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We’re now more than halfway through July, and today I posted the fifth July Bananagram story. Bananagrams are a crosswords concoction of twenty-one letter tiles fashioned into a story of a single sentence. I’ve attempted to illustrate each of the entries.
https://storiesonline.net/n/34459/july-bananagrams
Still more than a week left in July to submit your entry. I expect there will be a new Bananagram for August.
They’re back. The cicadas. We used to call them the 17 year locusts. Now, here in the Midwest, we’re in the thick of it. I wrote my only cicada story about 17 years ago and illustrated it some years later. Now to celebrate the arrival of the cicadas, I’ve added a cover picture of the Cicada I trapped yesterday. I think his name is Al. Oh, our ornamental pear tree, Sylvia, is doing fine, way too big for any netting.
( The story is called The Cicadas Are Coming )
Today I posted the second one sentence story in the Bananagrams collection.
https://storiesonline.net/series/1804/bananagrams
The new story is called A Fey Lie, and it’s a follow up to the first Bananagram story, “Cockwise.”
If you might be interested in contributing your own Bananagram to the collection, check out the information at the end of “A Fey Lie.”
https://storiesonline.net/s/33652/a-fey-lie
I wrote and illustrated the Emma Portal story “Roman a Clef” last December and posted it today. This March Amazon released a First Read Kindle novel by Zibby Owens called “Blank.” The plot involves a young writer who, after having a successful first novel, is suffering from writer’s block, but she gets an idea for a new novel, and begins writing it. She’s well into the project when someone else publishes a novel with essentially the same plot. She’s under pressure to produce a new novel, and as a last resort proposes a book that is nothing but blank pages. Who would buy such a book? Is it possible Zibby somehow had access to my Microsoft account and stole the idea? I like to think that Zibby is colluding with Emma.
I use Word when writing stories. This morning Word took a while to open. “Updating,” my computer told me. I was happy enough with the way Word was, and I was a bit worried about what might have changed. So far the only thing I’ve noticed is that I get a faint underline beneath words or phrases that Word thinks some readers might find offensive. In the few paragraphs I wrote, these included “cunt,” “blowjob,” and “butt hole.” I don’t mind these warnings, as long as that’s as far as it goes. I’m happy to have the input. In fiction my philosophy is anything goes. I do remember in my early teens upon first encountering erotica that I was a bit offended by the word “tits.” I thought something so special as a woman’s breasts shouldn’t be reduced to the vulgar. But then a friend of mine, pointing to the oversized breasts in a Mad Magazine illustration about bowling, said, “Look at the bazoomers on this one.” I’m not sure if there’s one z or two in bazoomers. Word doesn’t say. It was a great illustration, though; the bazoomers, bigger than 16 pound bowling balls, were flying all but free of the woman’s loose and perhaps modestly unbuttoned blouse.
Likely lots of racial appellations will get the faint underline. I’m fine with that, too, as long as my text isn’t censored.
I am a bit curious whether there are words or phrases the SoL reader finds offensive in fiction. Okay, I confess, I’m offended by “they” referring to a person who doesn’t want to be “he” or “she.” What’s wrong with “it”? Maybe I’ll outgrow it, just like I outgrew tits.
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