Flash Fiction: Peckish

      Peckish     “I don’t try to get out of things. I try my best not to get into things.” The weasel had dropped by, as he put it, coming on at first by a peristaltic rippling over a basswood’s roots. The roots canopied water pooling naturally between a fallen trunk and […]

My Blog Week: November 22 to November 28

Posted by ractrose on 29 Nov 2020 in The Latest

All the Latest from Torsade!                             A Word on the Week   Ageing Brats         Back in the mid-sixties, let’s say, two children were born. We’ll name them Luann and Benji. Their parents had an original view of child-rearing: […]

Celebrated (part ten)

Posted by ractrose on 28 Nov 2020 in Fiction, Novels

Novella Celebrated (part ten)                 Murmurs, hopeful and wary. On the safe inside, among private certainties, was this: that these scruples made no difference. He didn’t care about plagiarism…and didn’t care, not from misplaced fellow-feeling, but because he had come to it, from years of debating forced alternatives. […]

Flash Fiction: Fallen Short

Flash Fiction Fallen Short                               Darian thought an attic window black as that could not be empty behind the glass. But no one who’d broken the others could pitch a stone to reach so far. She wondered if this were true. […]

Mathilde Alanic: Shine! (part nineteen)

Mathilde Alanic Shine! (part nineteen)                             Art critic, contributor to Foyer, reader for the Voix de Paris, M. Laffenel had often met the secretary of M. Conan, and showed to her an amiable sympathy. Annie, taken into his confidence, smiled at the […]

Sand (poem)

Posted by ractrose on 25 Nov 2020 in Art, Poems

      Sand   doll-forms at craft shops bald sightless blockheads you should watch tutorials on airbrushing rose    into cheeks think of a doll for every ethnicity the minefield mechanics of noticing shades     of blush Populate a scheme to become a catalogue name with burials in a fold and tab-together box they were smoothed […]

Marjorie Bowen: The Sword Decides! (part one)

Posted by ractrose on 24 Nov 2020 in Fiction, Novels

Marjorie Bowen The Sword Decides! (part one)                         Chapter One The Letter     The turquoise of a summer sky was fading into evening purple. Golden above the Adriatic Sea glittered the first stars, while the olives below changed from silver to grey. The […]

The Totem-Maker: Crafter Becomes Maker (part twelve)

Posted by ractrose on 23 Nov 2020 in Fiction, Novels

The Totem-Maker Chapter Eight Crafter Becomes Maker (part twelve)             Barking of dogs stopped the dance. His own had run ahead, while he wavered, disguised by the bole of a tree, one whose roots clung to rock as though a winter jug of honey, lightly warmed by fire, were poured […]

My Blog Week: November 15 to November 21

Posted by ractrose on 22 Nov 2020 in The Latest

All the Latest from Torsade!                             A Word on the Week   More Flounce to the Ounce         Earlier in the Trump presidency, commentators used to say, “The one thing about Trump is that he’s never boring.” Well. These […]

Celebrated (part nine)

Novella Celebrated (part nine)                       Otherwise, Greenwalter was decently informative; he dropped jargon like IR and ingest, but offended in this no more than most computer guys. He had heard of Voluntary Motion. “I started reading it.” “Great.” Meaning either once and done, or yesterday […]