a red-out.

“Hey. Hey. Hey!”

The hand shaking me awake was attached to a stranger.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

If the Mime My Brother was Wrestling With had Any Hope of Escape

  • by jenbetter take cover
  • “Should I put my shoes back on?”
  • mere pinpricks
  • orgies are poorly designed experiments
  • use it in a rap song

Tune in next time part 421      Click Here for Earlier Installments

If the mime my brother was wrestling with had any hope of escape, she’d better take covert action, but mimes in general aren’t that well-trained tactically. This one was no exception. She soon took a needle to the neck and slumped in Jim’s arms.

Jem and Jem introduced some new steps to their writhing cobra yoga, circling around the herd of mimes and bunching them together like livestock. Working in unison like lithe corgis, they danced the group into the supply closet and slammed the door behind them.

“Finally,” said Jemma.

“Should I put my shoes back on?” asked Jemima.

“No need,”Jim drawled. “This is a pretty good place to hide out for a while.”

“Anyone want to untie me?” I asked. In truth my tape bonds were loose enough that I could escape if necessary, but I wanted to see how my siblings would treat me now that the mime threat had been neutralized. Were their consciences more than mere pinpricks?

Clyde was still in my lap, still “woofing” at me. Jim scooped him up and put him in a cage that had probably once held an army of lab rats. Jemma got a scalpel from a dissecting tray and began sawing through all the tape around my wrists. At least she was on my side.

Jemima, still barefoot, was reading the lab notes splayed on the worktop. She snorted. “Mime orgies are poorly designed experiments. No scientific rigor! Look at this.” She waved the disturbingly detailed sketches in my face. “What do you think Jason? Can you use it in a rap song?”

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Retroactive Relativity

As we work on the middle book of our music trilogy, we need to refer to the other volumes from time to time, especially the first one. The bulk of the information flow is from the already-written books toward the in-progress book, but occasionally that gets swapped around. Which is the major advantage of working on a whole trilogy all at once — you can retrofit details that strengthen the thematic and plot links across the series.

An instance of that occurred recently in the Writing Cave. Naturally there’s plenty of pseudoscience in these books, but there’s some actual science as well. The other night, Kent came up with something of a you-got-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter moment regarding the pseudo and the legit science imagery. Although the idea arose while working on book two, the best place to incorporate it is in the first book. So we added a note about it for when we go back to do revisions and tweaks.

We love our surprises too much to spill details here, but Kent’s still sort of giddy about his brainwave, because (in our story universe, at least) it provides a solution to one of the major conundrums of modern physics. In lieu of a fictitious Nobel, he received an even greater honor — he got to write the sticky note for the project board!

A writing partner is someone who forgives you for getting peanut butter on their chocolate.

 

“Jim, How Will We Defend This Place”

  • by Kentrelied more on firepower than martial arts
  • Rock and wiggle. Rock, then wiggle.
  • a contact high
  • taken a few too many painkillers
  • small mouth with crooked teeth

Tune in next time part 420      Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Jim, how will we defend this place if the fire eaters attack?” I didn’t bother lisping, because Jim didn’t seem to care whether it was me or Jason taped to the chair. In fact, he hardly seemed to care that I was speaking, all his attention focused on Violet or Harriet Donut. “They’ll send the Draconis Corps, Jim!” The guild’s most fearsome warriors, like ninjas who relied more on firepower than martial arts — the power of literal fire spewing from their faces.

If Jim’s motive truly was to protect our sister, then he should have been treating me as an ally instead of a prisoner of war. Watching him try to argue with a mime, I concluded that if anyone was going to keep Domino from marrying Jem, it was going to have to be me. But I couldn’t do that if I was stuck in this chair, so I focused on working my way free. Rock and wiggle. Rock, then wiggle. Gradually the tape loosened.

Meanwhile, Jim and Violet or Harriet Donut spun through a silent pasodoble as he tried to jab her in the neck with a syringe. Jem and Jem sustained their cobra yoga, effectively neutralizing the rest of the mimes in the chamber. The weirdness of the scene before me made me wonder if I was getting a contact high, like I’d had a blood transfusion from someone who’d taken a few too many painkillers.

