Flash Fic Challenge: Let Slip the Dogs of War

 Let Slip the Dogs of War

"Have they taken the bait?" Tam asked, eir hands racing over the controls of the Cave Canem.

Lucille checked the various displays, and grinned viciously. "Yep, they're all locked on and chasing us. Let's go!"

Tam chuckled, and eir finger stabbed down, sending the little spaceship diving towards a cloud of dust, as if trying to lose its chasers. "Put the umbrellas up in three .... two ... one..."

Lucille sent the pre-programmed release code with a flick of her eyes, and the secondary bow shields unfurled, simultaneously protecting the ship from incoming particles and reducing the ship's ability to sense what was ahead of it.

That was ok, they knew what was waiting, even if their pursuers did not. The Cave Canem danced and twisted, then burst out of the far side of the cloud. Here another cloud, made of massive warships, waited in stealth mode.

Lucille tipped her head to nudge the comms on. "Ready or not," she sing-songed, "here they come."

Lights on the side of every waiting ship flickered twice in acknowledgement, and then steadied again. Tam sent them skittering out of the way, and then slammed on their own stealth mode.

The pursuing ships plunged free of the cloud, dropped their umbrellas, and found themselves in a storm of weapons-fire.

The battle didn't last long. Lucille watched it on the displays, offering Tam a running commentary. "Mastiff got two, but she's taken a beating.... One's trying to escape, but Bloodhound's on it.... Terrier got the last one," she finished, turning her wheelchair colours into victorious blue and gold flames. "That's that set of wolves dealt with. They won't hurt anyone else."

"Good," Tam said, with a soft viciousness that matched Lucille's own. "Very, very, good."

Their opponents should never, Lucille thought, have underestimated harmless looking little old ships if they wanted to survive. Or, at the very least, paid attention to the ship's name.

Cave Canem. Beware of the Dog!

Cover Reveal for A Love Less Travelled By

 When star-crossed lovers Maria and George thought they had lost everything, they called on the goddess of love for help. She answered. Whisked away from their feuding families, and fostered by Professor Smith of Olson College (by some better known as Hephaestus), they have a chance to get things right this time: right names, right genders, right friends. But only if they can stop their past from haunting them.

 

A Love Less Travelled By features:

Established relationships 

Monster-friendship 

Ace rep 

Assorted disabled characters 

T4T relationship 

Quiet, cozy, fantasy 

Small stakes 

Older characters 

QPP

 

[ID: A woman carrying a green umbrella walks away down a leafy lane towards a brightly lit archway. Text reads: A Love Less Travelled By, A Craftsman's Tale, E.H. Timms]

Cover designed by Getcovers

A Love Less Travelled By will be out on the 1st of September 2023

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/194022950-a-love-less-travelled-by

Preorder links:

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-love-less-travelled-by-e-h-timms/1143729756

iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6450846965 

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/Search?Query=9798215923191

Flash Fic Challenge: Elephants Never Forget

 Elephants Never Forget

Once upon a time and a half (it was made by a trade union member, O Best Beloved), there was a Plastic Elephant. Elephants never forget (that is a thing to remember, O Best Beloved) and this one had so much in his memory that he remembered ancient elephants and how they were powerful and strong and dependable. He was sure that his small plastic self would never live up to those shape-ancestors, and it made him sad.

The Plastic Elephant lived at the broadcasting house of a radio station that played mostly music. He was called their mascot and sat every day on the desk beside the computer that they stored records on.

There was always and ever more music to keep on hand, however, and one day the Radio People sighed and wished that there computer had more memory.

The Plastic Elephant was filled with delight, for (did you remember that elephants never forget, O Best Beloved) his own memory was endless and now he could share it with the Radio People who gave him a home. Here was the answer to his dreams. Here, he too could be powerful and strong and dependable, like his shape-ancestors. He bent, and thrust his trunk into the right computer socket, and behold, the computer now had all the memory it needed.

And that, O Best Beloved, is why all wise people keep a Plastic Elephant beside their computer, so that they too will never run out of memory.

New Book! A Love Less Travelled By

 My latest book, A Love Less Travelled By (Previously known as Catch the World's Desire) will be out 1st Sept 2023! Preorders open at B&N, Kobo, and iBooks.

When star-crossed lovers Maria and George thought they had lost everything, they called on the goddess of love for help. She answered. Whisked away from their feuding families, and fostered by Professor Smith of Olson College, they have a chance to get things right this time: right names, right genders, right friends. But only if they can stop their past from haunting them.

