Michael S. Atkinson's Blog, page 47

Quantum of Solace: a Review

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Did I fire five shots, or six?  ….no, wait, that’s not actually what I know you’re thinking. What you’re thinking is, “Michael. Quantum of Solace has been around for five years. Why are you reviewing it now?”

A very good question! The answer is a bit complicated, so I will explain. I never went to see Quantum of Solace in 2008, primarily because I was too busy watching Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and most especially The Dark Knight.  A secondary reason is that I was always a fan of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond; I loved Goldeneye, and fairly enjoyed Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World Is Not Enough. (Let us not speak of Die Another Day). Daniel Craig as Bond didn’t really do it for me; I never got around to watching his first one, and so I wasn’t planning on the second one either.

Then, a couple weeks ago, I finally decided that I ought to give Craig a chance, and so I watched Casino Royale. I liked it. I didn’t like it quite as much as Goldeneye, maybe; I missed Q and a few other classic Bond things, but still, I liked it. So yesterday I decided to go on with the series, and began Quantum of Solace.

Oy.

The movie actually skipped halfway through (I hate it when DVDs do that), Netflix didn’t have it on streaming, and honestly I didn’t care enough to finish. It was, in a word, incomprehensible. Half the time I had no idea who Bond was chasing after, let alone why Bond was doing it. It got to where you couldn’t tell the players without a program. He just sort of ran around, chasing people and shooting them. And I grant you that’s a fair summary of most Bond movies, (e.g., Goldeneye’s famous scene where Bond drives a tank right through St. Petersburg), but at least the other Bond movies I’ve seen had a semblance of something resembling a coherent plot. Anyway.

So I really can’t provide a thorough review of the movie as I didn’t finish it, and went off to watch episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent instead.  As long as I have your attention, though, I’d like to make a small announcement. Earlier this year, in response to a Trifecta writing prompt, I wrote a short story involving Rain, a unfortunate girl sentenced to be thrown to a volcano by the Committee on Volcano Sacrifice Selection. I had such fun with that story that I continued it, and it went to some surprising places, not to mention people. (Winifred the Incarnation of Death, and so on).  Well, the complete story, Volcano Rain,  is now available on Amazon as an e-book. I did a spot of editing, made sure the different parts flowed together, but for the most part it’s there in all its volcanic death-incarnation glory. I hope you enjoy it immensely. And while you’re there, you can check out my author page, with links to other stuff I’ve done. There’s marmosets, and space hamsters, and a link back to this blog, and so the circle is complete.   Also, for anyone who’s in Britain, here’s a link to the British Amazon page. I’m given to understand that there’s also Amazon pages for Canada, and Japan, and India, and Germany, and Brazil. Hooray globalization!

Musings

This weekend’s Trifecta prompt was to do a thirty-three word free-write on any topic, any style.  ….I went meta.

Marsha the Muse was very put out. She’d been quite clear to her author; she would only provide words on specific topics. Zombie penguins. Vigilante pigs. Space hamsters. A thirty-three word free-write? Inconceivable!

Princely

This story was written for Trifecta’s weekly prompt, and follows on from Apple Most Foul, and Interrogation. Roll film!

The Queen Mother had gone missing, and Prince Evinrude of House Charming had vowed neither to eat, nor sleep, nor use the privy until he had found her.

At least, that was what the proclamations said. Actually Evinrude didn’t mind at all that the queen had gotten lost, and he wasn’t in overmuch of a hurry to find her again. She had ruled hard, on her subjects and her family, and she had squandered the crown’s financial resources considerably. Besides, practically speaking, if she didn’t turn up again, he was next in line.

Still, one had to keep up appearances. So that was why he was trudging through the wood, halfheartedly calling for his mother every now and again. Then suddenly a black-cloaked pig dropped out of a tree and barred his path. “Tell me what you know about the queen’s disappearance,” it said grimly.

“No thanks,” Evinrude said. “I know you; you’re the Third Little Pig. You’re an outlaw. What’re you going to do if I don’t? Kill me? Go ahead. The monks say heaven is quite pleasant.”

“No. Killing’s what that uncivilized wolf would do. Far too crude.” It pulled a metal device from inside the cloak. The object looked like a spoon, but it had peculiar sharp points where an ordinary curve should be.

