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Flash: The Secrets of Cats

Erin Penn

Image provided by saphatthachat on FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“The cat slunk by, eyeing me suggestively.” The woman shifted positions, foot to foot. “I’m not saying this right. The expression the cat had said it had a secret, one I would want to know, but it wasn’t going to tell me. But, it might lead me to it.

“That is how I got here.” Maribeth wrapped arms tightly around herself as she waited for the answer from the six people pointing weapons at her. Shivering from the cold as much as fright, she tried to make out faces under the scarfs and furs of the hooded parkas. Her flipflops inadequacies in the ankle-deep snow were matched by her bikini top and the shorts she pulled on to hit the boardwalk. She had spotted the cat going doing an alley behind a seafood restaurant when she went to grab lunch after surfing.

A muffled voice, either emanating from the person directly in front of her holding the old fashion machine gun or from the person to the right holding a crossbow strung with two arrows, one-right on top of the other, asked, “You followed a cat?”

“A cat, yes. About so big,” She took her hands out of her arm pits and gestured, before returning them to the warmest place on her body. She shifted her feet again; they felt more like slush than flesh. “Down an alley.”

She heard laughter behind her.

“Pad.” The voice, clearer this time, came from the crossbow holder and cut like an ice dagger. The laughter stopped instantly. “Girl, go back.”

“I tried. I came out of that tree.” Maribeth risked frostbite again for her fingers, waving at a nearby tree with footprints surrounding it. “I tried and tried. The cat disappeared, and I can’t go home.” She held back sobs, barely, but wasn’t sure how much longer before she broke down entirely.

“Then come.”

The group moved as one, some in high leather boots and others in snow shoes, barely making a sound. Not wanting to be alone, Maribeth followed. One of the group fell behind her.

“Should we mark the tree or something, so I can try later?” she asked.

“We won’t be back.” The one behind her reported.

The college student stopped until the person pushed her, forcing her to follow the trail the others were breaking. “But, how do I get home?”

“That is the cat’s secret.”

(words 398; first published 7/28/2019)

Other Cool Blogs: Chuck Wendig 4/18/2017

Erin Penn

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
Meme words added by Erin Penn

House Fire or Hot Property? Why not both? That pretty much is the publishing industry in a nutshell, and those that like to hang out in it. An living example of this metaphor is Chuck Wendig.

On his birthday in 2017, Mr. Wendig did a retrospective on his blog – Terribleminds – “What I’ve Learned After 5 Years and 20 Books: 25 Lessons.”.

Three pieces that grabbed me from the twenty-five on the list:

  1. Writing advice is … largely the product of survivorship bias.
  2. A writing career is a little bit jazz.
  3. Give the proper amount of fucks.

You can find the list here: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2017/04/18/what-ive-learned-after-5-years-and-20-books-25-lessons/

WRITING EXERCISE: Read the whole list of twenty-five and choose one that really strikes home. Write it up in a comment below explaining why it is important to you. By processing it out, explaining it, the concept will stick with you longer.

***

A writing career is a little bit jazz. 

I’m a plotter. Jazz is scary, improvisation jazz is even more scary. It’s structure isn’t a structure as much as a growth, layers of paint building from a pencil sketch which may or may not match what is in the mind but ends up so much more than I thought possible – or total dreck. Wendig wrote “You plan what you can, but the rest is experimentation.” Eek! 

And yet, jazz has its own beauty. Something beyond any plan. Adding a bit of jazz, a bit of music to a page to a book to a sentence. Create a canvas which people get lost in. The concept of a career having the same unsteady base is frightening and freeing.

Writing Exercise: Listen to the Music

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Every writer takes in inspiration through their senses, with some senses being stronger than others depending on the author. 

Me. I’m visual and touch. I see the scenes, feel the temperature, touch the surfaces. To write I need to be touching something – a keyboard or pen and paper. I’ve thought about DragonSpeak, but it doesn’t catch me on fire. To write, I just need to sit in my space with no distractions so I reach my inner space where things are happening. Sound is a big no-no for me.

Other people need other cues to write. Some people light a candle a favorite scent. Some people need certain lighting. Fuzzy clothing or other tactile trigger can indicate time to write. A nice cup of tea with a certain flavor not used any other time of day. So many rituals to activate the mind through the strongest sensory channel, letting it know TIME TO WRITE.

A lot of writers depend on music. For some, the music is part of the activation ritual only, not the ongoing process. They just listen to the song and approach the music for inspiration like I do visual prompt. Then turn off the music and write.

But most writers who employ music have it in the background to define the writing space.

David B. Coe listens to jazz. John Hartness has a certain playlist for when he writes fighting scenes. If you visit a coffee shop, you will see several writers with laptops and earbuds playing music. Many writers publish the “soundtrack” of their novel; music they listen to while creating or were inspired by for the story. Gibson House Press describes some in Novel Soundtracks (published November 19. 2018 – .

Me, when I hear words, they come out my fingers from my time doing transcription. But some people swear by it. Others want music without words. Sometimes people need words but can’t write with real ones so they work around the words interfering with their writing by listening to music in foreign languages.

