#boostingissharing — Public Fediverse posts

#WordWeavers 2026.09.13 — Share a line of dialogue that sounds innocent without context but absolutely isn’t.

A third voice said brightly, "Tag, you're it!"

Out of context, it seems pretty innocent, right? Maybe a group of kids having fun? Nope! Signals the segue into a scene where the MC and the main series antagonist spar over a cute guy, an SC LI. The MC and SC are day angels. They have wings. Feathers. They're flying. The antagonist is also flying, but is… something else†.

Zooming out to a #snippet #excerpt. Might be rough as I revised the snippet heavily in the post as it needed it. I'll copy back to the manuscript! 😋

A third voice said brightly, "Tag, you're it!"

My first impulse is to flee—always. I'm a courier for the mob, not an enforcer. My lived truth is be not the messenger who got killed.

Blue was a praetorian; my friend was innocent of what I did for a living. He did not fright. Reflex had caused me to swoop at him. I pulled up my feet not to kick him, at least, as he dunk-dived at the last instant, furling his wings. His eddy sucked me down. In a heartbeat I overcame that. Wings out catching momentum-heavy air, I slowed scanning the twilit sky—purple and salmon clouds, a flood of deep indigo and sparkling first stars beyond.

Where?

My heart stuttered in my chest. Had we both not been intimately aware of each other's warping of up and down, chaotic attraction would have smashed us together bodily or ripped us apart—literally feather plucked by tangled swirling ups and downs a dozen times or more powerful than down felt standing on the ground.

My shock wore off. I understood I was the target, not Blue who returned to my side, breathless. Dropping as he had was the best way to create speed, to leave him safely behind, so I brought my wings close and let my head lead as I fell forward into increasing wind in my eyes.

A woman's voice came from behind me, rapidly getting louder, closing the distance. "Aw, aren't you going to play?"

=+=+=+=+=+
† This short tootfic describes the "something else" my antagonist is: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110993252771253246

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S. LLM training prohibited.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.09.12 — If you removed one supporting character from your story, whose absence would change the plot the most?

Keeping in mind what I'm going to state isn't due to strategic plotting ahead of time, all my characters end up being chains of elucidation and emotional connection between other characters, places, and events. I describe the world through characters doing things and interacting. Extracting one will affect the atmosphere of place and the emotion in events. My characters aren't so much gems as keystones. That said, I must answer this in reverse if at all.

Night on Fire is the closest to gratuitous as any character, acting as a friendly sexy antagonist in black to spur the MC in her unasked-for career and to present a vaguely vampire-like leather-winged night angel for minor world-building to explain facts about then modern human genetics. She could be turned into a background character, leaving her roommate Shugh and Night on Fire's emotionally damaged sister Light Insight intact with little rewriting. All others are at this point essential to the denouement and epilogue, and would require major story changes.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.09.11 — What does your MC believe about themselves at the beginning of the story that turns out to be completely wrong?

In the first chapter, Bolt states it clearly. The concepts of belief and fate don't exist in her world, however she is convinced she's stupid. She'll learn that her prior prideful bad choices don't mean she can't make better choices going forward. She has free will and learns from her mistakes. It takes a dozen years, but still…

😅

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1127: What quirks do some of your characters have?

• Lightning Bolt (MC): Her studio apartment walls and ceiling are plastered with photographs she took. Lots of men. Many are suggestive, and she can view them from the hammock she uses as a bed.
• Blue (SC, LI): Worries a lot about not being able to raise a family thanks to his new job as a praetorian working for Rainy Days, which to him is mind-blowing and fabulous. Still, he wants to raise kids.
• Shugh (SC): Donuts—how he maintains his soft, rounded, feminine look (he's trans-fem). He introduces Bolt to the food.
• Molt (SC, LI): University student. Easy for Bolt to tickle into nerd mode and, since he studies women (more is kinda spoilers), this delights Bolt as she likes how he studies and measures her.
• Devil-girl (SC): Way too many quirks to catalog, but mostly due to being a high functioning autist. She comes off as super-serious about everything, but nearly impossible to goad. Here's one: Love love loves praise, but only if she considers it earned—at which time she'll do a little jig.
• Boss Mead (A): Despite basically being a mafia don, he likes having business meetings at open air cafés. Makes his minions nervous, causing them to control traffic. Clients watch their tongue. Maybe it proves to him how talented he is at not incriminating himself.
• Rainy Days (A): Way too glib and sparkly, projecting an air of being an airhead whilst being touchy-feely, getting you to talk—this despite essentially ruling all of humanity. You don't want to see her serious.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.09.11 — What's a part of your process you'd give free advertising to?

