Fiction: The Solace Cafe

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Alex J. Cavanaugh and are posted at Elephant's Child's blog here. This week's prompts are: staple, symbolic, relic, ebony, flames And/Or moon, general, drums, presto, thrilled. I didn't use presto and general.

Fiction: The Solace Cafe
"It taste like rain," she says as she places the cup back onto the saucer. Picking up the spoon, she spins it around the porcelain cup though she has not added sugar or cream to her tea. The clanking sound rings loudly in the almost empty cafe while in the background, a low, slow tune plays from the speakers.
    I nod. What is a good respond? Rain tastes like stale water, not something to get into the habit of drinking. Tea has been a staple in my house growing up. It is a relic ritual my great-grandmother had started, a symbolic way of celebrating the beginning of a fresh day.
    The two of us, the only customers in the cafe, sit in a booth at the front. Faint, late afternoon daylight shines through the glass storefront into the unlit cafe and lands on the floor by our table. In the back booth, I hear the waitresses counting their tips.
    My companion does not seem to be in a hurry. Her patience is carried by her slow, lingering demeanor. For over two hours, I have listened to this woman talked about random and familiar things. Her soothing voice lulls me into a strange trance of comfort and lethargy.

Books Unfinished: November 2024

Usually I talk about the books I finished reading at the end of the month but I re-read a lot of my favorites and tried new ones but couldn't finish them. Here are some of my unfinished reads.

01 - His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (original title is Northern Lights - book 1) by Philip Pullman
Quit at: over 10%
The title change had confused me. I don't think either title is that good so they could have just stick to one. I had tried reading this series years before so I thought I try again and this time, I got engaged in the beginning and then I didn't. I don't know what happened but I got bored and stopped reading.

02 - Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson with illustrations by Howard Lyon
Quit at: 25% or so (I don't know if this is accurate as I just return the book to the library and didn't take notice of how much I read)
This was my one and only time reading Sanderson and it was not my cup of tea. This started with a girl named after hair, Tress, which right away, made me wonder at the brilliance of Sanderson (some sarcasm here) and then there was a cup she found and then it sort of seemed like it's leaning toward those YA romances (with illustrations which are quite lovely) where the girl supposedly goes on an adventure to save the love of her life, Charlie, or something and yada yada, you know how it goes. Mostly I feel like I'm reading a book about two bland 12-year-olds trying to have a romance though they are supposedly much older. One reviewer said Charlie is a human creampuff and I completely agreed with that. But I quit not only because of the romance but because it was really boring.

03 - The probility of everything by Sarah Everett
Quit at: 30%
This started interesting but then it became depressing so I stopped reading. I don't want to say this is an unreliable narrator type of book but the ending does suggest this. I skimmed to the end and was disappointed that what was true wasn't. I really did want this to be the story about a girl at the end of the world like the synopsis said.

04 - The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda, translated by Alison Watts
Quit at: 30%
This was characters remembering what happened to the murders where a bunch of people drank poisoned drinks. Too many character viewpoints and events were too scattered and I don't know, it just seem like whatever the answer is, it's not important, more like character studies of what they did and thought and remembered. The writing seems kind of dreamy which I sort of like but not enough to continue. I was not invested in the mystery or even care who done it.

Have you unfinished any book lately?

Fiction: The Honest Obituary Writer

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Alex J. Cavanaugh and are posted at Elephant's Child's blog here. This week's prompts are: pyromaniac, midnight, parrot, frozen, razor's edge And/Or  anguish, alligator, taco, predictable, staple. Last week's prompts are: snow, cow, jade, candy, sunglasses and/or oak, refreshed, ornery, music, shells. Charlotte (MotherOwl) has given us Pearl Opal Green as the colour of the month.