“What are you going to do with that?” Evinrude asked in morbid curiosity.

“I won’t say. I’ll leave it to your imagination. What sort of nasty uncomfortable things could I do with this slightly rusted, sharply pointed thing?”

The prince, after a moment’s consideration, very quickly told all he knew. “She’s got a chamber below the dungeons. We think she’s done sorcery in there, but we don’t have a key, and the door won’t open. Magical, I expect.”

The pig nodded, and tossed the device his way. “Here. It’s your head-waiter’s new ice cream fork. Borrowed it.” Then he was gone.

“Well, I never,” said the astonished Evinrude. “A spoon and fork at once. Most innovative.”

B is for Blasters (And Brothers and Bears, Oh My)

Last time in the Catrina Chronicles, our heroine, protected by the magical Happy Accitent from the dolphins of DERP, had just recovered Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor!) but couldn’t quite get it to work for her. Then she listened with her heart, and suddenly understood….

“I’ve got to make a heroic sacrifice!” exclaimed Catrina, her voice echoing around the plastic folds of the Happy Accitent, as the fire from the dolphins’ blaster rifles ricocheted outside.

‘You gotta what?” Krystelle said.

“It’s easy,” Catrina said. “The Shovel doesn’t think I’m worthy, right? Okay then. I’ll lower the Happy Accitent and let the dolphins shoot me, thus my Heroic Sacrifice will create a diversion so you can get away. I might get knocked over for a second or two, maybe even lie on the point of death, but then Mlrning will see I’m worthy and boom! Problem solved! I get happily resurrected, save the world, and everyone’s happy!”

Krystelle rolled her eyes. “Isn’t the point of a Heroic Sacrifice that you’re not expectin’ to come back? If you know you’re gettin’ resurrected, kinda makes it less heroic, yeah?”

“Shush,” said Catrina, lowering her voice. “I know that, and you know that, but the derphins (giggle) out there don’t know that. From their point of view it’s a total Heroic Sacrifice. Also my author owes me one; he’s killed me off without meaning enough times, he owes me a nice meaningful death.”

Krystelle sighed, and tapped her communicator to let Connecticut Smith know that she needed to be beamed out. Catrina assumed her battle position, readying her Sporksaber and trying to brace herself for the inevitable impact of blaster rifle bolts. “Okay, shoulder angel, lower the Happy Accitent.”

The shoulder angel looked worried. When it had recommended that Catrina listen to her heart, it hadn’t quite expected that Catrina’s heart would suggest this. “Um, is this what you want? What you really really want?” it queried nervously, not wishing to blunder.

“Will you stop quoting the Spice Girls and lower the blasted tent?” Catrina snapped. The shoulder angel looked very hurt, and Catrina almost apologized, but then she remembered that technically the shoulder angel was only a physical manifestation of her own conscience, and it wouldn’t make much sense to apologize to herself. Catrina magnanimously forgave herself, as the shoulder angel, sniffling a bit, unfurled the Happy Accitent. Krystelle was yelling something in the background, something about Abramsian physics and “what do ya mean you can’t beam us out?” and using dreadful language, but Catrina paid it no heed. She stepped forward to face the surprised dolphins and dramatically lowered her Sporksaber. “Okay!” she announced, letting her voice waver just a bit for effect. “You’ve got me! I surrender! Cease your wearying badinage and blast me away with your horrid energy rifles! I regret that I have but one life to give for my Shmirmingard!”

The dolphins seemed unmoved by her speech, and they didn’t blast her either. They seemed to be looking quizzically behind her. Catrina glanced back, and found herself staring at the last person she wanted to see. “Edmund?” she gasped. “Where did you come from?”

Her diabolical brother didn’t even reply. He could have; his minions had a whole speech prepared, complete with a flannelgraph for illustrative purposes, about how his triumph was inevitable, how he’d manipulated her into destroying the world, how he had been waiting for far too long to have his revenge, blah, blah, blah. But Edmund had been studying the example of his predecessor, Susan, the last ruler of Character Hell, and he’d learned that overly bellicose evil monologues weren’t in fashion any more. So instead he simply fired his own plasma blaster at her.  The bolt would’ve knocked her clean off the raft and into the roiling ocean before she had time to scream, but then suddenly Catrina’s shoulder angel flew in the way, taking the full force of the blast. It squeaked in pain as it fluttered about in agonized circles, before dropping to the surface of the small raft. Its tiny halo flickered, and a smell of burnt wing filled the air.

