Christine E. Ray's Blog, page 18
January 18, 2024
NPR’s Books We Love: Take What You Need – Georgiann Carlson
holding out her wrist.
He brushed the hair away from her neck
and smiled. “Perhaps here?”
She stepped forward.
He leaned in and licked her neck,
his saliva an anesthetic
to dull the pain of his fangs
pricking her skin.
When he had had his fill, he leaned
back, and she picked up her book and
began to read.
He felt sated. She felt bored, but
continued to read, while she waited.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, suddenly.
“Finally,” she muttered, sliding her bookmark
between the pages she was reading.
“What did you do to me?” he gasped,
clawing at his throat.”
“I killed you,” she said. “My blood is...
well, it’s kind of special. There’s something
in it that vampires can’t tolerate. So, I became
a Vampire Slayer. Not a slayer, exactly, I mean
I’m not like Buffy, or anything, but the end result is
the same. It’s pretty fast acting, so you shouldn’t
suffer for long,” she said, turning the page
“But why?” he whispered.
“You guys kill people all the time,” she said.
“And?” he asked, weakly.
“That’s why I did it.”
“Humans kill more people that we do.”
“Hmmm. That’s true,” she said, softly.
“So I’m guessing you want the antidote then?”
He nodded.
She took a small vial out of her pocket and
slowly dribbled it into his mouth.
The minute he felt better he lunged for her
and hardly felt the wooden stake slide into
his heart.
“See, that’s the problem with you guys,” she
snapped. "You just can’t be trusted.”
He was dead, but she opened the drapes
just for good measure, and let him burn
up in the sunlight. Then she pulled a plastic
bag of rose petals out of her bag and sprinkled
them over his ashes, while looking up the name
of the next vamp in line.
Photo: cottonbro studio, Pexels
Feminist, Vegetarian, Bookaholic , Animal lover, Writer, Artist, Chicago native, and lover of the pigeons who live there. Coo. You can read more of my writing at Rethinking Life
The Bell Jar – Christine E. Ray
the heart
of my madness
beats wildly
beneath polished glass
its feathered limbs
twisting
turning
frantically
a living thing
fighting desperately
to be free
it is both monstrous
and
achingly beautiful
as it contorts
onyx and plum
catching the light
before it shifts
midnight and crimson
it is pitiable
as it throws itself
again and again
against curved walls
I struggle
with deep longing
to release it
cradle it in my arms
croon a lullaby
but like all feral things
sooner or later
it will turn on me
bite me viciously
on my breast
until I bleed
impale me with
razor-sharp talons
and not release me
until long after
it has taken flight
© 2019 Christine E. Ray – All Rights Reserved
Image Courtesy of Pinterest | feathered artwork by Kate McGwire
Daily Creativity Prompt: Take What You Need
Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.
There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.
How to Submit
Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.
“Leah has settled into a worldly life in New York City when she learns that her estranged stepmother, Jean, has died in their hometown. Jean had an accident while welding steel sculptures in her living room and bequeathed her oeuvre to Leah. Take What You Need alternates between Leah’s Trump flag-lined journey home to the same insular slice of the Rust Belt where Idra Novey herself was raised, and Jean’s path to belatedly producing outsider art. The result is an odd and beautiful novel about the ineffable impulse to make art, wedged into an exploration of what happens to towns and people left behind.”
— Kristen Martin, book critic
January 17, 2024
Daily Creativity Prompt: Cassandra in Reverse
Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.
There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.
How to Submit
Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.
“This book both touched me and taught me about autism. The title character is autistic (as is the author, who prefers that terminology) and remembers – and conveys – her past in painstaking detail. This ability, though, comes in handy when Cassandra discovers she can go back in time and change that past. Of course, her first efforts are inept. But if you stay in Cassandra’s world, I imagine you, like me, will end up rooting for her – and remembering her long after you’ve finished reading.”
— Emiko Tamagawa, senior producer, Here & Now
January 16, 2024
Daily Creativity Prompt: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.
There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.
How to Submit
Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.
“Emily Wilde – an anti-social, curmudgeonly Cambridge professor – is an expert in the study of faeries. This book is her journal, complete with faerie-lore-filled footnotes, on her northern research journey to study the fae. Her observation takes a turn when she gets far too involved in the world of the fae and begins chronicling her increasingly dangerous adventures, not just her research. Throw in a handsome, and mysterious, academic rival, Wendell Bambleby, who shows up uninvited to join the expedition, and you get an incredibly fun journey through fae lands and dark magic.”
— Anika Steffen, chief employment counsel
January 15, 2024
NPR’s Books We Love: Hestia Strikes a Match – Rachael Z. Ikins
Pavement. Thunder walks skyburst jingling.
Bounces off. Without opposable thumbs,
ceramic nest, socks, decorated tents for a gnat
on the lamp, birds weave. I hesitate, my hand
powers life. The salt grows heavy.