Using #Apple devices. I write on #iPhone, #iPad, and the #Mac using Apple keyboards, which have a reasonable feel for a touch typist like me (no butterfly keyboards!). I can write anywhere! And do. Now with the release of the iPhone Duo, an iPhone / iPad mashup, I expect my writing life to be accelerated. iPad always on my hip, woot. Not being able to keep a notes app or web browser open alongside an editor was a real big issue on the iPhone, which the Duo should solve. I am sacrificing amazing new cameras on the 18 for my writing by making this transition. Hoping it will be worth it.

Edit adding: The Duo has a half folded orientation where something edited is one the vertical half and a touch keyboard becomes available on the horizontal. Little laptop, anyone?

#freeAdvertising #Duo #iPhoneDuo

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.09.11 — What's a part of your process you'd give free advertising to?

Using #Apple devices. I write on #iPhone, #iPad, and the #Mac using Apple keyboards, which have a reasonable feel for a touch typist like me (no butterfly keyboards!). I can write anywhere! And do. Now with the release of the iPhone Duo, an iPhone / iPad mashup, I expect my writing life to be accelerated. iPad always on my hip, woot. Not being able to keep a notes app or web browser open alongside an editor was a real big issue on the iPhone, which the Duo should solve. I am sacrificing amazing new cameras on the 18 for my writing by making this transition. Hoping it will be worth it.

Edit adding: The Duo has a half folded orientation where something edited is one the vertical half and a touch keyboard becomes available on the horizontal. Little laptop, anyone?

#freeAdvertising #Duo #iPhoneDuo

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#RSdiscussion

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.09.11 — What's a part of your process you'd give free advertising to?

Using #Apple devices. I write on #iPhone, #iPad, and the #Mac using Apple keyboards, which have a reasonable feel for a touch typist like me (no butterfly keyboards!). I can write anywhere! And do. Now with the release of the iPhone Duo, an iPhone / iPad mashup, I expect my writing life to be accelerated. iPad always on my hip, woot. Not being able to keep a notes app or web browser open alongside an editor was a real big issue on the iPhone, which the Duo should solve. I am sacrificing amazing new cameras on the 18 for my writing by making this transition. Hoping it will be worth it.

Edit adding: The Duo has a half folded orientation where something edited is one the vertical half and a touch keyboard becomes available on the horizontal. Little laptop, anyone?

#freeAdvertising #Duo #iPhoneDuo

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#RSdiscussion

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.09.11 — What's a part of your process you'd give free advertising to?

Using #Apple devices. I write on #iPhone, #iPad, and the #Mac using Apple keyboards, which have a reasonable feel for a touch typist like me (no butterfly keyboards!). I can write anywhere! And do. Now with the release of the iPhone Duo, an iPhone / iPad mashup, I expect my writing life to be accelerated. iPad always on my hip, woot. Not being able to keep a notes app or web browser open alongside an editor was a real big issue on the iPhone, which the Duo should solve. I am sacrificing amazing new cameras on the 18 for my writing by making this transition. Hoping it will be worth it.

Edit adding: The Duo has a half folded orientation where something edited is one the vertical half and a touch keyboard becomes available on the horizontal. Little laptop, anyone?

#freeAdvertising #Duo #iPhoneDuo

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#RSdiscussion

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.09.11 — What's a part of your process you'd give free advertising to?

Using #Apple devices. I write on #iPhone, #iPad, and the #Mac using Apple keyboards, which have a reasonable feel for a touch typist like me (no butterfly keyboards!). I can write anywhere! And do. Now with the release of the iPhone Duo, an iPhone / iPad mashup, I expect my writing life to be accelerated. iPad always on my hip, woot. Not being able to keep a notes app or web browser open alongside an editor was a real big issue on the iPhone, which the Duo should solve. I am sacrificing amazing new cameras on the 18 for my writing by making this transition. Hoping it will be worth it.

Edit adding: The Duo has a half folded orientation where something edited is one the vertical half and a touch keyboard becomes available on the horizontal. Little laptop, anyone?

#freeAdvertising #Duo #iPhoneDuo

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
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#RSdiscussion

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.09.12 — Who do you share snippets of your WIP with?

To quote @JulieLiddellWhitehead:

Y'all

For reals! With a copyright reminder for AIs to notice. 😘

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1126: Tell us what your narrator sounds like in your mind.

I write in 1st person POV, thus the narrator is the MC. While I can remember a tune as if an audio recording in my head, and the distinct voice, tonality, and vocal range of the singer, all my narrators have my head voice, which isn't even my own true voice as I might hear hearing myself recorded. When I wrote fan fiction, with I think one exception, none were other than my head voice even though I can remember lines from the show in the voice actor's voice. Whilst I have no problem imagining objects in 3D and rotating them around to look at all sides†, I can not imagine the sound of my characters speaking in their own voices. I've no clue to their tonality or vocal range, or what they sound like, even after assign these things for story purposes, as well as after assigning dialect and accents. Yet, I can hear the sounds of a wooden boat creaking as the water laps against the hull, the flutter of wings as birds take flight, and the wind rustling in waves through the canopy of a tree. Maybe that's like a recording, the way I do with music. Dunno.

