author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

It's ridiculous-o-clock at night, which is when Fictionettes get finished when your fictioneer is foolish. But F all that. Here it is: "A Familiar Situation," which is what our protagonist finds herself getting into when she accepts a sorcerer's offer of investment. It features an original watercolorish scribbly thing by me on the cover. Please enjoy the linked excerpt, and consider subscribing to read the whole thing and more than a year's worth of back-issue Friday Fictionettes besides.

That's all I've got for you tonight--see "ridiculous-o-clock," above. The weekend will be given over to Puzzle Pirates stuff, as per usual, and also a great damn big party that a league mate of mine is throwing, as per annual. Which is to say, I'm outta here. And also out like a light. And so forth.

The first Friday Fictionette for October is a small folk tale retelling, or a folk tale fanfic if you will. It's called "How the Lassie Didn't Go East of the Sun and West of the Moon," and it posits a lot more communication and common sense than is the norm in folk tales. I mean, seriously, a girl's got more senses than just her sight. If her mother imagines that her daughter needs a candle to tell whether the guy she's sharing her bed isn't a Troll, her mother has a very innocent idea of what goes on in bed. That's all I'm saying.

I was astounded to discover that all of Kay Nielson's gorgeous watercolor illustrations for the folk tale collection East of the Sun and West of the Moon: Old Tales from the North are as much in the public domain as the text itself--or at least they are covered by "no known copyright restrictions." I incorporated one of these illustrations for the Fictionette cover art, because it's lovely and because it helps make clear exactly what folk tale I'm playing with.

I've also released a Fictionette Freebie for September, and it's "The Celebrated Frog Forger of Clackamas County." The PDF chapbook and the MP3 audiofictionette are now both available for free to subscribers and nonsubscribers alike. Enjoy!

And with that we head into the weekend. If you're in the neighborhood and want to hang out, I'll be among the crowd helping local brewery (and Boulder County Bombers sponsor!) 300 Suns celebrate their Grand Re-Opening on Saturday afternoon. Bring a game to play, buy some beer, and enjoy their new menu! That's what I'm gonna do. (My, that Lushious Belgian Ale with the ginger and lavender sounds tasty...)

Well, last week's Friday Fictionette didn't make it up on time either, but it went up Saturday, and I'm-a gonna tell you about it. It's called "The New Criminal Element," and it's about deer. And hooligans! Deer who are hooligans. Just as you always suspected they probably were.

That link goes to an excerpt hosted on Patreon. If you're already a subscriber/Patron and you're all like, "To hell with this 'excerpt' foolishment! Give me the Real Deal," why then, the link you want is either to the full-length PDF or to the MP3 audiofictionette, or both. And if you aren't yet a subscriber and you would like to be, because a buck a month for about 4000 to 5000 words of fresh new story-like objects sounds like a great deal, any of those links will do ya. Just follow the instructions under "Become a Patron" to chose your goodies.

I don't actually have much more to say than that, really. I could say that THIS will be the week when I really Get Shit Done. That's certainly my intention. But I also said the Fictionette would be up on Friday, and you see how that went. So I think I'm just going to keep my mouth shut for the moment.

So I didn't get it done Sunday. And I didn't get it done Monday. I got it done yesterday, and today you get the blog post about it:

"The Celebrated Frog Forger of Clackamas County" is your Friday Fictionette for September 18, 2015. So there. Why a frog? Because apparently I was on a talking frog kick last month, and went there on the least provocation. Why Clackamas County? I dunno; it scans right, I guess. And I lived in Oregon for a little while, so what the heck.

It was actually Josephine County that I lived in for the last couple years of the '90s. During that time, my mail kept getting randomly sent up to Marion County because multiple people saw envelopes and packages addressed to Selma, OR and "helpfully" corrected the obvious misspelling to Salem.

My goal is to have tomorrow's fictionette done on time. My goal is always to have them done on time, of course--at least, right up until the time I give up on it because I fail again. But this time I know ahead of time that my Friday the 25th will be packed with time-consuming things, so I have done a good bit of work on it early.

It will be about deer. Maybe talking deer. Deer that are capable of spray-painting graffiti slogans in English, anyway. I guess I've just been on a talking animal kick. This post-Spreading Sentience Syndrome setting may wind up in a pro-publishable story one of these days, seeing as how it keeps working its way into the fictionettes.

Anyway, here it is. And also, sorry for the long silence. I promise it's not because I got broken in Saturday's tournament. Nobody got broken! I just got bruised, and some of those bruises were from delivering righteous hits. But I did need more time to recover than I thought I would. Apparently, recovery involved two days spent more or less flat on my back with books. Or maybe it's just that I need days-in-bed-with-books from time to time, and derby recovery was a good excuse.