Catrina fell to her knees beside her microscopic conscience, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “You…you shouldn’t have done it…” she said, and now her voice had a quite genuine quaver. “I was horrid to you, and-”

The shoulder angel weakly waved her off. “I only wanted to help…” it said in its thin little voice. “I wish I could’ve helped more….should’ve brought…flash…cards…”

“You helped fine,” Catrina bravely assured her, taking the tiny angel in her hands. “You really did. And you’re not going away, you hear me? You’ll be alright, you’ll see…”

The dolphins of DERP were all sobbing in the background; Krystelle helpfully passed around tissues. “At least…” the shoulder angel gasped, “I got to help….one…last….”

Its halo light flickered rapidly, and then went out. Its little wings stopped fluttering. “No,” Catrina said, blinking hard, “no, this isn’t the last time, you’ll help out again, you will….”

But then she realized that the shoulder angel couldn’t hear her any more. In the distance, a sad little violin began to play the saddest little song. Tears poured down Catrina’s face, not the movie kind of tears where just one little teardrop slides dramatically down one’s cheek; no, Catrina was really crying, which meant her face was getting all red and blotchy, and her nose was dribbling. But she didn’t care. She hadn’t wanted this to happen. She’d meant for a Heroic Sacrifice, but it was supposed to be her. Not her shoulder angel.

And then Mlrning began to glow, a blue-white light emanating from its blade. A shock of power ran down Catrina’s arm, and her black hair stood all on end. Edmund started to fire the blaster again, but Mlrning moved in Catrina’s hand, and a sudden flurry of snowballs burst down from the heavens and smacked her bilious brother clean off the raft and into the sea.

She knew at once what had happened. Her shoulder angel was a part of her. So when her shoulder angel had thrown herself into the blaster bolt’s path, in a sense Catrina herself had done it, so Catrina had made the Heroic Sacrifice after all. Only…she hadn’t meant for it to happen like this.  And as that thought crossed her mind, she knew what she had to do. Of course, there were actually about fifty things she had to do, such as restoring the world and reversing Ragnarok, getting back to Perry and defeating Edmund’s army, retrieving her reputation after being convicted of murder of an alien blob, and there were even several things she didn’t know she had to do, such as turning Perry back from being a bear. But there was one absolute Thing She Had to Do. She had to get her shoulder angel back.

Catrina held up Mlrning towards the sky. She’d heard that Thor’s various garden implements could help him fly; she assumed Mlrning worked the same way as well.  “Mlrning,” she demanded. “Fly me to heaven!”

“But…” Krystelle the rogue elf replied. “Ya can’t fly with a shovel! That’s impossible!”

“As the great U.S. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once said,” Catrina quoted, “‘There are many men now living who were in the habit of using the age-old expression: ‘It is as impossible as flying.’ The discoveries in physical science, the triumphs in invention, attest the value of the process of trial and error. In large measure, these advances have been due to experimentation! Now, granted, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking about Mlrning, the Shovel of Thor, but even so. I have the Shovel, I know what I need to do, and I’m going to experiment!”

The Shovel crackled with power, and Catrina abruptly shot up and away into the rainswept sky.

Krystelle, meanwhile, found herself alone on the raft, surrounded by unhappy derphins, and then Edmund came spluttering out of the ocean and climbed back on the raft, and he was very mad indeed, using frightful language and swearing that “by Beelzebub, he’d get them, he’d get them all!”  Unfortunately, in the process of being blown off the raft before, Edmund had inadvertently dropped his plasma blaster. Krystelle, not having much patience for irate bad guys, had quickly picked it up, and promptly shot him with it. He tumbled right back into the sea. Before the dolphins could make any more trouble, Connecticut Smith in his spaceship above finally convinced his pilot that they could really beam the rogue elf away without hurting the plot, and so Krystelle teleported happily away from there, leaving the upset derphins to bother about the abandoned raft.