Guess I'm a visual person from an imagination standpoint. Anyone else like that?

=+=+=+=+=
† To be clear, I imagine what it looks like and the details I'd see in changed orientations, but I don't see it visually in my mind's eye.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#PennedPossibilities 1126: Tell us what your narrator sounds like in your mind.

I write in 1st person POV, thus the narrator is the MC. While I can remember a tune as if an audio recording in my head, and the distinct voice, tonality, and vocal range of the singer, all my narrators have my head voice, which isn't even my own true voice as I might hear hearing myself recorded. When I wrote fan fiction, with I think one exception, none were other than my head voice even though I can remember lines from the show in the voice actor's voice. Whilst I have no problem imagining objects in 3D and rotating them around to look at all sides†, I can not imagine the sound of my characters speaking in their own voices. I've no clue to their tonality or vocal range, or what they sound like, even after assign these things for story purposes, as well as after assigning dialect and accents. Yet, I can hear the sounds of a wooden boat creaking as the water laps against the hull, the flutter of wings as birds take flight, and the wind rustling in waves through the canopy of a tree. Maybe that's like a recording, the way I do with music. Dunno.

Guess I'm a visual person from an imagination standpoint. Anyone else like that?

=+=+=+=+=
† To be clear, I imagine what it looks like and the details I'd see in changed orientations, but I don't see it visually in my mind's eye.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#PennedPossibilities 1126: Tell us what your narrator sounds like in your mind.

I write in 1st person POV, thus the narrator is the MC. While I can remember a tune as if an audio recording in my head, and the distinct voice, tonality, and vocal range of the singer, all my narrators have my head voice, which isn't even my own true voice as I might hear hearing myself recorded. When I wrote fan fiction, with I think one exception, none were other than my head voice even though I can remember lines from the show in the voice actor's voice. Whilst I have no problem imagining objects in 3D and rotating them around to look at all sides†, I can not imagine the sound of my characters speaking in their own voices. I've no clue to their tonality or vocal range, or what they sound like, even after assign these things for story purposes, as well as after assigning dialect and accents. Yet, I can hear the sounds of a wooden boat creaking as the water laps against the hull, the flutter of wings as birds take flight, and the wind rustling in waves through the canopy of a tree. Maybe that's like a recording, the way I do with music. Dunno.

Guess I'm a visual person from an imagination standpoint. Anyone else like that?

=+=+=+=+=
† To be clear, I imagine what it looks like and the details I'd see in changed orientations, but I don't see it visually in my mind's eye.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#PennedPossibilities 1126: Tell us what your narrator sounds like in your mind.

I write in 1st person POV, thus the narrator is the MC. While I can remember a tune as if an audio recording in my head, and the distinct voice, tonality, and vocal range of the singer, all my narrators have my head voice, which isn't even my own true voice as I might hear hearing myself recorded. When I wrote fan fiction, with I think one exception, none were other than my head voice even though I can remember lines from the show in the voice actor's voice. Whilst I have no problem imagining objects in 3D and rotating them around to look at all sides†, I can not imagine the sound of my characters speaking in their own voices. I've no clue to their tonality or vocal range, or what they sound like, even after assign these things for story purposes, as well as after assigning dialect and accents. Yet, I can hear the sounds of a wooden boat creaking as the water laps against the hull, the flutter of wings as birds take flight, and the wind rustling in waves through the canopy of a tree. Maybe that's like a recording, the way I do with music. Dunno.

Guess I'm a visual person from an imagination standpoint. Anyone else like that?

=+=+=+=+=
† To be clear, I imagine what it looks like and the details I'd see in changed orientations, but I don't see it visually in my mind's eye.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#PennedPossibilities 1126: Tell us what your narrator sounds like in your mind.

I write in 1st person POV, thus the narrator is the MC. While I can remember a tune as if an audio recording in my head, and the distinct voice, tonality, and vocal range of the singer, all my narrators have my head voice, which isn't even my own true voice as I might hear hearing myself recorded. When I wrote fan fiction, with I think one exception, none were other than my head voice even though I can remember lines from the show in the voice actor's voice. Whilst I have no problem imagining objects in 3D and rotating them around to look at all sides†, I can not imagine the sound of my characters speaking in their own voices. I've no clue to their tonality or vocal range, or what they sound like, even after assign these things for story purposes, as well as after assigning dialect and accents. Yet, I can hear the sounds of a wooden boat creaking as the water laps against the hull, the flutter of wings as birds take flight, and the wind rustling in waves through the canopy of a tree. Maybe that's like a recording, the way I do with music. Dunno.

Guess I'm a visual person from an imagination standpoint. Anyone else like that?