What I've been rereading is Sheri S. Tepper's True Game series, which is kind of like a cross between Xanth and Pern in its world-building, but its squick derives from aggressive pro-eugenics politicizing rather than from sexist rapey crap. I'm... not exactly selling it here, am I? Rereading Tepper is always a guilty pleasure. Her worldbuilding and her protagonists' development are fantastic. And even if I can't quite buy into the chess-like framework for the duels in The True Game, I kind of dig the attempt. But her politics are monstrous, the sort of stuff that gives feminism and environmentalism a bad name. She seems to think the solution to all societal problems is to have aliens or gods or sentient trees or whatnot kill off most of the population. It comes up in most of her novels. In the True Game books, she explicitly posits that physical "deformity" leads to moral deficiency because, what, living in a crippled/deformed/stunted body that's constantly in pain squeezes the soul out of shape? Somebody please find me a way to read the whole "Dupey" encounter in a more generous light? Because I can't. And it gets worse, because there are characters called Midwives (capitalized to indicate magical Talent), whom all good characters want at their side during childbirth (refusing a Midwife is an indication that you're corrupt and evil and selfish), whose future vision allows them to see which newborns will never "grow a soul" and therefore may be exterminated. Put those two bits together, and, well, way to tell a good portion of your readers that, due to whatever condition they were born with, they're congenitally evil and you'd prefer they'd never been born. And that's before we get into her conveniently subjecting two of her villains to misadventure resulting in dramatic facial wounds that make our sensitive protagonist want to throw up every time he lays eyes on them, but at the same time condemns these characters for vanity because they tried to magically hide their scars (shock!)... Argh. This is not your go-to author for handling disabilities and issues of physical appearance with compassion, is what I'm saying. And her villains tend to be two-dimensional strawmen, and half the time I think she uses a thesaurus written in baby-speak to come up with names for people and places, and she uses way too many exclamation marks.

...And I still turn to her novels for comfort reading. Some of them, anyway. (Any of the ones I read before throwing The Fresco at the wall, anyway. I stopped seeking out new stuff of hers to read after that.)

I seem to have gone off in a rant. Well, I'm now well into rereading the fifth book of the novena, so it's been building up. Remember, though, I'm choosing to reread them, so they've got to have something going for them, right? But they are decidedly not for everyone.

Well and so but anyway, see you tomorrow with a new Fictionette. Promise. (Double dog promise! Pinky swear!)

Sorry, y'all. The Friday Fictionette will have to come out on Sunday. Most of this work week got nibbled away by various preparations for tomorrow's tournament--extra practices, yes, but also repairing gear, printing signs, cleaning wheels and bearings, setting up the venue--and I'm still not quite done.

Please feel entirely welcome to come to the tournament specifically to chastise me. Or to watch four fantastic Colorado roller derby teams skate their hearts out. Whatever floats your boat!

This week's Friday Fictionette is about a frog with a fantastic opening line, and the change in the world that allowed him to utter it. It's called "The Spy Who Croaked."

As for the experiment with Viggle and the worries about whether it will be a terrible distraction that will kill my productivity--worry not, for as it turns out I'm not allowed to use it. I hear from Various Sources Online that the app's terms and conditions consider emulators a banning offense, and of course Bluestacks is an emulator. And there is no non-smartphone version of the functionality. Besides, it was absolutely failing to credit my music check-ins.

On the other hand, TV check-in appears to work. And football season is upon us...

No! No, I will be strong.

Finally got the audio version of last Friday's fictionette up. Don't know why it took me so long. Guess I've been in kinda full bumming-around-the-house mode since I got back from Avon. The two-hour drive home in the sun was so much more exhausting than the four-hour round trip between Avon and DIA at night. It sort of took it out of me.

But it's Monday. Dragging around the house on a Monday is OK. But what happens on a Monday gets left behind with Monday when it turns Tuesday. Tuesday is working hard day! Just you watch!

In reading through the fictionette, I noticed and fixed two typos, so after uploading the MP3 I got to upload a new version of the PDF and correct the excerpts posted to Patreon and here. And this is why I try most weeks to record the MP3 before publishing the fictionette in any format--reading aloud is my best method of proof reading. Even reading the piece slowly so that I could "hear" my voice reading it aloud in my head--which I did while out at dinner Friday night--isn't quite as effective.

Thankfully, Patreon has greatly improved their publishing experience, such that it is now possible to delete and re-upload attachments. Genius, right? Used to be you couldn't do that, which made late-discovered typos terribly frustrating. But now it's simple.

In other news, John and I have been watching a lot of Steven Universe lately. Steven Universe is a cartoon that is awesome and you should watch it. It is good for the heart, it is emotionally deep and gloriously silly, it is constructed with such meticulous care that no detail can be rightly called "throw-away," and it boasts some amazing voice acting talent as well as a cast of characters who are wildly diverse in a delightfully unmarked way. (And it's totally stolen a plot point from my semi-trunked novel trilogy, but nevermind, it's my bad for not having converted it from semi-trunked to publishable by now.)

I've just discovered Vrai's recaps at The Mary Sue. These are smart and rewarding reading, articles that love to delve deep into subtext, point out resonances with other popular animated works, and revel in the show's unapologetic yet entirely understated political statements.

Don't know where I was going with that. What is this, a thesis? Go click on the links and read smart articles and watch good cartoons. That is all.