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For previous episodes, go here. To visit my author page where you can buy copies of Nuclear Family and Catrina in Space, both of which feature Catrina in starring roles, go here. And speaking of B-words, it happens to be my birthday. How coincidental.

Man of Steel: a Review

So I’ve done a few movie reviews in the past, like The Hunger Games, The Avengers, and Star Trek: Into Darkness, though that was less of a review and more of a philosophical discussion about the Prime Directive. (I still don’t like it. And I’m still a fan of Sisko. Though I’m becoming more of a fan of Janeway, especially since I learned she was born in Bloomington, Indiana. We Hoosiers have to stick together).

Back on topic, I finally was able to see the Superman movie this afternoon.

….

Wow.

I repeat, wow.

I’ve had the experience twice this year, where I saw a movie, loved it at the time, and later found myself slightly disappointed. I didn’t like the thing Iron Man 3 did with the Mandarin, and Star Trek woefully underused the Klingons, and Khan.  But…I’m not disappointed in the Man of Steel movie. Holy Zod, it was brilliant.  Beats the Brandon Routh version right out of the park, and, I dare say, ranks up there with the Christopher Reeve movies. (The first two, anyway. Let us never speak of Superman IV.)

I mean, I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Krypton. One thing I had about the earlier Krypton depictions was it always seemed so…antiseptic. All frozen ice and spires and such. You wondered what the Kryptonians did all day except hang around with their shiny crystals. But here, Krypton lives. Jor-El and Lara put such passion into their roles, and there’s some key bits about Krypton’s society, and you really get a feel for the scope and tragedy of the thing, as Ron Weaseley once said in a less serious context.

And then of course there’s the rest of the movie. The hilarious thing with the truck at the diner. (Note: you never want to pick a fight with Clark Kent in a diner. That didn’t work out well in Superman II, and it doesn’t here). Lois Lane. Perry White. The guy that plays Eliot Stabler on Law and Order: SVU, who in this movie is a really cool Army colonel guy. The LexCorp logo on the trucks in the big fight scene. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Wayne Enterprises logo on the satellite. The bit with the handcuffs. Jonathan and Martha Kent, and the dog. Even Superman’s various powers are handled nicely. (They don’t do the super-breath or the memory-wiping kiss thing, which is for the best). I could go on and on, but really, this is a wonderful movie. I intend to go see it again. Maybe even three times. I doubt I’ll be able to see it as often as I did The Dark Knight, as that was in the days before law school. But still. Best superhero movie since the Avengers.

You Should Be Running

This weekend’s Trifecta prompt was to play around with the following. Henry James quote: “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”  So, I pondered, I asked my muse, and, well, this is what the muse came up with. 

Three things about a zombie penguin apocalypse are important. The first: run. The second: run. The third: RUN.

Interrogation

This story was written for Trifecta’s weekly prompt, and follows on from last week’s story, Apple Most Foul. Enjoy!

There were many areas of the castle that were quite pleasantly decorated. The dungeon, however, in the proud tradition of castle dungeons, was decorated mostly in Medieval Slime, with Rusty Blood-Stain Accents. It lacked ghosts, sadly, but one of the castle guards had taken to making “ooooooo” noises and rattling chains about, just to frighten the prisoners. As they only had one prisoner, and she was an elderly old lady who had seen far more horrors than anyone living, the guard’s ghostly imitation fell quite flat.

The guards were poorly paid anyway, and not well trained in guard procedure. So when they heard a strange noise round the corridor, of course only one of them went off to investigate it. When he didn’t return, the other guard didn’t call for help and raise the garrison; he very stupidly went off by himself as well. He didn’t return either.

The Third Little Pig, clad all in black, slipped into the dungeon. He eyed the old woman in her cell with grim suspicion. “You. Talk.”

The old woman flicked a strand of white hair from her face. “Oh, dearie me, talk, he says. Nice little piggie. But I can’t talk, can I, not about important things, oh, no. Can’t talk about Snow, not now, you see. Only the mirror knows about all that, dearie. The mirror, yes…” She seemed oddly troubled. “Supposed to change back by now. I was promised that, oh yes. But I haven’t changed, have I, dearie, and I’m a bit too young to be old, you know, and…”

She fell to coughing wheezily. The Third Little Pig saw the bewildered desperation in her eyes, and turned away. “See you at the hanging, Queenie,” he said, and then threw a small bag to the ground. It exploded in a flash of smoke, and when the smoke cleared, the Third Little Pig was gone. “Well,” the old woman said. “How rude, dearie. Oh yes. How rude.”