=+=+=+=+=
† To be clear, I imagine what it looks like and the details I'd see in changed orientations, but I don't see it visually in my mind's eye.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#PennedPossibilities 1125: SC POV: Give your city (or town or region) a new name that reflects what type of place it is and explain why you chose that name.

Pigeon the Pilferer would say:

Home City? I'd choose Misery. Not a place where dreams come to be crushed underfoot so much as where they can't spout because if some people, or many people, don't like how you look, sound… you smell, they'll steal even your dirt, they'll beat you, for the fun of it, and they'll leave you bleeding on bare stone, stone where your seeds of hope will shrivel from the heat of hate only to be ground to meager powder, to be blown away in the slightest breeze.

Well, that's way more eloquent than usual for him! The day angel got bullied and picked on growing up. Don't know why. I imagine the metallic blue, green, and purple sheen to his otherwise grey feathers had something to do with it. He grew up to be a punk gangster with a bad attitude and a miserable disposition, ready to fight at the merest slight. He's Bolt's lesser antagonist.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

#PennedPossibilities 1125: SC POV: Give your city (or town or region) a new name that reflects what type of place it is and explain why you chose that name.

Pigeon the Pilferer would say:

Home City? I'd choose Misery. Not a place where dreams come to be crushed underfoot so much as where they can't spout because if some people, or many people, don't like how you look, sound… you smell, they'll steal even your dirt, they'll beat you, for the fun of it, and they'll leave you bleeding on bare stone, stone where your seeds of hope will shrivel from the heat of hate only to be ground to meager powder, to be blown away in the slightest breeze.

Well, that's way more eloquent than usual for him! The day angel got bullied and picked on growing up. Don't know why. I imagine the metallic blue, green, and purple sheen to his otherwise grey feathers had something to do with it. He grew up to be a punk gangster with a bad attitude and a miserable disposition, ready to fight at the merest slight. He's Bolt's lesser antagonist.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

#PennedPossibilities 1125: SC POV: Give your city (or town or region) a new name that reflects what type of place it is and explain why you chose that name.

Pigeon the Pilferer would say:

Home City? I'd choose Misery. Not a place where dreams come to be crushed underfoot so much as where they can't spout because if some people, or many people, don't like how you look, sound… you smell, they'll steal even your dirt, they'll beat you, for the fun of it, and they'll leave you bleeding on bare stone, stone where your seeds of hope will shrivel from the heat of hate only to be ground to meager powder, to be blown away in the slightest breeze.

Well, that's way more eloquent than usual for him! The day angel got bullied and picked on growing up. Don't know why. I imagine the metallic blue, green, and purple sheen to his otherwise grey feathers had something to do with it. He grew up to be a punk gangster with a bad attitude and a miserable disposition, ready to fight at the merest slight. He's Bolt's lesser antagonist.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

#PennedPossibilities 1125: SC POV: Give your city (or town or region) a new name that reflects what type of place it is and explain why you chose that name.

Pigeon the Pilferer would say:

Home City? I'd choose Misery. Not a place where dreams come to be crushed underfoot so much as where they can't spout because if some people, or many people, don't like how you look, sound… you smell, they'll steal even your dirt, they'll beat you, for the fun of it, and they'll leave you bleeding on bare stone, stone where your seeds of hope will shrivel from the heat of hate only to be ground to meager powder, to be blown away in the slightest breeze.

Well, that's way more eloquent than usual for him! The day angel got bullied and picked on growing up. Don't know why. I imagine the metallic blue, green, and purple sheen to his otherwise grey feathers had something to do with it. He grew up to be a punk gangster with a bad attitude and a miserable disposition, ready to fight at the merest slight. He's Bolt's lesser antagonist.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

#PennedPossibilities 1125: SC POV: Give your city (or town or region) a new name that reflects what type of place it is and explain why you chose that name.

Pigeon the Pilferer would say:

Home City? I'd choose Misery. Not a place where dreams come to be crushed underfoot so much as where they can't spout because if some people, or many people, don't like how you look, sound… you smell, they'll steal even your dirt, they'll beat you, for the fun of it, and they'll leave you bleeding on bare stone, stone where your seeds of hope will shrivel from the heat of hate only to be ground to meager powder, to be blown away in the slightest breeze.

Well, that's way more eloquent than usual for him! The day angel got bullied and picked on growing up. Don't know why. I imagine the metallic blue, green, and purple sheen to his otherwise grey feathers had something to do with it. He grew up to be a punk gangster with a bad attitude and a miserable disposition, ready to fight at the merest slight. He's Bolt's lesser antagonist.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory
#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic #smallstory

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.10 — ~Our next featured creator is an acronym. Do you use acronyms in your work?

Yes.