It's Friday, and the fictionette for the first week in September is up! Its working title has become its actual title--"Still Life with Coyote"--and it's in the format of an interview. With a coyote. Just because.

Thing about being in a hotel room, even a very nice one with a small kitchen and a separate bedroom, is that there really isn't a lot of extra space to make into a recording studio. It's pretty much whatever room isn't occupied. So I'm going to wait until tomorrow morning early to record the MP3 edition, while John's still asleep in bed and I have the kitchen/living/dining room area to myself, because the kitchen table is oodles more comfortable for recording at. I'll update both excerpts to include the MP3 link at that time.

The past couple of days have been pretty relaxed. After John's daily phone meeting (working vacation, remember), we've been walking across the street over to Loaded Joe's for breakfast-with-computers. They have a pretty extensive menu these days; I had the brioche french toast yesterday and the philly steak burrito today. These were delicious. John had their fried eggs over medium both days. He reports they cook it perfectly.

And now for a brief culinary tangent: Your classic Philly Cheesesteak, that involves onions and green peppers, right? Green bell peppers? The philly steak burrito had mild jalapeños instead. Not a complaint! Just an observation.

Afternoon naps continue to be a necessity, helped along by the daily afternoon rain shower we've been getting. Tuesday and Wednesday were the only exceptions, so it was a good thing I went trail-skating Wednesday.

It's been an underwhelming week for writing. I've pretty much only gotten to my morning gotta-do tasks, and nothing else. I thought I'd get a whole bunch of work done on the short story revision, but as it turns out, I acted like I was on vacation or something. Funny thing about that.

Well. Next week is back-to-normal week. Let's see if I can locate an acceptable normal.

Hello from Avon, Colorado! John and I have run away from home for the week, as we sometimes do. It's a working vacation for both of us, but the change of scenery is always nice, as is that freedom from household responsibility that comes from staying in a hotel.

Also, there's having the week off from roller derby practice. Only I have very mixed feelings about that, since our B team has a home tournament to play in less than three weeks. John, on the other hand, desperately needed the recovery time after traveling to Detroit to be part of the coaching force for our A team at the second round of Division 2 playoffs. Still, he and I are both seriously considering that, when we check out of the hotel on Sunday, we could drive straight back to the Longmont YMCA and go to that afternoon's practice.

I do plan to spend some time while up here on skates. If the weather holds fair, tomorrow might be a nice day to take the trail from Avon to Edwards. I did that a couple years ago, and it was fabulous. The miles flew by. And the Bookworm in Edwards didn't seem to mind my sweaty self wandering in with kneepads on and skates in my hand to buy a book and drink a latte. Then again, they didn't mind sweaty bicyclists in logo-covered spandex coming in off the trail, either. They are very accommodating of active lifestyles in Eagle County.

After lunch at [Bob's Place] (an Avon institution), I have already been to the Avon Public Library and checked out an armful of books. I made a beeline for their collection of Terry Pratchett hardbacks, because I came in with a deep need to reread Unseen Academicals. Then since I was in the Ps already, I selected a Tim Powers novella, "Salvage and Demolition." In the comic book section, Astro City: Through Open Doors jumped out at me, not least because the author has been a frequent participant in all the Hugo-adjacent conversation over at File770. And then I visited the new fiction shelf, because I intend to cast a nomination ballot for the 2015 Hugo Awards, so I'd better start reading stuff that's eligible. Max Gladstone's Last First Snow was a no-brainer choice, seeing as how I adored Three Parts Dead and Two Serpents Rise.

Writing-wise, I spent today catching up on last week's fictionette stuff. The MP3 is up as well as the PDF for "How Featherkind Got Its Song," and they are both free to download by anyone who'd like to--I've made the August 28th offering the Fictionette Freebie for the month. I'm not entirely happy with it, as the author's note attests, but I feel like the most honest response to the problematic implications is to open it up to others' feedback and maybe learn how to do it better next time. Or else learn that I'm just whining and insecure and being all look-at-my-self-flagellation about something that's really no big deal and I should shut up. I'm not sure which.

(This week's fictionette is going to be a lot more fun. I am tentatively calling it "Still Life with Coyote.")

Tomorrow, once I get my Morning Gotta-Dos done, I mean to dedicate the rest of my writing time entirely to short story revision. Go me.

And now to join John in front of the TV, where he's watching archived bout footage from D2 Cleveland. No, wait, D2 Detroit archives are up already! Awesome! Time to rewatch Boulder's game against Brewcity. Go derby!

I'm late, and I'm going to be even later. I just put up the PDF edition of the Friday Fictionette for August 28, "How Featherkind Got Its Song." Patrons pledging at least $1/month can download it right this second. Hurrah!

And now I must run to pick up John at the airport. Since I'm coming from and returning to Avon, Colorado, we're looking at a round trip between four and five hours. That means the following probably won't be up until tomorrow morning sometime: the MP3 edition (available to patrons pledging $3/month), or the excerpt (available to everyone), or the Fictionette Freebie for August 2015. Damn and blast.

But hey, now you've got something to look forward to, right?

Talk to you then.