A is for Accitent

Last time, in the Catrina Chronicles, Perry, our heroine’s loyal sidekick and wedded husband, had discovered the long-lost trousers of the great wizard Merlin. As an unfortunate consequence, however, he had gotten himself transformed into a bear. Meanwhile, his maiden fair, blissfully unaware that her Perry was a bear, was facing some troubles of her own…

Connecticut Smith was growing concerned. When Krystelle the rogue elf had teleported down to Catrina’s small raft afloat on the post-apocalyptic sea, she had helpfully left her communicator open. He’d been listening to the conversation between Catrina, Krystelle, and the dolphins of DERP, and decided that things had taken a most troublesome turn. He spun around in his captain’s spinny chair and pressed the intercom button. “Hey, Demi, would you mind teleporting Krystelle and Catrina out of there? Those dolphins are about to start shootin’ at ‘em, and I don’t think they’d like that much.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” his pilot Demi La Monde replied, “but I can’t do that.”

“What, you can’t lock on to their signal? Some kinda electromagnetic interference blocking the transport?”

“Oh, no, their signal’s clear as a bell. No interference whatever. But, you see, there could be interference, there often is, particularly in emergency situations. So I decided it would be prudent to only use the teleporters in ordinary, non-emergency situations, when everything is quite safe.”

“I see,” Connecticut said, though he didn’t really. “So…you can’t teleport ‘em back up, and we can’t teleport down.”

“Oh, no, you can go down anytime you like. You just can’t teleport back.”

“Now how does that make any kind of sense?”

He couldn’t see it, but the space explorer had the distinct impression that Demi was rolling her eyes. “Sir, didn’t you take that course in Abramsian Physics at Flight School?”

“Didn’t go to Flight School, Demi.”

“Oh. Right. Well, basically, the plot demands that we can send someone, or something, down, but we can’t teleport it back up. It’d muck up the whole story if we did that. Unsatisfactory resolution. The readers would be disappointed, think we were using a deus ex machina to dodge the conflict. And so on.”

“Okay. Fine. Whatever. So, Demi, would you mind tellin’ me just what you want us to teleport down there?”

“Well, sir, there is one thing….”

***

Back down on the raft, Catrina raised her voice in a last, desperate plea. “Honestly, even if I wanted to give you the Shovel, I don’t have it! Can’t you see that?” She held out her hands in demonstration. All at once light flashed, and something fairly heavy thwacked into her outstretched palm. Catrina staggered a bit, unaccustomed to the sudden weight, but quickly regained her balance on the raft. Her eyes grew wide as dinner plates. “Oh. Well. I stand corrected. It looks like I do have it.”

Indeed she did. In her hand was Mlrning, the Shovel of Thor, forged long ago by ancient Dwarven hardware-store owners, who had gone on holiday, gotten bored, and wanted something to do. Its arrow-shaped blade, grey as charcoal burned in a summer picnic which has unfortunately been interrupted by a plague of fire ants, glinted in the cold air. Its deep brown handle felt solid in her hand, sturdy as the very earth, and on it were ancient Norse runes scarred into the wood. Catrina wasn’t very good with languages (she’d flunked clean out of Beginning Quenya), but she had taken a class on Norse mythology once, and she remembered what the runes meant well enough. Whosoever holds this shovel, if he be worthy, shall never be Thor in the morning. 

For the first time in a long while, her trademark smile spread slowly across her face. “Well, now,” she said, her voice dropping an ominous octave or two. “It seems the situation has changed. I have the Shovel now. And if you stupid derphins don’t back off and let me and Krystelle go about our business, I shall not hesitate to bring this Shovel down, right smack on your flippers!”

The dolphins of DERP, curiously, didn’t seem too concerned. “Go ahead,” the leader grunted, “try it.”

“Oh, I won’t try,” Catrina said. “I’m gonna do.” And with that, she raised Mlrning above her head, and waved it in a dramatic circle, before bringing it down upon the water with a mighty splash.

