M.S. Edwards's Blog, page 3

coffee and contemplation

In the great words of Hopper (RIP), mornings are, indeed, for coffee and contemplation. But so is summer break. Which is why I’m baaaack, speaking in incomplete sentences and waxing stream of consciousness on y’all as I try to make sense of my forward progress.

It’s now been a year and change since I wrote, published and got on the mini hype train that was No Great Matter. Since then, I’ve garnered 11 5-star Amazon reviews, a book signing at the local Barnes and Noble that was attended mostly...

the breaking point

I was talking to my daughter the other day and she asked me how I kept my shit together (only she didn’t say “shit” because she still respects me as an authority figure not to swear in front of me). And I paused, pondered, and decided to burden her with my rather bleak outlook on life: I told her that I’d made the deliberate decision to surrender emotion.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not admitting to being a sociopath. All I’m saying is that there comes a certain point in life when caring too...

the epic fail and a little more of Magnus

NaNoWriMo is not happening for me this year.

Irony, right? The writer is not writing.

And is it bad that the main reason for my non-participation is the bandwagon-y aspect of it as it sweeps the nation – err, the workplace? Everyone in my social circle, it seems, is trying their hand at writing the requisite 50K words this month, and in true neurotic, petty, insular Garbo-esque fashion, I simply want to be alone.

I don’t want to share writing tips or plot points or character motivations. I do...

#31 – slice

So I went back and checked my entry about Inktober and realized I’d fallen off the wagon several entries ago. I’d said I was going to do a fic a day but that all of them would string together like pearls on a single strand. Sadly, due to indecision, lack of inspiration and/or life, I ended up writing multiple strands of multiple stories, not just a single, cohesive one. And to top it all off, I even stole from myself, used my own Wayback Machine and used some old fics/fanfics from the aughts...

#30 – jolt

What is taste? What is good taste? What is bad taste?

Ferdinand stared off into the middle distance. He had twenty minutes to fill two handwritten pages. Handwritten. Travesty. Who wrote things down by hand anymore? But Harrison was a fossil and it was her English class he’d been unlucky enough to get assigned to, so Sustained Silent Writing it was. Every day. Five days of the school week. Unless he was absent, which was rarely to never since his mother insisted that public school was the bes...

#29 – double

the trysting place

Characters:
Ian the restless
Gino the helpless
Billy the hopeless
Sara the brainless
Simone

~act one~
A deserted drive-in movie theatre. It is dusk. Gloom is settling in and a brisk wind stirs up dead autumn leaves on the ground. A battered ’67 Mustang slides in almost apologetically, loathe to disturb the solitude of the place. In the car are GINO, SARA and IAN. Car windows are rolled down and the cloying smell of alcohol wafts from the backseat where GINO and SARA sit. I...

#28 – gift

The scene is an abandoned warehouse with two levels. Large windows draped with white sheets allow for some light to stream through. Crates and boxes are haphazardly strewn about. Paints, brushes, sculpting clay and Crayolas litter the floor. The dominating feature is a canvas on the second floor. It is a study in grey and black, vague outlines of people half-heartedly sketched in. As the curtain rises, the sun has just set and IAN is smoking, sitting on a crate at center stage and ashing onto...

#27 – thunder

She says my name softly into the phone. I suppose I’d let the pause go for longer than was acceptable. Before I can formulate an appropriately nonchalant response, her tone goes somber and she asks me the dreaded questions: Where have I been? Why haven’t I contacted her? Did she do something wrong?

She sounds sincerely concerned. Do I confess? Do I tell her that I’d called her numerous times, but only when I knew she wouldn’t be home? Do I tell her I miss her so much that the sound of her voi...

#26 – stretch

Charles Fletcher, Esquire, was not such due to any noble blood running through his veins or to any appreciable prowess as a knight. To hear him tell it, Charles Fletcher earned his title by the sweat of his brow, serving his queen and liege by tilling the land and turning the fruits of his labor into profit that filled Her Majesty’s coffers. Never mind that the fruits of his labor tended to fall under suspicious scrutiny – How did Fletcher manage to produce wheat and sundry vegetables out of...

#25 – prickly

Noah Swift refused to acknowledge that his prickly nature was what had gotten them into the mess in the first place. He also refused to admit that there wouldn’t have even been a mess to get into had he listened to her. And he certainly wouldn’t be caught dead agreeing with the assessment that they were currently in over their head.

He was the most infuriatingly stubborn person Coop had ever encountered. And that was counting humans and suprahumans alike.

She sighed and the glowy thing in her...