Evil Editor's Blog, page 370

New Beginning 719

Raven sat under a young aspen in a grove on the Nuba River bank. He was just outside the city of Mora, a place that was not home. He just couldn't bring himself to think of it as home, despite living in Mora's outlands. This cluster of trees seemed more like home to him, and this tranquil, natural existence was the way life was supposed to be.

Peace of heart and mind. He felt it in the cool early autumn breeze, in the lyrical flow of the river, in the rustling of the aspen's golden leaves. The...

Feedback Request

The author of the book featured in Face-Lift 697 would like your opinion of a new plot description. It's in the comments there.

Cartoon 553

Caption: Anon.

Your caption on the next cartoon! Link in sidebar.

Writing Exercise Results . . .

are in the posts below. The task was to write the opening of a novel or short story, incorporating "bad backstory."

Bad Backstory 5

The hood stepped out of the shadows.

He aimed his gun straight at me and said, "payback time, you creep."

Hard to believe that only ten minutes ago I was lying in the bath with this guy's wife. Hell, prior to last weekend, I didn't even know who she was. And ten months before she was born, neither did her parents, though they may have been planning it for some time. As for grandparents and ancestors further back than that — hey, let's just say the mind boggles. I guess that's how it goes with t...

Bad Backstory 4

Detective Harris sat across the table from the suspect. The man looked calm. Too calm. "Do you understand why you've been arrested, Mr. Delgado?"

"It's the child support, isn't it?" he replied. "I'm only a month behind, and I told Ginnie she'd have it by the end of the week. I've got a job, I just had a rough time of it lately, unexpected medical bills, car needed new tires. I'm a stickler about that, ever since the time I drove all the way to New York City and back on bald tires and lived to ...

Bad Backstory 3

He jumped over the wall without even seeming to try. That made me envy him, even more than I already did. I envied him already because of that time back in, oh, 1300 AD or so, when he got the chestnut stallion and I was stuck with the dappled.

The dappled had been my father's horse; he rode it in three wars before it stumbled in the pasture at home and had to retire—until the time the dragon came to terrorize our tiny village, and Jack and I drew straws for the good horse. I lost, but I think ...

Bad Backstory 2

"Come Watson, the game is afoot," Staff Sergeant Amanda Pliggle said in her high-pitched baby doll voice. It wasn't always her voice. She had an accident at three that left her with a single vocal cord stretched tight as a violin string. She stuffed her blouse inside her slacks and smoothed her hair into place just like her mentor, Colonel Sproige, taught her after each of their nooners. She liked the routine and reinstituted it when she was reassigned.

"You and your foot fetish. You know I ha...

Bad Backstory 1

"You're right honey, you're right, you cain't kill me yet," said Ned Bales a/k/a Ned Bates, ex-husband of Lorna Bates, the primped-up chick standing right in front of him, holding a gun and wanting him to sweat with fear and beg her for mercy, yes, beg her, in payback for all her purported suffering after he'd left her high and dry and skipped town a while back, which was, hell, let's face it, a damn sight better than the down and wet and dirty thing she'd been when he'd first met her, pole d...

Saturday Film Series