Character Bio – Lucinda Jolie

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Marcel Proust Character Questionnaire

 This questionnaire was invented by the noted French author Marcel Proust.  Lisa Wood used this questionnaire to interview the main character of Burnt Offering, Lucinda Jolie.

The audio of the interview will be available soon.

LW: What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Luce:  I should hope that I have many achievements in life to come.  I would hate to limit myself to my greatest achievement so young in life.

 

LW: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Luce: I do not believe that happiness should be perfect.  It would make all the rest of your moments seem rather bleak if you’d experienced one moment with absolutely no flaws.

 

LW: What is your current state of mind?

Luce:  I am excited about all of the opportunities that Gallia has laid out before it; I’m nervous about my role in the future of our city; and I’m proud of all the Gallian citizens who have pulled together to make our colony great.

 

LW: What is your most treasured possession?

Luce:  My most treasured possessions are the memories I have of my life with my family.  I would give up everything in this world to keep myself near to them.

 

LW: What or who is the greatest love of your life?

Luce:  A lady doesn’t talk of such things.

 

LW: What is it that you most dislike?

Luce:  I dislike sloth.  It is important for the success of our colony that we all pull our own weight.

 

LW: What is your greatest fear?

Luce: Losing the ones that I love.  I know I cannot hold on to my loved ones forever, but the memories of them keep them alive in me.  So long as I have those memories, I have the ones I love.

 

LW: Which living person do you most despise?

Luce:  Hate is such a wasteful emotion.  It does not do to dwell on the bitter dregs of an old cask of wine when a new one is so easily accessible.

 

LW: Whose are your heroes in real life?

Luce: My mother and my father:  they dedicated their lives to the betterment of Gallia, and I hope that I can cast even a shadow of their influence over our great colony.

 

LW: Which living person do you most admire?

Luce:  I admire all living people.  Life, I’ve found, is quite difficult and I find it commendable simply to drag yourself back into it every day.

 

LW: What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Luce: Can a virtue be overrated?  Perhaps, it can if the virtue is demonstrated only for show, and not to do actual good in the world.

 

LW: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Luce: I’d much rather change the world by being the best of myself every day.

 

LW: How would you like to die?

Luce:  I’d rather not for a while.  But when it is my time to die, I think I would like to die like my mother with bravery and courage and in sacrifice for those I love.

 

LW: If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?

Luce:  I think when people we love die they never really leave us so long as we keep their memories alive.  I’d like to believe that there are people who love me so dearly that I will never truly die, but if I must leave this body, I will, I hope, at least return as a memory.

 

LW: What is your motto?

Luce: My motto came from my father:  Those who can must do.  If you have within you the ability to help someone, or to make this life even remotely easier for them, then you must do it.  It is by these words that my colony has prospered all these years despite being the smallest in the Terra II system, and a desert ecosystem no less.

Indie Writers Rock! An Interview with Lisa Wood,Newly Published Author of the novelette, Burnt Offering — pamelascanepa

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I am pleased to announce my first ever author blog interview! What makes it even more exciting is the fact that this newly published author is also a friend of mine who was once a co-worker. Lisa Wood just recently published her first sci-fi fantasy e-book, a novelette titled Burnt Offering, on Smashwords and on […]

via Indie Writers Rock! An Interview with Lisa Wood,Newly Published Author of the novelette, Burnt Offering — pamelascanepa

External Combustion

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External Combustion was written as an entry into a friendly competition in one of my writer’s groups.  Alas, my witch did not win the day, but I still find a special place for her in my heart.  The original draft had to be less than 250 (a hard task for me indeed), but this one is a bit extended (I put back a lot of those great phrases it made me sad to delete to keep it below the limit).

The blaze licked angrily at her toes.  They would pay a dear recompense for her suffering.  Fire could not kill a witch, temporarily incapacitate her maybe, but it never could kill her.   she was too much at one with the rage of the conflagration.  For how else did one become a witch but through a trial of fire.