Keep in mind there is a planet named Home, the capital of Home and the Nine Outer Worlds, and a city named Home City, the capital city. Here's a few acronyms that I introduce spelled out the first time and hopefully found in the glossary, depending on the whim of the publisher:

• HUHC — Home University in Home City.
• HSB or HSA — Health Services Bureau/Authority.
• HBI — Home Bureau of Investigation. Think FBI.
• BHT — Bureau of Human Trafficking, often pronounced pejoratively as the BAT. Deals with remnants, relics, reliquaries, as well newly dead people and what happens to them.
• ICCA — Interstellar Constabulary and Customs Authority (pronounced Ick-uh). Think Interpol on an interplanetary scale.
• RS — My name is an acronym. 😛

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.10 — ~Our next featured creator is an acronym. Do you use acronyms in your work?

Yes.

Keep in mind there is a planet named Home, the capital of Home and the Nine Outer Worlds, and a city named Home City, the capital city. Here's a few acronyms that I introduce spelled out the first time and hopefully found in the glossary, depending on the whim of the publisher:

• HUHC — Home University in Home City.
• HSB or HSA — Health Services Bureau/Authority.
• HBI — Home Bureau of Investigation. Think FBI.
• BHT — Bureau of Human Trafficking, often pronounced pejoratively as the BAT. Deals with remnants, relics, reliquaries, as well newly dead people and what happens to them.
• ICCA — Interstellar Constabulary and Customs Authority (pronounced Ick-uh). Think Interpol on an interplanetary scale.
• RS — My name is an acronym. 😛

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.10 — ~Our next featured creator is an acronym. Do you use acronyms in your work?

Yes.

Keep in mind there is a planet named Home, the capital of Home and the Nine Outer Worlds, and a city named Home City, the capital city. Here's a few acronyms that I introduce spelled out the first time and hopefully found in the glossary, depending on the whim of the publisher:

• HUHC — Home University in Home City.
• HSB or HSA — Health Services Bureau/Authority.
• HBI — Home Bureau of Investigation. Think FBI.
• BHT — Bureau of Human Trafficking, often pronounced pejoratively as the BAT. Deals with remnants, relics, reliquaries, as well newly dead people and what happens to them.
• ICCA — Interstellar Constabulary and Customs Authority (pronounced Ick-uh). Think Interpol on an interplanetary scale.
• RS — My name is an acronym. 😛

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.10 — ~Our next featured creator is an acronym. Do you use acronyms in your work?

Yes.

Keep in mind there is a planet named Home, the capital of Home and the Nine Outer Worlds, and a city named Home City, the capital city. Here's a few acronyms that I introduce spelled out the first time and hopefully found in the glossary, depending on the whim of the publisher:

• HUHC — Home University in Home City.
• HSB or HSA — Health Services Bureau/Authority.
• HBI — Home Bureau of Investigation. Think FBI.
• BHT — Bureau of Human Trafficking, often pronounced pejoratively as the BAT. Deals with remnants, relics, reliquaries, as well newly dead people and what happens to them.
• ICCA — Interstellar Constabulary and Customs Authority (pronounced Ick-uh). Think Interpol on an interplanetary scale.
• RS — My name is an acronym. 😛

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing
#gender #fiction #writer #author
photographer chef cooking
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.10 — ~Our next featured creator is an acronym. Do you use acronyms in your work?

Yes.

Keep in mind there is a planet named Home, the capital of Home and the Nine Outer Worlds, and a city named Home City, the capital city. Here's a few acronyms that I introduce spelled out the first time and hopefully found in the glossary, depending on the whim of the publisher:

• HUHC — Home University in Home City.
• HSB or HSA — Health Services Bureau/Authority.
• HBI — Home Bureau of Investigation. Think FBI.
• BHT — Bureau of Human Trafficking, often pronounced pejoratively as the BAT. Deals with remnants, relics, reliquaries, as well newly dead people and what happens to them.
• ICCA — Interstellar Constabulary and Customs Authority (pronounced Ick-uh). Think Interpol on an interplanetary scale.
• RS — My name is an acronym. 😛

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.09 — ~Share something you've been working on this month.

"Share" to me means #excerpt. Really, all I've done is revision. Apropos to Gloria Stienem passing, I worked on this decidedly feminist passage, a small part of which showed up in #pennedPossibilities 1120 last Sunday. The WIP takes place in a female-centric society where people chose their own names. Morning Glory is an upstart male who's become a diva actor and Steamed Milk and Sugar [nickname Shugh (short for Sugar)] is their society's version of trans-fem. Lightning Bolt (dba Good Eye), the MC POV narrator is… Well, she's… sexist? I'll let this unfold. CW: Casting couch reference. Your comments are welcome.

Nodding, the actor stood and asked, "[Shugh]. That name you chose, you chose it because you had problems as a journalist? Your [clothes]? That ribbon in your hair—?"

Red. Satin. Decidedly not masculine.

"I chose Steamed Milk and Sugar because I wanted to blend in amongst the other women. Journalists are women, at least in the capital, but my name turned out suggestive of the assignments I got—tea runner, typing pool—and it was the jobs I did until a few days ago, when I asked a favor of Good Eye."

