Week 178 – Wordplay, Stories and a Post of Two Halves

Every four years the world holds its collective breath as teams from across the globe battle it out to be crowned the champions of the world.

Skill. Power. Precision.

It’s got the lot.

Sadly the Rugby World Cup is another 15 months away and so for the next month we’ve got to put up with a bunch of overpaid whiners kicking a round ball across Russia.

My moaning will be short this week as there’s a lot to get through. We’ve even got a special treat in the form of some quite brilliant banter between two of our authors.

More of that later…after we take a look at the week just gone and another five excellent stories.

As always the stories were as diverse as our authors. It’s a pleasure for us to welcome some new faces and this week there are two – Sherry Shahan and Jason A. Feingold. It’s great to have you both on board and I hope we’ll see plenty more of your work.

 

The early part of the week belonged to two authors who are building up impressive bodies of work on the site. Roger Ley took a bite out of Monday with his latest piece, Piranha.

“I did like the simple telling of what was a pretty black bit of comedy!”

“Comically grim!”

 

David Henson is a very active and supportive member of the LS family and it was great to see him…errrm…poke his way into Tuesday with The Drag Queen And The Dozen Dicks.

“…Ha Ha – Drag Queen – clever play on words – I bet you thought what I did…”

“I really enjoy Dave’s work, I think he is one of our best story tellers…”

“…you aren’t really sure if it is tragic or humourous and you feel a bit guilty liking it!”

 

Wednesday welcomed Sherry Shahan and her dark and very clever Skin and Bones.

“A brilliant, unique take on a terrible condition”

“…it’s a totally new look at this and it is non-judgemental…”

“Turning this story on its head is as inventive as the characters”

 

Our second new face arrived on Thursday in the form of Jason A Feingold and the excellently plotted The Long Way Home.

“…depressing, but so brilliantly observed”

“…it was so well paced and the tone was spot on…”

“At first it all seemed pointless and then the penny dropped…”

 

It’s hard to find further superlatives to describe the unsurpassed, unequalled, unparalleled, unbeatable, peerless, stellar and remarkable Tom Sheehan (but I did try). He’s a most welcome ever-present on LS and he closed out the week in style with V for Victor.

“Absolutely enthralling”

“…this had a wee bit of magic about it. I wanted to be at the table having dinner with them…”

“Mystical, no explanation and beautifully written”

 

As promised this week will be closed out by two of our authors, but before I hand over to Frederick Foote and Patti Santucci I’d like to say a very BIG thank you to all of you who have submitted stories to us. As many of you know, keeping a consistent output of five stories a week without dropping our standards is hard to sustain – and we are rarely more than a week or two from the well running dry so to speak. So it with much joy that Hugh, Diane and this Welsh bloke who’s been rambling on at you for the last ten minutes can report that we have THE NEXT FOUR WEEKS FILLED UP WITH STORIES! This is only possible through your collective brilliance – so thanks from us…and keep ’em coming…

And so, at last, to Fred and Patti and their wonderful email exchange On Writing. This resonated with us here at LS as it all comes down to two people having fun with words – which is really why all of us put virtual pen to virtual page…

 

From: Patti
To: Fred

Fred, I would love for you to read the final version…if I can stop fussing with her. A little blush here, a lotta liposuction there. And just as she’s about to depart, dressed up as an attachment, I change her shoes and cinch her corset.

From: Fred
To: Patti

Yep, and if you change her shoes you change her mood and a mood change requires a makeup change which needs an outfit change which gives her time to realize how uncomfortable her corset is. She starts to wonder if she really wants to be this particular story. And here we go again.

From: Patti
To: Fred

And again, and again until I’m delightfully dizzy from literary procreation and exhausted but inspired to dress her up one last time.

From: Fred
To: Patti

Patti, writing can be addictive and dangerous. Without warning, we may be buried under an avalanche of alliteration or mugged by a wayward metaphor. We work with some very unpredictable and treacherous creatures. To protect those around you be sure to post a warning sign at your writing space, “Writers at play – Beware of agitated, animated, adjectives, vicious, vivacious, violent verbs, and a nest of denigrating, deprecatory nouns, and teams of professional pseudo nouns – pronouns, hysterical interjections, hectoring adverbs and XXX rated coupling conjunctions.”

From: Patti
To: Fred

I hear ya! I don’t know if I ever told you, but I thought someday I would dress up for Halloween as the Grammar Police, complete with badge and helmet. I would have a string of letter beads that spelled out “participle” which would hang from my hip. My dangling participle.

I’d also get a big rig truck and load coal on it – my semi-colon. But the most important element would be that I would be pregnant. Why you ask? Because I missed a period.

From: Fred
To: Patti

Patti, this gives a whole new meaning to the term, “pregnant pause.” Hey, you know that pregnancy can result in dependent clauses that will remain with you for 18 years or more.

And pregnant women should, of course, avoid the Comma Sutra, and the snapping jaws and shark teeth of opening and closing quotation marks.

From: Patti
To: Fred

Love it!!! I’m LOLing as the kids say. Comma Sutra. Hysterical. My high school kids would get that joke but ask them what a verb is, and I know one of ‘em will pipe up with, “Ain’t that one of them German sports cars?” And, like a fool, I’ll keep going. “What’s a pronoun?” And Johnny, the one I told you about that who sleeps through class half the time, will surely raise his head and say, “Duh. One with a turbo, dude.” Lord, help me.

If I ask my high school seniors what a preposition is one of ‘em will pipe up with, “Well, Ms. Santucci, that’s gettin ready to get in position,” and then lean back in his chair like he’s just delivered the best line of foreplay in his life.

From: Fred
To: Patti

Wow, kids today. Patti, my seventeen-year-old nephew owns an Audi-Verb modal RS 3 and has had many appositive, even superlative, but tense experiences in the back seat.

Even junior high students should know that building on ampersand provides an insecure & shifting foundation.

First graders understand that three asterisks mean you struck out.

Most students know that musicians’ understudies practice with underscores.

And I remember when parents would not allow any backslash and you could dash to the store in a Nash.

From: Patti
To: Fred

Alas, I grew up in a working-class family of common nouns and at an early age married a possessive noun, and soon we were a collective noun.

My mother said I deserved my fate for not being a proper noun in the first place and not keeping my skirts down.

Well, I kicked my possessive noun to the curb, and I’m now in conjunction with a kind and proficient pronoun.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

From: Fred
To: Patti

I loved your love story, here’s another.

Loving Punctuation

The lovers had an engaging conjunction under a full moon.
She said, “The moon’s celebrating the end of my period.”
He responded by pressing his eager ellipses to her sweet red ellipsis.
This resulted in his sharp explanation point probing her pubic area.
Which led to the penetration of her hyphen.
She cautioned him that poking her colon or semicolon was an apostrophe in her religion.
He said, “I’m so glad that your parentheses are deep sleepers.”
She was glad he did not question the marks on her stomach.
He thought, “I hope my tongue tip does not get caught in her braces, again.”
He was making his point between the brackets of her breasts when he had a flood of comma climax.
She said, “Ah, what a sweet interjection!”
He heard her rapid repeated quotation, “Harder! Harder! Harder! – Author! Author! Author!” that marked him forever hers.

From: Patti
To: Fred

True love’s so tender and warm. I heard the new bride tell her friend, “I was in the indictive mood, but his participle was dangling.”
Good night all, from here to infinitive.