The sight of Clyde the mime-dog in my lap only deepened my distrust of my own senses, as he “barked” soundlessly, working his small mouth with crooked teeth bearing the message he had been conditioned not to voice.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Even With Clyde in My Lap

  • by jenfully aware of the ten sets of eyes
  • His Grace petitioned the Count
  • Now he was bleeding
  • too smart for that school
  • I’d suggest no more than a thousand

Tune in next time part 419      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Even with Clyde in my lap, and Jim waving his camera around, I was fully aware of the ten sets of eyes — mime eyes — that were trained on my dancing sisters. I might still have a hope of escaping as long as Jem and Jem’s hypnotic cobra yoga held them entranced.

I had to make Jim see reason. “Our family has standards, Jim.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your standards, brother,” Jim snarled. “The fire eaters want to claim Jem, and I won’t have it! This is the only way to save her.”

“What’s the Lord Carnevale have to do with any of that?” I asked.

Jim sneered his first words. “His Grace petitioned the Count Flambé, leader of the largest fire eater guild, for Jem’s hand. Their marriage would seal a pact between those heartburn motherfuckers and the masked carnivalistos.”

I shuddered at the thought.

“So,” Jim continued, “I’m showing Lord Domino that we play hardball. If he doesn’t back off, something ugly will happen to Clyde.”

The little dog in my lap bared his teeth again, exposing the “woof” painted thereon.

The bicycling mime reentered the laboratory. Now he was bleeding from one nostril, and he had the Donut sister riding on his imaginary handlebars.

Jim tucked his camera into the pocket of his lab coat and grasped the Donut mime by the wrist. She began to flail about, hurling silent insults at us and at the Academy. The thrust of her nonverbal argument seemed to be that she was too smart for that school, but I distinctly remembered seeing her in its halls.

“Relax Ms Donut,” Jim said, thus perpetuating the mystery of which sister was which. “If you don’t calm down I’ll have to give you an injection.”

“I’d suggest no more than a thousand milliliters, and no less than nine hundred,” said Jemma. “Like most mimes she’s built up quite a tolerance.”

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

High Altitude Viewing

There are two kinds of series in the book world (okay, there are probably more, but play along for now) — the episodic kind, where each novel is its own complete adventure, and the serial kind, where each novel tells part of a larger story. We write the second kind. Our novels, while each having a satisfyingly complete story, are parts of a larger whole.

We’ve been on the road a lot lately, and as we talked about last week, that’s pulled us away from composition of our current work in progress. As we find our way back into the writing, we took the opportunity to pull back from the minutia of scene-by-scene storytelling and take a look at not just the novel, but at its place in the trilogy.

Due to our weird, inside out process on this trilogy, we’re writing the middle book last. It was really interesting to look at the bigger picture and make sure that the edges are still lining up with the existing books. The last thing we want is for the railroad we’ve been building from both ends to fail to meet in the middle.

We were really pleased with what our aerial view showed us. There is a nice escalation of stakes from one book to the next. (Or a really unpleasant one, if you’re one of our characters.) The phenomenon that makes our story world unique gets explored from a new angle each time, by different sorts of characters. It felt really good to see our kingdom laid out beneath us just the way we’d pictured it.

A writing partner is someone who you can enjoy having your head in the clouds with, but will also help you land the plane.

and without even meaning to, we included planes, trains, and automobiles in this post!

What Jim’s Camera Couldn’t Capture

  • by Kentpure, undiluted flopsweat
  • a twisted petting zoo
  • I want to think the best of everyone
  • Apart from the masks
  • at his haunted castle

Tune in next time part 418      Click Here for Earlier Installments

What Jim’s camera couldn’t capture was my pure, undiluted flopsweat at the idea that this mime dog’s trainer might be in this very room, a twisted petting zoo where Clyde, the sole exhibit, was perched in my lap. Nobody who knows me would expect that I want to think the best of everyone, but I certainly want to think better of just about everyone than I thought of that mega-mime.

“Jim,” I said in a shaky voice, almost forgetting to lisp, “are you sure you know what you’re doing? Have you really considered all the angles here?”

“There is only one angle, dear brother,” Jim purred. “The right angle. That’s the one I’m workin’. And when Domino sees these pictures, he’ll know I’m not messin’ around.”

Domino, the Lord Carnevale? Apart from the masks, his troopers were just as creepy and overly dramatic as mimes. He trained them at his haunted castle and sent out leaflets now and then threatening to sic them on the unsuspecting populace. Meanwhile, the rumors about his unseemly bond with Clyde were evidently not without some basis.