Fiction: The Honest Obituary Writer
01
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"It's a rare occasion if I see anybody naked at all." Mary Catherine Hazel did not want to share that. The words escaped her mouth without thinking. They had been chitchatting about a play that had featured an actor naked on stage.
    Sitting on her left, Eddie Mild's eyes widened at her words. "You too?" he said as he stuffed more salad into his already full mouth. They were sitting at a table that held 34 staff of Everyscene News and newspaper owner, Jefferson Mann, his mother Eleanor and brother Remington at Mann's vacation home. Mary didn't want to come but her nana, Amelia, threatened to cook. Like a pyromaniac, whenever Amelia tried to cook, things tended to catch on fire. Growing up with Amelia, Mary had eaten a lot of burnt and frozen meals.
    In her head, Mary couldn't help but write Eddie's obituary: Eddie Mild, 59, had always believed in eating a salad after a full meal because that was how he kept his 310 pound body fit. Before he choked to death on a crouton from his Caesar salad, he had the pleasure of discussing how good the dressing was. Eddie loved eating fried meat, wearing sunglasses in the rain, racing his chihuahua, Jade Cow, to the mailbox and irritating his neighbors by blocking their driveway with his clunker of a car. Eddie is survived by his elderly mother, Edna Mild, and his mother's cat, Jax and his dog Jade Cow. Eddie had turned 30 in January. Mary tried not to laugh at her morbid thoughts.

Some Blogging Thoughts

01 - My occasional thoughts about blogging is why do I still bother blogging? Why not just quit? I do sort of quit about several times a month because I'm a slacker and I don't post often but I just can't make myself quit. And sometimes it just seems like there's no point in blogging anymore. And yet, I like blogging. I like having a place to talk about stuff or show off my art or just to say I'm still around. If I'm not here on my blog, I'm pretty much nowhere else because I don't do social media.

02 - Does a blog have to have variety of content? My blogging habit is still pretty much 'totally aimless blogging' but I guess I got into the habit of posting two things - one, whatever I'm interested in sharing (ie, books, thoughts, my artwork during the rare occasion I actually finished them) and two, is a piece of fiction writing. I don't have a variety of blog posts like I used to and I don't venture out of my comfort zone much and I'm perfectly okay with this most of the time because I'm still blogging.

03 - Even though the artwork/graphic above look pretty simple, it took two whole days to get it that way. Decisions have to be made such as what meaning should the image provoke, what to include, what colors to use, etc. Just like my artworks, I spend a lot of time and effort on making graphics for my blog. I also reuse them because it's convenient. (In case you're interested, I use Affinity apps to make them. I had used Adobe apps before but their subscriptions are way too expensive. With Affinity apps, you a make one-time purchase and that's it.)
    I know not every blogger can make their own graphics. Using graphics/images/animated gifs from the web is perfectly fine. I'm always curious about them as some bloggers find the most amazingly accurate/just the right ones to use. I think any graphic/image/animated gif with a post is good to not only to add interest to a post but also to have something that attracts readers to stop and check out what is posted. If you're a blogger, how much time do you spend working on graphics/images or finding them?
 
04 - I've been a bit lazy in commenting on blogs. I enjoy commenting on blogs but sometimes it just seem like I have to look for things to say. I've written tons of comments over the years and even with all the practice, I still find it a bit hard to write them. I can be a bit impulsive and say a few regrettable things. Foolish thoughts and foolish impulses seems to go together along with the foolish need to sound like I know what I'm talking about. I think the best way to write a comment is to be honest and not to think too much or else what you say can become a bit like you have edited away whatever point you're making.

05 - Is Blogger outdated? I've been a Blogger user for as long as I have been blogging so if ask, I would recommend Blogger but people will probably tell me I should update to Wordpress or some other platform. It's true Blogger is old technology when compared to Wordpress and other platforms. Google who owns Blogger have not been updating Blogger at all. The most recent update was years ago (don't remember the exact year) but it feels quite a long time. And they took away the subscription by email option and a couple of other useful features so it seems like they really don't care to get new users. I haven't come across any new blogger using Blogger in years.
    I guess I want Google to update Blogger but at the same time, I don't. I'm skeptic about changes especially when it comes to technology. Change always means more changes. That's the reality. I'm willing to embrace change if it means Blogger can be better. But the chances of an update is quite slim.

Got any blogging thoughts to share?

Fiction: The Miracle Maker's Revenge

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Alex J. Cavanaugh. This week's prompts are: parachute, reindeer, shark, clay, ruins, and/or telescope, totem pole, black, severed, surf. Charlotte (MotherOwl) has given us Pearl Opal Green as the colour of the month.
    Last month's Words for Wednesday prompts were provided by Sean Jeating. The prompts were: church, hazel, hollow, red, whirlpool and/or cave, Mary, near, rapid, white. I started this story last week so I had used these prompts. I was going to fit in this week's prompts but decided not to but conincidently, I used two of the prompts, black and ruins (although not exactly the same form). Prompts are posted at Elephant's Child's blog here.

