[Guest Post] – A Tasty Surprise

Thanks to Cyndera for the following guest post/short story, “A Tasty Surprise”.  A little drama that’s close to home for me…and I’ll get him next time!  (Just keep reading, and pay me no mind here–it’ll all make sense in a minute, I promise.)  ~Timewalkerauthor

All stories posted in this capacity may also be found under the “Stories” heading in the menu. Thanks for reading!
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I came home from work around nine in the evening, plumb tuckered. It was a hard day, as usual, but you gotta do what you gotta do to make a livin’, right? In these parts, it ain’t easy. You gotta be careful wherever you go. “West Virginia, Wild and Wonderful” my rump! I could do without the “Wild”, believe me. “Wild” around here equals snakes and other fellows you don’t want to run into. I had a few close ones in my time … scared the heck out of me.

Well, let me tell you, the last few days were even less fun than usual. It had been raining like crazy, and I could virtually feel webbings grow in-between my toes. Might even have been better at this point than feet, really: the puddles around my house and work kept getting bigger and bigger. Noah had the right idea back then, let me tell you … an arc would have been very convenient at times.

When I got home, I shook the water off my feet and went to see if there was any food. I had just recently moved to a new place, and so far I was pleased: Lots of bites laying around here and there. I really couldn’t complain. So I looked around, as usual, when suddenly one of these huge animals crossed my path that you see roaming everywhere, behaving as if they owned every place you go to. There were three that had chosen my place as their dwelling: this particular one, the biggest and tallest of them, showed up every now and then, sometimes with and sometimes without the other ones —smaller, young ones, maybe. The big one, he can be loud at times (at least I am guessing it’s a he … my knowledge about these critters is quite limited), but the the smaller ones can really give you a headache. They stomp, and scream, and sometimes they get into what looks like fights. Usually, the big one separates them, and growls at them, and then there’s peace for a few minutes.

I am usually good about avoiding dangerous creatures, but earlier today I wasn’t in my best form. I was hungry, hadn’t eaten all day because of some work that needed to get done down at the community center, just by the river, and so I did not pay much attention. Imagine my surprise when suddenly a HUGE foot stood in front of me. I swerved to the right and narrowly avoided being crushed. These things really needed to be restraint somehow.

Look, I have no idea if these things are intelligent or not, but I gave a friendly not and made my way past the giant. I think he said something, but it was all gibberish to me, so I didn’t pay much attention. I found some crumbs in the kitchen and returned back to my place.

While eating, I heard more footsteps, and from the sound of it, it was the younglings. Oh, great, here went my peaceful evening. Somebody should tell these creatures that some of us are working hard every day and deserve some quiet-time. To my surprise though, the giant didn’t yell. He communicated with them in a quiet tone. Well, good for them. I really hate to complain about neighbors. Only calls for trouble, you know?

Later that evening, I left my place again only to find a strange contraption in one of the corners of the room. I looked at it; I had never seen anything like it before. It didn’t really matter though, because in the middle of it was a glorious piece of cheese topped with peanut butter. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten cheese and peanut butter! I got closer and noticed that the ground of the little contraption was a little sticky. I tested it carefully: One foot, then another, then the third and fourth. Granted, it was a bit hard to walk, but I could reach the cheese with only two more steps. Holding it carefully in my mouth, I made my way back off the sticky stuff, went home again and had a great midnight dinner.

Makes you wonder though … no way those creatures had put it there on purpose, but hey, who cares, right? Food is food. I just hope there’s more tomorrow!

[Guest Post] | (Very) Short Story: Sincerely Yours, …

Note:  As I’ve mentioned in my last few posts, I’ve begun trying my hand at using writing prompts for some of my short stories.  Now, my co-contributor on the site, Cyndera, has decided to join the fun, opening with this guest post, “Sincerely Yours, …”  My usual habit is to post the prompt that was used, but in this instance, to do so would be to give away the punchline of the story, so you’ll have to wait!  Thanks to Cyndera for this contribution…her own blog is currently under revision, but stick around and check it out later–great things are in the works!  ~Timewalkerauthor.

All stories posted in this capacity may also be found under the “Stories” heading in the menu. Thanks for reading!

You know that there’s something wrong with the government reading your emails. But do you know what to think when they respond to an email? Even more, to an email that wasn’t even sent to them? That’s right: You don’t. That was exactly my problem. But let me start from the beginning.

It was a nice and pleasant Sunday. Nothing much was going on, I was sitting at my favorite coffee shop. Reading, writing, the usual. The weather was nice, not too hot, not too cold. As I said, a very pleasant day. And, as it usually goes, I also wrote some emails. Nothing special, some words to friends and family and minor business stuff. Now, here I have to say that I usually proof-read my emails before I sent them. You really don’t want to embarrass yourself by having a typo. I don’t care what today’s kids and teens say: For me, writing is still something that should be taken seriously, especially if you have time to read it over before sending. What’s making things even worse these days is the auto-correct function. You’ve seen the hilarious auto-corrects on cell phones, so I don’t have to tell you what I am talking about. The latest installment was an email I received from a friend. He couldn’t sleep and so decided to write a little and send the story to me. His email began with “I couldn’t go to sleep write away”. I hope you are getting the humor here.