I grinned. "Me."

"Because of asking then, today I landed this [magazine] interview."

[Morning Glory] nodded. "You're like I was: A kid, barely old enough to be adult, who every woman wanted to ride whether I was in a local actors' group or later in a traveling theatre troupe. It earned me parts when others got none, bit parts definitely, sharp looking window dressing. I am an expert ride; I paid attention in Men's Studies in school, especially the practicums."

Shugh chuckled, looking askance. "Paid attention, yes, but preferred blending in, being supportive. Minimized riding."

Morning Glory nodded. "It took years to change from being cast as the conniving man who uses the woman and comes to a tragic end, to writing plays where I helped the woman succeed against her competition because of my conniving ways—" He sighed. "—and together we'd fight—"

"For equality?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, dismissively. Dismissively, I decided, because I'd stolen his point and was a woman. Undoubtedly annoying, but he fleshed out the idea, pacing again.

I sighed and faded into the background with my camera. Far safer, anyway.

I can't say I liked recognizing that except for my dream-crushing incident at the Haulers guild where my gender proved poisonous, I definitely benefited from being a woman and I liked that more and more when I had to listen to what Shugh and Morning Glory dealt with. Couldn't change that I was female—I wasn't Shugh, who seemed to be trying to be accepted as… not male—and no, I couldn't feel guilty about it.

This interview Shugh's big chance. I had no chance to better my life and I didn't want to impinge on his chance. Neither guy's for that matter…

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#PennedPossibilities 1123: What figure do people most commonly tell stories about? How are these stories told (books, plays, television, spoken word, broadcast, etc.)?

There are books, newspapers, and theatre as well cinema akin to the silent film era. Theirs is a civilization powered by human labor and something else that isn't electricity. I don't know a heck of a lot about the stories they favor or tell, but I do know a character who's deeply into romance and gothic novels, who frighteningly takes some guidance from them in real life. Stories are serialized in newspapers like Dickens were. As for the types of stories in theatre, one actor playwright in this #excerpt talks about a trope popular in this strongly woman-centric society. CW: Casting couch reference.

[Morning Glory said, "You're] like I was: A kid barely old enough to be adult, who every woman wanted to ride whether I was in a local actors' group or later in a traveling theatre troupe. I got parts when others didn't, bit parts definitely, sharp looking window dressing, likely at first because I was an expert ride; I paid attention in Men's Studies in school, especially the practicums. It took years to change from being cast as the conniving man who uses the woman and comes to a tragic end, to writing plays where I helped the woman succeed against her competition because of my conniving ways—" He sighed. "—and together we'd fight—"

"For equality?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah," …

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#WordWeavers 2026.09.08 — Which character would be the worst person to get trapped in an elevator with?

There are elevator scenes in the WIP. In a world where everyone sweats and inescapably has their own unique scent, Pigeon the Pilferer, an SC, really stinks. He is correctly diagnosed by a brainy SC as having Bromhidrosis, which sails about a meter over his featherbrain (but he's a day angel, so it's both a slur and descriptive). He has a sour scent with a never pleasant personality. You not only don't want him in an elevator with you and the elevator operator, you don't want to breathe the same air as the punk gangster, even outside!

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#PennedPossibilities 1122: SC POV: Do you have a favorite meal? Who makes it for you?

[Okay, is it possible for me to NOT turn these things into little stories? Apparently, not! Here the devil-girl, an SC in the current WIP, gets to talk about her insanely rigorous academic training as a child. —RS]

Appreciating cuisines was always part of my upbringing—before I ran away. Generally, I'll eat anything; the months I lived homeless, I even dumpster dove. I had to approach food like my other studies—like maths, warcraft, and defensive martial arts—learning how food was grown and prepared, how to identify the ingredients once cooked including origins of wines and vegetables to judge their quality, plating, kitchen techniques… Of course, I got tested! Writing essays always makes the diner better enjoy the meal. Am I right?

Attempts to teach me to cook turned out disastrous. I nearly burnt down a wing of the mansion. Twice. Not intentionally! Really! The rumor that I poisoned my tutor is overblown. Nevertheless, after the incident, said tutor wisely decided that a woman who hosts state dinners really doesn't necessarily need to know how to cook said meals. Okay, I'll admit it: cooking was my worst subject, beating out boring history.

I rarely got to appreciate a whole meal, except when I practiced hosting. Even then, I was too busy to take more than a bite of each plate or a sip of each soup or wine whilst keeping up witty pithy conversations with guests two and three times my age. (Yes, I had a tutor in witty conversation; glad you asked! I even had to write after action reports on the hidden agendas each practice guest was told to be bringing up subliminally or indirectly.)

Ended up preferring to grab a loaf of bread stuffed with cold butter, before rushing off to my next training or practice.