Video game soundtracks are extremely popular because they are internally rewarding; they are built to be addicting and keep people doing the activity. (Looking for an outlet? – try Pandora’s Video Game Music Radio).

I’ve been remiss in not suggesting this sooner. Even though music is no-go for me (I listen to music for everything but writing), it may be the perfect thing for you.

WRITING EXERCISE: Explore Music with Your Writing. Go to Pandora or other music site, if you don’t have one already, and sample different types of music. Can you think of new words when hearing words? Does latino, classical, jazz, or video-game-experimental float your creativity? Think about your senses; which are your strongest for memory and interacting in the word outside of visual? For your starting ritual for writing (if you have one or think you need one), see what happens if you add a particular song or particular type of music. Remember for some writers, they only use music for particular types of writing – like fight scenes. Would that help you?

WRITING EXERCISE BONUS: Randomly pick one song. Can be through a large playlist or a random generator (like and use it as a prompt to write a flash.

Flash: New Leaf

Erin Penn

From Article : A Graduate Student Created First Man-Made Biological Leaf Which Can Produce Oxygen Just Like a Plant

“Captain wants to know when you’ll be up and running again.” Computer processors judged the XO’s projection within the SoftSuit to how far his voice would carry if the room actually held air and aimed the broadcast accordingly while he ducked another dozen hanging wires and stepped over debris littering the floor to get close enough to carry on a conversation with the department’s senior surviving lieutenant. Whichever of the HardSuits around contained that person.

Normally he would have addressed the lieutenant by name and the software would have closed off a direct communication channel. Normally Cheshire would have known who was in charge as the organizational chart resorted instantly from incoming status reports. Hell, normally the captain would have use her direct link with the ship’s net to know the exact status of everything happening on the colony ship.

But things were far from normal after the Wittzerk attack. And since the captain was integrated with the ship for the trip’s duration, submerged in a gel-bath as the living part of the combination living and artificial intelligence directing the ship through real-time and folded space, one of the elite humans capable to the feat, he was crawling through the guts of the ship on her behalf using a jury-rigged radio to send reports up to the bridge, at least until wires could be reconnected by the scrambling techs, getting his uniform dirty for the first time in decades.

It was exhilarating. He had forgotten what line work was like.

Not something he wanted to do all the time, but acting a TrNaval officer instead of a glorified cruise director for a bunch of sleepers brushed off the spider webs.

The green and yellow HardSuits of Environment and ShipMain swarmed around him as he reached cleared floorspace, but no one stopped. After enjoying the artificial gravity steadiness for a moment, Liquid lost power twice while he was there and he nearly lost his lunch, he barked into his microphone, “Senior, report!”

Two people jumped, one deep green and one eye-searing glow-in-the-dark-of-space yellow, as software directed a more precise message than the previous general broadcast. Cheshire steps ate up the distance between him and the green one, while Hinson’s voice filled his ears. “Primary Gravity functional for the deck one-beta grid, additional maintenance will be required to meet spec, secondary gravity online to spec, trieary gravity … yeah Robert, we stealing parts from that to get prime and second going and until manufacturing is working again ain’t nothing going to get that stuff to work. Three nodes were complete losses. Water will be online in ten more minutes, probably and air pressure in sixteen hours. Too many holes. Stupid frigging shotgun weapon.”

“Thank you ShipMain. Continue, priority on this grid AirProduction and embroyo status tubes.” Hinson was the second best ship maintenance worker so Cheshire let the use of his first name slide. Most of the time they used first names around the colonists awake for transition training; no surprise a good portion of his staff couldn’t switch back to military protocol.

(words 511, first published 7/21/2019)

Geeking Science: LightSail 2

Erin Penn 1 Comment

From the Planetary Society Kickstarter site

It’s been a long journey to start this long journey, and I have been on it from the moment the Planetary Society Board presented the idea to its members, through its Kickstarter, through LightSail 1’s fiery death on the Russian Launch Pad, and finally the deployment of LightSail 2.

You may remember the Bajoran lightship on Deep Space Nine, the one Captian Sisko and Jake created reminiscent to the real-world Kon-Tiki expedition to prove a raft could cross the Pacific from South America to the Polynesian Island, in the fictional story’s case to prove the Bajorian traveled to Cardassian territory in their early space travel.

The cool thing is lightsail ships were a real scientific thought at that time, just hadn’t been proven viable. The ability to travel through space riding on just photons from the sun. It would be much slower than a rocket booster, but not everything needs to be done immediately. Station keeping weather stations, slow fly-bys of planets sending millions instead of hundreds of photos, communication arrays throughout the system. The possibilities are endless. And cheap – as the weight of the sails are negligible when compared to rocket fuel or nuclear power … and tons less dangerous.

The long journey? Oh, that will be LightSail 2 in orbit right now with its sail due to be deployed on July 23, 2019 and going for about a year. That is a lot of orbits around the Earth, a very long journey.

You can follow its journey around the earth through the LightSail 2 Mission Control link.

Breakthrough Initiatives plan to use lightsails to send their fleet of small ships to Alpha Centauri.

This is now. This is our future. We can reach the stars.