But anyway, you really want to try and eliminate mistakes before sending an email, because if you are like me, you’ll discover the mistake a split-second after you hit “send”. Fortunately, Google came to the rescue here and added an “undo” feature for emails, meaning you can grab your rope and lasso that email back in before it gets out into the big, wide world known as the internet. Believe me when I say that this feature has saved my butt more than once. So there I was, sipping my coffee and lazily browsing when I heard the little ping indicating a new email. I went over to gmail and saw an email titled “Re: Your application with company XY.” I was intrigued. After all, it was Sunday and usually not even very, very desperate companies react to applications on a Sunday. I opened the email and saw my original text, only that a part of one sentence was underlined in red. Huh? Below the email was a comment, also in red.

“Dear Sender, We are writing to you to inform you about the grammatical error you made in your email. This is a new service that we have recently implemented to point out mistakes like this so you may be able to rectify the mistake somehow. It has recently been decided that, because we intercept and store every email, we should give back to the citizens of this country by helping them to improve their writing. Please be aware that this service is only available to U.S. citizens within the United States right now. We are working hard to offer this service globally very soon but, as you know, negotiations have been really tough. We hope that you will find this service useful. Sincerely Yours, NSA.”

Guest Post: Villains are heroes, too! Or are they …

The other day I came across a tweet on Tom Hiddleston’s Twitter page that said “Tom Hiddleston Fans Attempt To Get A Loki Solo Film With Petition“. It stood out to me because just last weekend, I was discussing the idea of “herofying” the villain of a story, in other words make him the protagonist and tell a story from the bad guy’s point (1st person).

It sounded pretty intriguing, especially because the story we were talking about was a stalking event that my friend wanted to write about. She toyed with the idea to tell the story from the victim’s as well as the police officer’s perspective. Enthusiastically, I suggested that she could also write from the stalker’s perspective. Well, I kind of opened a can of worms when I said that, because soon after we sat by a lake, discussing the implications of making the bad guy the protagonist of a story. We also got sunburned. Go figure.

Villains, at least in good books and movies (although that is subjective, too, of course), tend to be interesting, well-developed characters. Just because of the tweet mentioned above, let’s take Loki, for example (Thor/The Avengers). In general, he is evil, vengeful, insincere and only has his own agenda in mind. At the same, he is also a deeply troubled character that is apparently searching for a purpose, and for an answer to the question “Why am I here?” (Ha, don’t we all!) So that would make for a pretty good story, told from the perspective of the bad guy, right?

When I was thinking about this a few days later, I recalled a few times when I actually developed sort of a crush on the villain of a movie or book. I have never really thought about that, mainly because I assumed that it was just the actor looking cute. But while that may be true, after my lake-conversation, I think there’s more to that.

Villains are designed to evoke a few different feelings in us:

First, they exist to give the viewer/reader a sense of right and wrong. That’s a no-brainer.

Second, they allow us to we can safely experience actions that would have serious consequences in real life. We are there when the villain plots and plans, acts and semi-succeeds (until he is defeated, of course). Everyone of us has a bad side, it’s what makes us human. But through the villain, we can dive into that dark side without having to fear any consequences.

Third, a villain personifies characteristics that attract the observer. We can safely dream of the (misguided) power, strength and determination that they exhibit. That does not mean that in real life we are attracted to these kinds of people; I don’t think I would ever want to associate with real villains aka criminals.

No matter how much we love the villain, if the character is developed properly, on some level we will always hate to love the villain.

So, what if we made the villain the protagonist? How hard would it be to tell the story from their perspective and keep them from becoming too likable, which would jeopardize their villain status?

It is easy to identify myself with my hero when I write. I assign qualities that are in line with my values. I aim to give the character depth and explain his/her actions so that the reader fully understands the motives that drives the protagonist. Developing a villain is harder: I give the character traits that are undesirable and that I despise. But because I can’t identify myself with these traits, I can’t fully explain the actions of my bad guys. I just can’t get my brain to think that way. How am I supposed to know what goes on in a stalker’s mind, or in the mind of a super-villain that wants to take over the earth? I can’t.

But when the villain becomes the protagonist, can his or her actions still be a mystery to the reader? We experience them but we don’t understand the motives if the creator/writer can’t explain them. Once a villain becomes so transparent that the reader starts to fully understand, is he/she still a villain, or would that make the character the hero? Would the story then still be told from the villain’s point of view, or would we have created a new hero that we accompany on this/her journey?