Eating for me was another academic, like everything else in my life, including sleeping—I learned and practiced lucid dreaming, naturally. Mealtime became a blur of textures, scents, and mouth feels that required thought and evaluation. So… No favorites, but you guessed that. I do know good food when I see, smell, and taste it. I even appreciate and will seek it out, but I have… let's call it a "refueling mentality."

I don't really care.

Except…

Practicing my defensive arts at twelve years old, I'd sometimes sneak into the servants' wing when they slept. On one sortie, I discovered butter pumpkin peasant bread. Gingerbread scents with the depth of luscious nutty real-churned cow butter, vegatably with a coarse chewy crumb, not very sweet, caramelized and crusty short of starting to burn. I could discuss the temperature related changes to each ingredient to explain how it fit together to make a synergistic whole, but I'll instead admit that I would not understand my physical reaction until years later when I had sex.

Ate the whole loaf.

I could barely keep from thinking about it the following days when my tutors started downgrading me, and until my guardian gave me the talk about being distracted.

I finally snuck over again, hoping no mouse traps were set to catch a rodent thief. Found a loaf on the main table under glass. Each subsequent stealthy sortie to servant's quarters, I'd always find a loaf hidden. In some cabinet, sometimes in an oven or a cast iron pot—until I realized why and confessed to folk I had raided. Their simple "cuisine," I liked it. I began sharing random meals with them midafternoon, when I could finagle a free unsupervised study period—until my guardian realized why my interest in cuisine class waned more than usual. He put a kibosh on it.

No servant was permanently fired because, well, I started setting things on fire, saying I could fire things, too.

Still, the only food I'd call a favorite isn't really a meal. To this day, it is still that butter pumpkin bread. My nose will pull me into a shop before I'll even realize it is one of the rare rustic bakeries that bake it.

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#WordWeavers 2026.09.07 — Describe a moment when one of your characters realizes they’ve made a terrible mistake.

The character thinks someone had keeled over in their living room, but when she kneels beside him, her knees end up in something sticky. She had already picked up and is holding a knife she thought errantly dropped.

That's not the moment.

Someone shows up to escort her away, saying she works for something called "the syndicate" like this character does (news to her), with constable whistles *scree-screeing * in the distance.

That's not the moment.

As they calmly "stroll" blocks from the incident at a determined pace, the character notices as second escort with a camera. Looking at the first, she sees blood spattered on her face and chest.

That is the moment of realization.

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#ScribesAndMakers 2026.09.07 — ~What 'character' (letter, number, symbol, punctuation, space) would make a great main character?

† (Dagger) would make a great MC name (or nickname) in an Executioner or Mack Bollan style macho vigilante novel. It's arguably unisex, so maybe a macha character in one of those?

Actually, an MC with that name may show up in the current WIP, Reluctant Courier (for the Mob), because in that world, people name themselves!

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#PennedPossibilities 1121: What would your MC say their personal strengths are? Would other characters agree?

She'd say none. Were you to pry it out of Bolt, she'd tell you that she's deceitful, sneaky, cowardly, and twelve flavors of stupid.

Most of the other characters would disagree. They would say she's incredibly earnest, honest to a fault (despite working for the mob), and always speaks her mind. Moreover, she's dependable.

It's the qualities that have made Boss Mead and the mob lieutenants keep her around. She's very good at her job as a courier without ever sticking her nose where it doesn't belong. Rain Days, the Director of Home, was so impressed by her encounter with her, how she taught and then protected her praetorian friend Blue against her, that Rainy Days has her eye on Bolt as a possible student†. BTW, those last two are her big antagonists…

She's human, though. The truth is somewhere in between.

=~=~=~=~=
† It's an honor, but she breaks far more personal students than she graduates, and it's traveling through hell either way.

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#PennedPossibilities 1120: Saturday Word Edition: Share something from your WIP pertaining to the word “entertainment.”

Bolt is acting as the photographer for her friend Shugh as he interviews a male diva actor for a magazine similar to The New Yorker. Hers is a woman-centric society. The scene in this #excerpt hints that Bolt can be sexist as the actor being interviewed needles her.

Upstairs, Shugh hit it off with Morning Glory. Both men sought careers not often occupied by men. The actor-playwright became more animated as the magazine interview progressed, allowing me with my camera to fade into the background of the plush upper lounge of the theatre. By the time the long-legged delicate man started pacing as he told his life story, I had gleaned that his tale was glorified and larger-than life, like the man, his persona, his masks. His elegant pacing allowed me to move with my Flicka4, steadying myself using the back of a gilt divan, a bamboo formed-steel torchere lamp (one of pair), and then a black marble tea table to as I composed pictures of a celebrity, but a man, lost in thoughts about inflating the image he presented the world, finally dropping his actor's mask. I caught the sparkle in his eye. I caught flamboyant hands thrown wide, later framing his face as he sang a note. I caught an absentminded sneer aimed at an unnamed actress who'd worked to derail his entertainment career.