Fiction: The Miracle Maker's Revenge

01
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She used to reconstruct people's facial and body tissue to their natural or nearly natural state. Now Ramona Hue did the same thing but with the dead. Some said Ramona was a miracle maker. It was a title given to her by one of her former patients which somehow stuck to her when she became a mortician. Most thought she used her plastic surgeon's talent to make the dead looked like the living but no one knew it was her natural ability to heal and restore the body that made it so.
    When she was a plastic surgeon, there was a whirlpool of rapid emotions damped by the joy of the patients. As a mortician, Ramona worked in a steady calm atmosphere, as if her workroom in the basement of the Eternal Glory Funeral Parlor was a church filled with other people's last memories of what their bodies had been through.
    It wasn't Ramona's intention to be a mortician. Her colleague, Eugenia Ply, framed Ramona for disfiguring a patient's face and ended her career. Ramona had thought it was rather natural to help the dead look their best before they go into their eternal resting place. She had partnered with her college friend, Mary Hazel, and set up Eternal Glory Funeral Parlor.     
    The family curse that caused Ramona to have strange food craving during a full moon was something Ramona had to deal with ever since she turned forty this year which was also the time she truly left her past behind. There was no cure for the curse but Ramona got a new assistant who was a godsend after so many dubs. Liberty or Libby as she liked to be called, was not only strong and able to carry bodies, she had a healthy relationship with the dead in that she respected them and took her job seriously. Ramona was happy to give her a raise. After a lengthly talk with the young lady, Ramona had her promise she would keep helping Ramona and to keep her secret.

02
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The red banner hanging high with the words Welcome Old Friends! in white made Ramona wanted to throw rocks at it. She entered the opened double doors into the large hall and was struck by the many familiar but aged faces. Everyone was talking about things she didn't have knowledge of. Had she been dwelling too long in her self-exiled cave?

IWSG Nov 2024: Writing Pet Peeves

I'm skipping this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group question and list some writing pet peeves.
    Reading is a preference so what I like, other people might not and what I dislike, other people might so feel free to disagree with me. Here are some writings that I dislike.

01 - End a book by reverting everything back to its beginning or make whatever happened in the first 90% of the book invalid — What is the point of this? If the real story is a different one, then why not tell that one instead? I don't encounter this a lot but when I do, I wish I hadn't read the book.

02 - Dumb makeup words for non-magical people — It works in Harry Potter but somehow it doesn't work in other books and mostly because the terms they use are so ridiculous and maybe insulting to human kind. I guess I prefer a little more creativity and less insulting. Normies (which I read in a book), for instance, is particularly annoying to me.

03 - Cliffhangers in a first book in a series — I now expect every book to be a series but I also expect it to finish a certain plot other than the larger plot. It makes no sense to force readers to get the next book to complete a story that should have been completed in the first book.

04 - Book series with different content ratings — Is it wrong to have a whole series in the same general rating content-wise? So for children's book, the audience does change as the characters grow up but I just don't think it is necessary to write more mature content with details that changes the audience. An example: in a young adult book, the first book is considered g-rated but then the second book had explicit sex scenes and probably would be rated R and then the third book is back to being g-rated. Maybe this didn't matter if the reader is an adult but for children's book, the details are probably not necessary.

05 - When a main character finally gets an answer to a secret that they wanted to know but is stopped by something stupid — I'm not saying you can't delay the answer, I'm saying if you want to delay the answer, don't tease the reader and make us think we're getting it when we're not. One tease, fine, two, maybe, but if the delay gets a delay, then it's the most annoying thing in the world.

06 - First person narrative — Somehow I never got to like this all that much. Who exactly is this person (the narrator that is) talking to? I'm especially curious who they were talking to when they have an attitude. An example of this: 'Yep, I love eating donuts with cheese, do you have a problem with that?'  I guess my issue with this is when I'm reading, it's directed at me because I'm reading it. I never assume things about any character other than if they are the murderer in a murder mystery.

07 - Unreliable narrator - I read one book with an unreliable narrator (although told in third-person) once and I didn't like it. If we can't trust the text we are reading about these characters and their actions to be true, then how are we to believe what is going on is actually going on? This is a preference but I just don't get how people can like a story told in this way.

What are some of your writing pet peeves?

[More about the group over at the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog here]