The knockout gas had almost worn off. “I thought this was about my sem–” I cleared my throat. “My brother’s semen. Why get yet another faction riled up about it? I mean,” I dropped my voice a bit, “it’s bad enough you’re mixed up with the pantomime contingent. What’s happening to this family?”

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Clyde’s Reputation Preceded Him

  • by jenthis is for right now
  • that prisons cannot hold
  • quasi-religion
  • or in this case, the gold medal
  • used a digital camera

Tune in next time part 417      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Clyde’s reputation preceded him. He was, allegedly, a mime-dog. I had always assumed that he was a rumor, that such a creature could not actually exist, and yet here he was in my lap: a silent dog trained by mimes. The wretched thing had letters painted on its teeth, letters that spelled “woof.” My mind was still reeling from the knockout gas and all I could think was, “This is, for right now, my only worry in the world.”

An average mime could not accomplish something like the training of a mime-dog. No, this required the sort of mime that prisons cannot hold, the sort who sees mime as more than a quasi-religion. The mime who trained this dog must have won the grand prize, or in this case, the gold medal in mime-fuckery. But what the hell were my siblings doing with a mime-dog? They clearly were not mimes. Were they using the mimes, or were the mimes using them?

I sure am using the word “mime” a lot, I thought, as Jim moved in front of me and used a digital camera to take what I presume were blackmail photos.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!

Roadtrip Season

It’s roadtrip season, and faithful readers know what that means: brainstorming! Hours spent traveling hither and yon cut into our writing time, but we don’t let that kill our productivity. We find that extended car trips make a great time to have in-depth discussions about our works-in-progress.

Our current WIP (Sibling of Music Novel) is puttering along smoothly, and while we do need the occasional chat about the details of a scene, there’s nothing knotty enough to fill a couple of hours of straight discussion. That’s a great place to be as a writer. Or as a pair of writers.

So when we need a topic that can fill a few hours, we switch gears to a project that’s in an earlier state of development. And right now, that means the Ghost Story. It’s still fairly embryonic, with many of the kinds of Big Decisions left to be made that are ideally suited to lengthy conversations.

We recently dug out Ghost Story’s dedicated Steno o’ Notes and read through it, and we reviewed the folders of inspiration images we’ve been collecting. With our pumps primed, discussion came easily. Our conversations have already been quite fruitful, and roadtrip season isn’t over yet. We expect to make some real progress on this whole new story world so that it will be waiting for us to dive in once the Music Series is complete.

A writing partner is someone to help you tell ghost stories around the steering wheel.

While All the Mimes Were Hypnotized

  • by Kentwhile intoxicated
  • just a big ol’ velvet trenchcoat
  • and away he went
  • small, hot, damp pillow
  • his tiny painted teeth

Tune in next time part 416      Click Here for Earlier Installments

While all the mimes were hypnotized would have been the perfect time to break free, but no matter how I strained against my bonds I couldn’t tear them. Soon my arms were as rubbery as my tongue. The tape really didn’t look that strong. I concluded that my weakness was from the knockout gas, and that I wouldn’t get far anyway while intoxicated with its residue. The feeling was not at all unpleasant, just a big ol’ velvet trenchcoat draped over my whole body, but my situation was too dire to allow me to enjoy it.

I watched Jem and Jem dancing, hoping that one of them would drop me another coded hint about what was going on here. Movement among the mesmerized mimes drew my eye, and I realized that I recognized one of them. It was Harriet or Violet Donut, and she was sneaking toward the exit.

“Jem!” I shouted in warning. My sisters didn’t stop dancing, but the Donut sister made her move, dashing out the door. One of the other mimes snapped out of his trance, holding his head dramatically with both hands and swaying in a full 360 before giving chase. At last he threw one leg over an invisible bicycle, and away he went with an awkward pedaling gait.

Jim strode in through a door on the opposite side of the lab. He wore a long, white coat, and when it gapped I could see that he also still had on Fleur’s bejeweled garb underneath. Safety goggles and thick purple gloves rounded out his mad-scientist look. He was carrying a lumpy object as he walked directly over to me.

“Hey there, brother,” he drawled. And with that he placed the lump on my lap. It felt like a small, hot, damp pillow, but it was moving. “Meet Clyde.”

The creature, Clyde, raised his snout at me and bared his tiny painted teeth.

bonus points for using them in order

about stichomancy writing prompts

try our stichomancy writing prompt generator!