She’d expected something to happen. She wasn’t too clear on what Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor!) actually did, but she had a few ideas. She knew it wouldn’t bring lightning, that belonged to Mewmew or whatever it was, one of Thor’s other garden implements. But shovels were often associated with snow and ice, so she’d thought perhaps a massive snowstorm would come bursting from the heavens. Maybe a sudden mountain of dirt would smack into the dolphins, or a gigantic flower garden would whack them over the head. She was prepared for anything. But then, nothing happened. Water splished about a bit, but then subsided. The dolphins looked unimpressed. “Didn’t ya read the inscription?” the leader said. “If he be worthy. Obviously it doesn’t think you’re worthy.”

Catrina was about to object that of course she was worthy, when suddenly a tiny figure materialized on her shoulder. At first she thought it was her shoulder angel, come to render helpful moral advice and convince her to follow the path of light. However, this particular small version of herself wasn’t wearing a halo, or carrying a harp. Instead it wore professional business attire, right down to color-coordinated heels, and carried a microscopic legal pad. “Hello,” it introduced itself primly. “I’m Catrina’s shoulder-attorney. I’m here to render legal advice and services to my client, and also to assist in issues of statutory and contract interpretation.”

“What?” Catrina said, completely flummoxed.

“Clearly, the language of the runes does not apply in this circumstance,” the shoulder-attorney went on, taking no notice of her bewildered client. “The inscription says, if he be worthy. This qualification obviously applies to any male Norseman who picks up the Shovel; however, it logically does not apply to a woman who might pick it up. My client is of course a woman, therefore she can pick up the Shovel and use its power without any qualification as to her alleged unworthiness.”

As Catrina was trying to follow along with the argument, one of the dolphins raised a flipper. He had, as it happened, acquired some legal knowledge from a friend of his who was a loan shark. “Yeah, but that’s the generic he, isn’t it? The generic  refers to the whole of humankind, not one specific gender. Thor’s got a daughter, right, Thrud, and he’d be expecting her to wield the Shovel sometime, so an interpretation that precludes her use of the shovel clearly goes against Thor’s original intent.”

“It might,” the shoulder-attorney returned, “but that’s clearly not what the language states in plain text, and-”

“Scuse me,” Krystelle interrupted. “But why the heck are we spending all this time arguin’ about some pronoun on a stupid shovel?”

The dolphin commander smiled, and leveled his laser rifle rifle again. “Good point. Let’s just skip to the part where I blast you people into tiny bits.” The other dolphins raised their own laser rifles.

“Thanks a lot,” Catrina said, glaring at the elf. Then she readied herself for what she believed would be her sixth death. Possibly seventh. She was beginning to lose count.  But then, just as the dolphins fired, a sudden blur of plastic swept in before her, blocking the shots entirely. Catrina gasped, as the entire raft was rapidly encased inside a protective bubble, outside of which the furious dolphins of DERP squeaked in frustrated rage. “What on…”

Her shoulder angel flashed into existence, looking very pleased with itself. “Ta-da!” it said with a flourish of its halo. “I’ve saved you! I deployed the Accitent!”

“The what?”

“The Accitent! You know, like when someone says something happened by Pure Accitent, or that Accitents Will Happen, or that something was a Happy Accitent? Well, this is it! The Happy Accitent! It’s a magical tent that protects you from harm!”

Catrina thought about observing that accitent didn’t quite mean what her shoulder angel thought it meant, and that in fact it wasn’t even spelled that way, but then she considered that the shoulder angel might get upset and go off in a huff, and take her Accident with her, and that wouldn’t work out well at all.

“Right,” she said, “So…how do I get this shovel to work for me?”

The shoulder angel looked very serious. “I think,” it said in its tiny chipmunk voice, “you’ll have to work that out for yourself. Listen to your heart, Catrina. What does it tell you?” It went into a brief snatch of song. “Listen with your heart, you will understand….”

Catrina closed her eyes, as a sudden helpful gust of wind swirled her black hair for dramatic effect, and attempted to listen to her heart. After a few moments, all she got was a steady thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. It was possibly a little quicker than it should be, but that was probable due to the stress she’d been under recently, what with Ragnarok and all. “I’m not sure I’m understanding. Should I be using a stethoscope?”

