Sunday Vignettes by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli Someone Ought to Open Up A Promo – Free Range Oyster

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Sunday Vignettes by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it!  For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is:

attract

Someone Ought to Open Up A Promo – Free Range Oyster

Elise Hyatt

A French Polished Murder

Daring Finds Book 2

When Dyce Dare decides to refinish a piano as a gift for her boyfriend, Cas Wolfe, the last thing she expects is to stumble on an old letter that provides a clue to an older murder. She thinks her greatest problems in life are that her friend gave her son a toy motorcycle, and that her son has become unaccountably attached to a neurotic black cat named Pythagoras. She is not prepared for forgotten murder to reach out and threaten her and everything she loves, including her parents’ mystery bookstore.

John Van Stry

Present Tense

Days of Future Past, Part 2

Coyote has a new task for Paul, one that involves him traveling north hundreds of miles over the post-apocalyptic landscape of California, the place that Paul once called home.

Thankfully, Sarah and Heather have both decided to go with him and between Heather’s shooting skills and Sarah’s magical ones; Paul thinks he might just live through whatever scheme Coyote has enlisted him in. If he can live through telling the girls just what Coyote’s got him carrying in his pack now of course.

At least he’s done with Riggs and hopefully won’t have to deal with him ever again, nothing could be worse than that after all!

Pam Uphoff

No Confidence

Wine of the Gods Book 31

A vote of No Confidence has sidelined President Orde until the Special Election either confirms him or elects another candidate. In the mean time, The Interim Ruling Committee seems determined to get them into a war. And Dancer Rael receives the orders she’s always dreaded. Can she do it? Will she do it?

Blake Smith

A Kingdom of Glass

The Garia Cycle

Zara hasn’t seen her family in eleven years, but she doesn’t mind. They sent her to live in a neighboring kingdom when she was small, and she’s adopted her foster parents in their place. She lives the life of an aristocratic Garian girl – riding her horse, shooting her bow, exploring the castle with her friends – and she has nothing to wish for.

Until she’s summoned home, to a prospective marriage she doesn’t want, family she doesn’t remember, and a poisonous royal court that threatens everything she’s ever known. The East Morlans are nothing like Garia, and Zara struggles to find her place among the scheming Morlander aristocrats. Along the way, she makes new friends, meets enemies, and falls in love. But secrets abound in the glittering palace, and Zara must discover who she can trust as she fights for her life and freedom in a fragile, beautiful, kingdom of glass.

Sarah A. Hoyt

Ill Met By Moonlight

gical Shakespeare Book 1

Young Will Shakespeare is a humble school master who arrives home to find his wife and infant daughter, Susannah are missing, kidnapped by the fairies of Arden Woods, the children of Titania and Oberon. His attempts at rescue are interrupted and complicated by a feud over throne of fairyland, between Sylvanus, king regnant, and his younger brother Quicksilver who is both more and less than he seems. Amid treachery, murder, duel and seduction, Shakespeare discovers the enchantment of fairyland, which will always remain with him, for good and ill.

40 thoughts on “Sunday Vignettes by Luke, ‘Nother Mike and Mary Catelli Someone Ought to Open Up A Promo – Free Range Oyster”

  2. Draft2Digital is no longer sending books to CreateSpace, so I’m going around to do it myself.

    Hmmm. . . does anyone have any comments on other POD services? LightningSource? Or any others, relative to CreateSpace?

    Like

  3. “They ought to be luring a new lot,” said Greene. “It’s not like it’s worth their while to let all the facilities go to waste while they gather more.”
    Which comment did not lure him.
    Cal picked his way with care, to avoid echoing footsteps, and down a corridor away from them. One with an abrupt turn. He could hope it more fortunate than his last venture.

    Like

  4. “My that’s an attractive notion,” said Arabella. “Hunt roses that should help us, but we have no notion how.”
    “We will be glad to hear what we should do instead,” said Rosalind. “Go back? Humbly ask to make our peace with Carrigiana?”
    Arabella’s look of terror was shocking in intensity.

    Like

  5. Fred said the the Jinn “I want the power of magnetism!”.

    “So be it” said the Jinn.

    After Fred is buried under tons of iron & steel, the Jinn said “What fools these mortals be”.

    [Note, I know I’m mixing mythologies.] :wink:

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  6. He stood on the palm of her hand, he could drown in her eyes. She smiled at him.
    “This couldn’t work you know.”
    “Yes. Not through lack of trying”
    She gently brushed the top of his head with her lips.
    “A pity they were right about opposites.”

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  7. “What the hell is going on out there?”
    “The mob is trying to crash the gates. They are demanding that we release the data on where the meteors are going to fall next.”
    “We don’t have that data! I wish we did, but you can’t predict that.”
    “They think you can. The papers took your statement about the attractors and ran with it.”
    “Damn it, all I said was that the pattern of strikes conformed to a standard distribution. That doesn’t mean I know where the next one will come down!”
    “I think you better go out and explain that to them. Try to use small words.”