The flames marched up her legs like hungry ants rending her flesh in rough mouthfuls.  The true shame of it all was that she had not been so terribly awful this time.  A wicked smile quirked up the corner of her lip as she recalled the moans of passion incited by her benevolent doing.  She’d matched up many-a-soul to their true mate; perhaps a few of them had a previous claim on their heart from a lover who wasn’t so willing to share.  She had only felt it was the just thing to ensure each of the citizens of her fair town found their own one, true love.

As the fire found her heart, hidden deep within the cavern of her chest buried there since the tragedy.  She’d once known her own one, true love.  Known him and lost him in as many days as it might take a baby to learn to toddle around his home.  Her malice crackled with the fire.  It was hard to hold up the farce that her actions had been accomplished in compassion.  She’d wanted retribution for her love.  She’d wanted to see them writhe in an agony that matched hers unerringly.  They’d paid dearly just as she’d make these poor naive villagers pay.  Their victory would be less than short-lived.  She knew it.

Just as she knew the fire as it met her brain, and the citizens of Lotham would soon know the fire too.  This she vowed as she felt herself being incinerated.  This was nothing, she welcomed the inferno.  The world would never remember Lotham.  She would burn them off the face of the Earth.  The memory of Lotham would be cremated and spread so thinly across the history of the world that no modern human would remember them.  She felt the particles of her being blazing, and she let them go away from her; they spread across the village and it burned as did all of its unsuspecting occupants.

Thank you for your time, and more importantly: thank you for reading External Combustion. If you enjoyed it, and want to encourage others to read it, please take a moment (just a few minutes!) to leave a review of this story in the comments. Your honest feedback is all I ask, negative or positive!

 

The Devil’s in the Details

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This is a short story created based on a prompt from PicNstory.  You can see the pic prompt above.

The cracked leather seats ran with rivulets of sweat beneath his legs, and the hard steering wheel bit a path through his forehead as he slept in the blistering Autumn heat.  He’d been waiting for hours for God only knows what. Frank wasn’t an information guy. They told him to wait here, so here he waited.

It wasn’t the best job, but hey the money was good.  He woke with a start as the ramshackle truck’s passenger door was flung open.

“Drive!”  The voice was urgent, but Frank’s groggy, sleep addled mind was anything but prepared to deal with urgency.

His passenger was a woman in a dainty, frilly, pink dress. She looked as though she’d just come from high tea, and she made Frank feel like a street urchin by comparison. He’d been baking in this truck since sunup and his t-shirt was soaked through with sweat. He’d bummed this straw hat off a man passing his window as the sun crested the trees and began to burn his face.

“Drive!” She said again, fear causing a slight shriek in her tone.

That was enough to get him moving. As the truck lurched out onto the road, he heard a ripping noise beside him and looked to see this strange creature tearing the skirt off of her dress. What remained was the bodice and a pair of pants that she had rolled up to her thighs.

She directed him to turn left, and take the highway, and drive the common speed with the prettiest pink mouth he’d ever seen.

He did as he was bid, and tried to pluck up the courage to ask her name.

“Pull off,” she ordered, “right here is good.”  She looked at him with eyes as blue as Heaven he was sure and said, “get out.”

Too entranced to question her, he got out, but she didn’t follow. She scooted over, and before he could react she drove off in his truck.  Her only goodbye was a cloud of dust. He choked on it for most of the way to the bus stop. As he rode the bus back to Timmy’s place he realized this meant he would be getting paid for his truck as well and he tried not to do a happy dance.  That old thing had needed replacing.

The door to Timmy’s was always locked, and it did no good to knock, so he leaned against the door frame until someone within deigned to open it. For once, it didn’t take too long.

“What are you doing?  You’re supposed to be waiting!”  Timmy’s bellow reached him the moment the door was opened.