The shoulder angel flew into a tizzy. “I was speaking metaphorically! Not literally! Listen to your metaphorical heart!”

“Oh. Well, that would make more sense. Perhaps I should try again?”

“Yes. Do that.”

Catrina closed her eyes once more, ignored her steadily beating literal heart, and attempted to focus on her metaphorical heart. “I think…” she whispered. “I might be getting something…”  The wind picked up obligingly again. Catrina’s eyes flew open. “I’ve got it! I know what to do! I’ve got to-”

…

To Be Continued.

***

This has been another exciting episode of the Catrina Chronicles. For previous episodes, go here. To visit my Amazon author page where you can buy other tales of Catrina in print or e-book form, go here. Thanks for reading!

Thor Realz

Well, this weekend’s Trifecta story is entered, and I’m planning for Monday’s Catrina story, so since we’re in-between stories, as it were, I thought I’d take a moment to explain a couple of things I’m going to do with the Catrina Chronicles. The first thing comes from three different sources (it’s weird the way my mind works, it really is).  First, I’ve made it a practice with Catrina to include randomly contributed elements, usually solicited from my friends on Facebook and elsewhere. For instance, I wrote several episodes in which I included random lines from songs, submitted to me by friends, which I wrote down on slips of paper and put in a hat. I then pulled a paper from the hat for each story, and wrote it based on that. It got Catrina into some very interesting situations, let me tell you.  However, I am, at the moment, out of random lines. So I was trying to think of a random element I could do. 

Then I read a post by Suzanne at Apoplectic Apostrophes, in which she introduced a new Vocabulary Series, wherein she plans to present posts discussing words for each letter of the alphabet, such as, appropriately, apostrophe. And I thought, hey, that’s neat and fun! And then I did a calculation with my cellphone’s calendar application, and discovered that, excluding the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s Eve, there are twenty-six Mondays left in the year. And I do a Catrina story every Monday. Suddenly, it all came together.

So. For the remaining twenty-six Mondays of the year, I’m going to do a Catrina story themed on each letter of the alphabet. I shall include at least one word starting with the pertinent letter in each post, though I can use more than one, if suggested. So far I have one A-word for Monday’s post, contributed via Facebook. And, speaking of Monday’s post, I think it’s time to explain about Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor).

Mlrning originated, as so many things do, on NaNoWriMo, especially the NaNoWriMo forums on the eponymous website. There’s a particular thread devoted to recounting typos (it is one of the most hilarious threads ever), and in September of last year fellow NaNo-er WrittenWord posted about a certain typo they’d had, where they had meant to discuss their character’s morning, but instead wrote mlrning. I thought, and I think I commented on this at the time, that Mlrning sounded like the Shovel of Thor.  The rest is history.

Since then Catrina has been searching for Mlrning (the Shovel of Thor!) , and it looks like she might finally get her hands on it next week. To that end, I’ve been thinking about the Shovel itself, and what powers it might entail. A knowledgeable friend on Facebook suggested that it might have powers to, say, create an entire world from a single scoop of dirt. Naturally it’ll have power over snow and ice, and whatever else one might use a shovel to scrape off one’s driveway. It’s not square-shaped, it’s more the kind of shovel  And since it’s an Asgardian shovel, I thought it should have an inscription.  Like the one on Thor’s hammer Mjolnir.

I considered the question for some time.  I knew inspiration would come eventually. And then, suddenly, like a whisper in the Force, it did. “Whosoever holds this shovel, if he be worthy, shall never be Thor in the morning.” 
BAM said the lady.  That was it. Now, I don’t know how that might be translated into epic Viking runes, like the inscription on Thor’s hammer. I shall have to do research on that. At any rate, that plot problem is pretty well solved. On Monday we’ll see how it works out.

Civilized

This weekend’s Trifextra prompt was to write thirty-three words inspired by the idiom “third time’s the charm”. This bit of dialogue sprung to mind. Basically I pictured the bad guys of Independence Day, but a bit more…erudite.

““I say, Q’irpington, shall we invade Jupiter next?”

“I should say not, sir. Bit gassy, you know.”

“Saturn’s out too, then. What about the little blue one?”

“Brilliant choice, sir.”

“Naturally, Q’irpington. Naturally.”