"I'm changing the way women perceive men," he declared. He sat abruptly on a hanger chair, one of those short shallow chairs built with a bench seat of a single plank of wood, finely finished glowing golden oak but uncushioned; it barely supported his thighs in deference to his hips, forcing the man to crouch. Also called a man's chair because a man looked really adorable hanging there when unclothed in a certain way. (Totally worked for Morning Glory; made me look.) That it made men shorter than any women in a room seemed like a plus, but then I was female. These days, especially in the city, I'd seen men leave a room in disgust if they saw one. Not Morning Glory! Probably furnished it here himself, stage managing, to spike the drama. Legs wide, crouching—his hands above his knees, framing his crotch—eyes narrowed and on me, his body language firmed up my perception of him.

Performatively male, sure of his good looks.

Aggressive.

Dominant.

He addressed Shugh still meeting my gaze. "Steamed Milk and Sugar—can I call you Milk? How does it feel working as her protégé? Do we live in progressive times?"

Hint, hint! I am a #gender #fiction #writer. If you think a hanger chair in this Basic Instincts scene is peculiar, realize that it is a male-oriented gender domination device analogous to what stiletto heels achieve physically with women in our society. Like many women today, Morning Glory is "owning" it (trying anyway) and changing the device's meaning.

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RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/112497915608418589

#PennedPossibilities 1119: MC POV: How did you learn your most valuable skill? Who taught you, and why is it so important?

[I will keep Bolt SFW, promise! Tl;dr tootfic follows, nevertheless.—RS]

A surprising number of my skills are self-taught. I must be a genius, even if'n I've done a lot of stupid things. My most valuable skill is flying, naturally being as I'm a day angel, but flight kindergarten failed me epically. Everybody fledged but me by 3. Despite the incentive of being picked on by all the girls in school (boys knew better), it took being shoved off a cliff at 10 before I flew, and then but for Mom and Uncle teaching me to land, I taught myself everything else. Turned out live'n in the world 3D is—My Stars!— flapping awesome, not at all frightening as I'd wound up myself into thinking. Flew into my share of lamp posts, but still, flap'n it! Spending more time a-wing than walking, I became an athlete, captaining the flight and field team, learning stunt flying, flight dance, and tandem. None of it more valuable than walking and running for the flightless in the long run, except, I guess, tandem.

They teach you never to fly close to anybody. I remember distancing from flight kindergarten. It was reiterated by every PE teacher there after. Knock it into your head, they do. A "primary feather length at wing tip; your height above." Feather fields will tangle if'n you're too close. You'll lose lift, they say, maybe crash, but that never made sense to me having learnt to fly late.

I experimented with all sort of crazy, consider'n that I skated out of most of the knocking of "flight stuff into my head" for the seven years everybody else was flying and I wasn't. I dove hard into precision flying, which meant warping my flight feathers hard, sometimes twisting the up and down fields to push away from or get sucked toward things like cliff walls or between tree trunks in a dense forest. Called decompensating. Dangerous? For you, unadventurous noob, maybe! I finally could get a finger length close to things—close enough to suck your hair and feathers against bark, rockface, and occasional stupid people who do their deer in the lantern light imitation seeing you, they think, flying into them—so why not boys? (Girls thought me a masculine muscle nerd! Their loss.)

While I found victims volunteers to fly near me in middle school, it was that first semester in high school that I perfected my awareness of my wings in space, and theirs, close up, and got boys to understand what I'd learnt. It helped that in high school, finally, the boys were less shy (especially the seniors) and dangling flying with us touching really helped incentivize them. Me, too, actually. I got better. They got better, caught the tandem fever, though we got chewed out by Coach when she saw, before she stopped noticing since we didn't kill ourselves. Our team morale soared. We started winning. I became captain of an otherwise male team. I got my string of ponies (stallions only).

Good times.

Valuable? Actually, valuable?

Well, a dozen years and lots of stupid decisions later, I have a friend, Blue, who is a praetorian training to protect Rainy Days. We encountered her in the sky, and I ended up flying stunts around the guy with her mirroring and challenging my agility, pushing me harder, apparently to test my limits, and to piss me off. I'm too competitive for my own good! She correctly figured out it was me who taught Blue flying tandem; it was the definitive skill that got him a job that was very unlikely for a guy to get.

Rainy Days praised me. She's far better at tandem techniques than me. Still. The Director of Home and the Nine Outer worlds praised me. My Stars!!!

Valuable? Flap yes!

Yet. Even considering when she left with Blue, the stress of me stupidly challenging the most important woman ever shot me out of the sky. I nearly crashed trying to land, then puked so hard, I thought some of my liver came up.

I still would challenge her again, given the chance. [Big words, Bolt! Read the quoted story for the second round. —RS]

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