“She came,” Frank answered shoving past to feel the sweet bliss of the air conditioner.

“She came?”  Timmy’s question was an atom bomb on a still night.

And suddenly he knew, “I wasn’t waiting on the girl.”  He worried briefly what the consequence of crossing Timmy might be, he’d never heard of anyone who’d actually had the gall before. Then, it struck him. He’d been swindled by the most angelic creature he’d ever beheld.

Thank you for your time, and more importantly: thank you for reading The Devil’s in the Details. If you enjoyed it, and want to encourage others to read it, please take a moment (just a few minutes!) to leave a review of this story in the comments. Your honest feedback is all I ask, negative or positive!

Daily Prompt: Reach

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Reach is a short story written in response to another poster’s one word prompt.  If you enjoy this story, check out my other work available on iTunes, Nook, and Smashwords and coming soon to Kindle.  There is another bit of flash fiction ‘Til Death… Well maybe (free) and a novelette Burnt Offering ($2.99).

“Reach,” Jo groaned stretching her stubby arm out to her sister as pebbles cascaded down the side of the cliff. Jo and Cassidy had been on a family road trip when their mother decided that a picnic in the woods would be their next destination of choice.
“Cassidy, you’re not trying. Give me your hand.” Her sister was dangling precariously from the side of a gorge, a rushing river that they’d both probably learned about in school that year filled the space one hundred feet beneath her. Jo edged her body further over the ledge of the cliff. She was only seven years old, and her scrawny limbs could only reach so far.
Cassidy moaned pitiably as she grasped the twisted root desperately in her sweaty palms. At ten, she’d known exactly what river it was she was dangling over, right up until the moment she’d tumbled off the ledge. Now all she knew was that if she ever got back onto solid ground again, she would stay very far away from nature. She’d only wanted to see the fish leaping up over the rushing waters, now she could hang the dang fish. She felt her fingers slipping loosely down the twisted root.
She looked up again and saw Jo, her baby sister, half hanging off the side of the cliff and she wanted to scream at her to go get mom, but her terrified mind had restricted her use of speech to whimpers and moans.
Jo had been saying something urgently, but Cassidy had not heard. The only thing she could hear was the roaring of the river beneath her. It threatened her with menacing howls.
As she slipped further down the root her sweaty palms unable to hold their grasp, her feet scrabbled at the rocky wall, and she felt the tiniest ledge beneath the toe of her previously pristine sneaker. She rested her weight on that ledge and a sigh of relief escaped her mouth. It was premature, she realized as her toe slipped off the ledge. She was left hanging from the root again, but she’d had time to get a better grasp hooking an elbow over the knotted surface. It bit into the delicate white skin of her elbow, but she ignored the pain and focused on not falling to her death.
She tried again to find some leverage on the sheer face of the cliff with the toes of her shoes. It was futile, but she noticed that now she could use her feet to walk up the face of the ledge as long as she held her weight on the root.
With relief, she realized she’d closed a nice chunk of the distance between her and Jo who was crying big fat tears that were falling miserably onto the top of Cassidy’s head. She smiled up at her baby sister to let her know everything would be okay, and nearly died with relief when she saw the dark head of her father poking over the edge of the cliff.
Jo was jerked suddenly away as Cassidy felt the strong hands of her father wrapping around her and pulling her up. She finally allowed herself to cry. She knew there would be shouting and punishments, but she was simply so happy to be alive she couldn’t let herself fret about that right now.
As she crested the ledge, her mother snatched her away from her father and clutched her to her breast. Normally, Cassidy would have fought the embrace. She was too big for hugs, but just now she needed this as much as her mother did and she returned the hug with all the forced her tired arms would allow. She felt Jo’s tiny arms wrapping her up from behind, and her father’s warm embrace surrounded them all.

I hope you enjoyed Reach, please leave a comment with a review (good or bad – I can only get better if you tell me what’s not working).

via Daily Prompt: Reach