Superstition, that lucky dog, the car in odd places
unable to toss years of darkness. Why do you save
old calendars? Reveal truth’s deep silence,
electricity, God. Wild ghost lies, power outage
tucks us back to caves. Where a monster lurks
to tear you apart for some desperate glory.
You don’t need someone to rip you apart
again, all those salt-heavy
years of building with bloodstained fingers.
A baby crying itself out creates no trust,
after it all,
half of nothing shared
is everything.
Photo by Maan Limburg on Unsplash
Rachael Z. Ikins followed her pen into the forest as a child. As with Gretel in the Grimm Brothers’ tale, a wicked witch forced her to reroute through valleys so dark she doubted the existence of the sun at times. A fabulous wizard held her heart in his hand. They fell in love. He urged her to release poetry from her soul. She lost everything before she finally understood her truth: write like a motherfucker, write or die. For poetry was the constant through all storms, the beloved she refused to relinquish. She won some prizes, published in journals and then books. When last seen, Ikins was feeding pickled jalapeños to a large dragon perched on the roof of her house—a dragon who bestowed her name upon Ikins’s cat. Sister souls of fire and passion.
NPR’s Books We Love: Ink Blood Sister Scribe – Georgiann Carlson
to get one of her tattoos
her appointment book was always full
and the only reason
for a cancellation
was death
she was known as a Sister
as a Scribe
she inked the history
of women on the bodies
of those who were living it
so the truth would never be lost
stolen by men
and erased by governments
she used bright bloody red ink
to show how women have been bled out
by never ending violence
by fear
lack of freedom
evil governments
and a complete lack of power
her art was alive
and it was LOUD
women wore it proudly
never covering it up
they were living herstory
living truth
and they were not afraid
Photo: Pixabay
Feminist, Vegetarian, Bookaholic , Animal lover, Writer, Artist, Chicago native, and lover of the pigeons who live there. Coo. You can read more of my writing at Rethinking Life
Daily Creativity Prompt: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It
Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.
There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.
How to Submit
Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.
“Greg Marshall grew up with a limp, thinking it was “tight tendons,” only to find out – well into adulthood – that it was actually cerebral palsy and that his high school secretary knew before he did. While Leg is a memoir about Marshall’s complicated relationship with his most interesting limb, the leg has a lot of competition for top billing among the troop of brash, loud siblings, a dad with ALS and a mother who makes it her decades-long mission to be a star cancer patient. Leg has everything you want in a memoir: plenty of body humor, a little bit of smut, family drama and tons of personality.”
— Samantha Balaban, producer, Weekend Edition
January 14, 2024
NPR’s Books We Love: Some Desperate Glory – Lynn White
it all depends
on which side you’re on,
on whose story is most powerful
in the desperate search for glory.
Hero or victim,
it all depends
on where you come from,
on whose story is most glorious,
on who you believe,
on which side you’re on.
Heroes, victims and villains.
Heroes are as fleeting
as a glorious moment.
Villains last longer.
in posthumous glory
Victims last forever
searching desperately for glory.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Light Journal and So It Goes. Find Lynn at Poetry – Lynn White and Facebook.
NPR’s Books We Love: Ink Blood Sister Scribe – Rachael Z. Ikins
just another meat ball that rolled off the counter
to die slow, dying of rot, rutabagas’ poison purpling.
To be pored over, in no particular order, in a treehouse where women go.
Melancholy dog cheerful, a book of naked women stuffed under His shirt.
Potatoes and ultrasound snapshots, a fetus with no skull, leaking
sweetens her lips. A murder of rutabagas, squinting eyes of the throttled
cigarette cocked on one ear, bubble gum’s sticky left hand
tied behind Her back to force Her to write right, walk the right path.
A treehouse- freestyle unicyclist, magician of pornography in drag.
Stuffed under His shirt to be pored over in no particular order, God.
And superglue. God assembled the human, of green fanned bills.
Green fan spreads on the table with spare parts.
Kicked under the table, shut up, cheerful and angry,
a meatball rolls off the counter.
Lucky dog.
Photo by The Royal Danish Library on Unsplash
Rachael Z. Ikins followed her pen into the forest as a child. As with Gretel in the Grimm Brothers’ tale, a wicked witch forced her to reroute through valleys so dark she doubted the existence of the sun at times. A fabulous wizard held her heart in his hand. They fell in love. He urged her to release poetry from her soul. She lost everything before she finally understood her truth: write like a motherfucker, write or die. For poetry was the constant through all storms, the beloved she refused to relinquish. She won some prizes, published in journals and then books. When last seen, Ikins was feeding pickled jalapeños to a large dragon perched on the roof of her house—a dragon who bestowed her name upon Ikins’s cat. Sister souls of fire and passion.