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  8. “You’re never going to attract a girl, looking like that” JIm’s mother said.
    “Maybe I don’t care about attracting girls”
    “Someday you may, and you won’t be ready then, if you don’t take care now.”
    “Don’t think I ever will care.”
    “Don’t be too sure about that. Go clean up.”.

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  9. The scout followed the prints of the tank through the grass of the huge plot of land. When he caught up to it in a copse of young trees, he handed the commander the missive from Command about using cover and concealment to avoid drawing the eyes of hostile forces.

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  10. Five, six times, Williams fired through the door. Nothing good would be knocking at this hour, and he couldn’t afford chances. Reloading, he pushed open the safe house door to see two men, wearing dark suits, white shirts, skinny ties. In the hand of one was a pamphlet, a tract.

    If that ain’t fifty on the button, Judge Posner ain’t a moron.

    Like

  11. Samson turned away from his wife’s grave. “Its time to move on, love.” He said. “The world holds no attractions for me any more.”

    No, Earth could no longer hold him. With trembling hands, he pulled the package from his pocket. “Maybe on Novi Svet, I can find purpose again.

    50!

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  12. I spied Tucker time I stepped into the dinning car. He didn’t pay me no mind, ‘cause old gray darkies don’t attract no attention from white folk. That suited me just fine. Go on with your bragging, I thought. we’ll settle up later. ‘Spect I’ll have all your attention then.

    Like

  13. He glanced at the program. The next paper was on the value of virtue signaling in finding a mate. Shuddering, he headed for the bar in hopes of finding someone who didn’t think that being a victim was attractive. Surely not everyone was here for the conference.

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      1. Take it from me. Never try to pick up bar staff. Not worth the aggravation on both parties part.

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  14. I notice, in your Ill Met By Moonlight post, that it’s a
    “gical Shakespeare Book 1”, to which I must ask “Ma, who’s making those eyes at me?”

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  15. “Morons!” yelled Sergeant Romanov. “Do not bunch up behind that tank! Spread out!” The new draftees, caught between their fear of the scattered incoming fire and fear of Sergeant Romanov, hesitated. Romanov shook his head in disgust. “I told you, all tanks do for you is attract fire! Now move!”

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    1. “A Moving foxhole attracts attention.” Source: probably every infantry NCO since the day after the Battle of Cambrai.

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      1. Actually I found the hardest part of this was writing Sgt. Romanov uttering no cursage while dealing with those draftees, this being a family blog commentariat. I literally cannot imagine a combat NCO with so saintly a vocabulary.

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  17. “Orbit Decaying,” announced the navicomp.

    “Tell me something I don’t know,” snarled Melelk.

    He could feel the shuttle crabbing as the traces of atmosphere began gently pushing on the tail; first on one side, and then the other.

    “Got to stop that damn oscillation or I’ll lose it,” he muttered.

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  18. “An aphrodisiac, Charlie? That actually works? You know it will be sought after.. and probably banned or restricted.”
    “Really, Tom, I’m hoping for banned.”
    “When the bloody blue blazes did you get morals or ethics?”
    “Feh. The forbidden commands a better price. Any damn fool knows that– Hi Cheryl!” *Spritz*

    Like

  19. It is very seldom that the world changes completely in an instant; it is even rarer for it to do so twice in less than a minute. But it happened that day.

    The first change occurred when Simon noticed, in the middle of sitting at his lab console and dully flicking the EM recursive field generator on and off while listening in jealous anguish to his coworker Tania blubbering about her boyfriend’s infidelity, that the nonmagnetic test weights in the vacuum chamber were showing distinct vector torsion changes as they snapped towards the active field and then away. The on-site cameras would later record that activity as the first example of successful artificial gravity generation in human history.

    The second change occurred when Simon and Tania, carried away by the overjoyed realization of what had happened, found themselves locked in an embrace that, like EM force translating into gravity on some quantum level, rapidly became something far more profound than either had expected. That part of what the on-site cameras recorded turned into evidence against them at a misconduct hearing, and later became a running joke at the university. But neither regretted it.

    They knew which epiphany that day had been the important one.

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      1. I had a half a d@mn I was going to give, but decided instead to use it to shim the short leg on the d@mn desk.

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      2. Much obliged. I confess I am much of the school of writing practiced by James Michener, who famously admitted, “In six pages I can’t even say ‘Hello’.”

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  20. The lantern swung on a pole at the bow of the dinghy. A small pile of fish sat in a basket behind the old fisherman.
    He’d been fishing like this for years, despite the superstitions. Old wives tales!
    The scaled hand reaching over the hull behind him would prove otherwise.

    50 spot on!

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  21. Skimming quickly through the post to get to the vignettes in the comments, what should attract the reader’s eye but a fifth new Wine book in one day. Oh Frabjous Day!

    Started On the Run over lunch. I love the idea of “laser hair growth” by magic! They will get rich. You know there’s only one thing men would want more than longer hair…

    Like

  22. It was bad enough his hearing loss had occasionally manifested as hilarious mondegreens; but somehow it had begun short circuiting his vision and reading abilities too. Rather than “laser hair growth”, he had perceived it as “laissez faire growth”
    His girlfriend was not going to be attracted to the results.

    Like

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