 

This is a story of "Romeo and Juliet: the Aftermath" featuring: 

 Established relationships 

Monster-friendship 

Ace rep 

Assorted disabled characters 

T4T relationship 

Quiet, cozy, fantasy 

Small stakes 

Older characters 

QPP

Preorders:

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-love-less-travelled-by-e-h-timms/1143729756

iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6450846965 

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/Search?Query=9798215923191

Flash Fic Challenge: Daisy Chain

 Daisy Chain

From the outside, the old nightclub looked bare and empty. Nothing was there except dust and a few mushrooms growing up through the damp floorboards. If anyone had stepped inside, however, and crossed the line of the faerie ring, it would have been a different matter.

On the Faerie side of the portal, the nightclub was thriving, full of light and music and dancers.

Glittering beams bounced over wings and horns, hooves and hands and clothing in every style and colour imaginable. Up on the main stage two fiddlers faced each other, and bowed, before tucking their violins under their chins and lifting their bows, each playing in turn for the attention of the room.

The first one, moon-pale and willow-slender, held a fiddle of black wood strung with silver. They drew from it richly complex music that threw interweaving patterns dancing across the walls and sank deep into every heart a memory of beauty, power, and wonder.

The second one, sun-bright and oak-sturdy, held a fiddle of warm red wood strung with gold. When they swept their bow across those strings, they drew from them a simple tune, fast and joyful. The tune danced and turned, twisting back on itself, braiding itself from the simple melody into something as complex as the first, drawing rainbows and celtic knots to twine on the walls and offering a memory of joy and peace to both counter and compliment the first. The second fiddler wasn't finished, however, because the now complex tune unbraided itself under their flying fingers and become once more a song, pleading:

For you'll look sweet, upon the seat,

of a bicycle made for two!

Flash Fic Challenge: Grind Their Bones

 Grind Their Bones

It all started when my Walkman broke. It helps me get through the day. It was mid-morning, and I was at work when it happened, though, so there wasn't anything I could do.

At first, I didn't notice anything was wrong. The tapes I've got for it are old and a bit crackly anyway, so the increased static just sounded like wear and tear. The music faded out, but there was still sound there, still singing voices.

There were words there, too. Not quite distinct enough to make out, rising and falling in numbing repetition. As numbing, to be fair, as the data entry I was working on. I tried to focus on the data, of course. Make sure it got in the right column. The Walkman was just background noise.

Then one of the voices said my name. I definitely didn't have any tapes with my name in them, so that got my attention.

I couldn't make out most of the words. Something about soon, and a grind, and food.

I checked my latest entry, corrected it, and moved on to the next one, with a subtle glance at my watch. Nearly lunch-break. And yes, I quite agreed, the work was a grind, but I'd get to eat soon enough. At least I wasn't on an assembly line and could sit down.

Still hope, muttered the dying Walkman. Grind her down further.

I flicked a look along the row of workers, trying to see who was talking, and nudged the headphones off one ear. No, the words were definitely coming from the Walkman, not from reality. I slid the headphones back on and let my mind drift a little. It brought more of the speech (if that's what it was) into focus.

Not ready to eat yet, they murmured. Not enough despair.

I grimaced silently. True. I never had been one to despair, though this sort of job was enough to drive anyone to it. Deadly monotonous, never enough pay, always hungry, always tired, never done with the never-ending data.

The screen flickered, and just for a moment, it reflected something else, somewhere else. Some kind of factory, some ghostly thing full of writing tentacles tending it, boxing up snacks that looked like me, like my work-colleagues.

An assembly line formed from dullness and despair, grinding slowly away until we were all in the desired form.

I leaned forward and wiped the screen, then reached for the next piece of work. Incomprehensible beings focused on grinding us all down, and extracting everything they could? That was just capitalism personified. 

Old news, really.

In other news, it was Thursday.

Flash Fic Challenge: An Unusual Body

 An Unusual Body

It wasn't the first time I'd been called to a newly-unearthed body, but it was the first time that body had been the body of a car. A Model-T Ford, to be precise. Suffice to say, when the prison work farm called me to say they had found a body in one of their fields, a car was not what I expected.

Still, a body is a body, so I went to have a look.

It was in one of their newer fields, currently half ploughed - the plough was sitting off to the side with a piece of scrap metal wrapped around the blade - and now with a car sized hole in the middle of it. The car was in remarkably good shape for having been buried so long.

If it had in fact been buried so long. It was the first of April, after all.