Way cool blurbs, Allyson!

Allyson, squeee!!! That's a strong foursome lineup there.

Raq, yours is backflung, and I'm all needy now, "Please mu'm, I'd like some more!"

Thanks, Beverly, and thank you for your comments and edits.

Interesting how things morph. When I started writing that story, it was about the creation-via-espionage of WMDs in Iraq, making the facts align to create the enemy you want. Then that intersected with a reverse Garden of Eden story, what happens when someone loses the ability to distinguish good and evil. The first story was WAY more allegorical, and I'm a little sorry to have lost that, but this one works better.

Thanks to all the readers here for y'all's help!

Great blurbs, Allyson! I liked Tim's a lot (because it sounded like him), but I liked Nicholas Brendan's the most. Despite the fact he's done cons and interacted in the fan world, it's a whole 'nother thing to be part of the audience than on the stage and that came through well.

Connie, I loved your drabble. I think I was in my mid-20s when one of my older brothers (a certified genius) astounded me when he told me I was always better at math than him. I never felt smart until then.

editted for clarity

He came to set her free. He knew he was the one to save her – cut through the thorns, kiss her awake, and settle down to their happily ever after. His destiny.

I knew better. I saw the thorns shoot up. They won’t fall until long after I’m gone. But my advice didn’t suit; the truth was not pretty enough to be believed. I am not a princess. He barely saw me.

I could hear him for days, crying out - first for help and then for death. He had pressed on farther for any could follow.

She still sleeps.

From Salon:

Judging women writers by their looks

It was Annalee Newitz's dream to get "Slashdotted" -- that is, until she read the reader letters. Newitz is a tech writer, whose work was recently linked to on the "news for nerds" website Slashdot. Hoping to have ignited a thoughtful dialogue about technology and social justice, she was shocked to click on the comments section and instead find a thread debating whether she was too fat, Newitz writes in today's AlterNet. "At that point, I vowed to stop reading Slashdot," she says. "Why should I give a shit about those morons?"

But over time, Newitz missed her Slashdot fix and retuned to the "blog of record for techies." Then the site spotlighted her work again, prompting a reader to describe her as a "gorgeous nerd" ("rather than a journalist or writer or columnist or even just plain 'nerd'", she writes) and a new discussion started on whether she was indeed a hottie. But this time, Newitz chose to fight back.

She read the letters a bit more carefully and noticed that readers were actually debating among themselves about whether it was cool to comment on her looks. "For every sexist dick, there was at least one feminist dick talking back to him," she writes. She realized she was witnessing a slow cultural evolution. "I don't want to run away. I want women to get excited by all the cool articles on Slashdot and not get driven away by a community that values them for their bodies instead of their thoughts," she writes.

[link]

Awesome blurbs, Allyson!

Huh. Allyson, I think in that situation? I might not even bother posting a picture. If the readers' attention to the content is the end goal, why distract from that in any direction at all?

But I do like her conclusions from paying attention to what was going on in the comments.

Makes me even more paranoid about the jacket photo.

Which won't happen if I don't get dressed and go get a chai for a second wind for which to write.

Photograph

The Kodak photo says Nov 1972 along one edge.

A woman and a girl. They're in leotards, on the floor, exercising together, mugging for the camera. The musician who took it is the girl's lover. She was bleak, he got worried; she's thrown herself into gaiety, to reassure him.

The girl is eighteen and glorious, long hair hennaed black, green eyes, laughing, head thrown back. Her legs are puffy from having been in post-surgery compression; defying the doctors, she's wearing outrageous rocker shoes.

She looks up at me, laughing into history. I see her, and wonder if she'd know me.

This last topic inspired a LOT of good drabbles! I love reading them, and I always forget to say this, so here it is: THANK YOU, all you drabble-y drabblers. Thank you for sharing your writing week after week. It's such a gift to me. I love it.

Challenge #105 (you would hardly recognize me) is now closed.

Challenge #106 is The In Crowd. (This was inspired, actually, by an old Sesame Street bit -- not Grover doing Near and Far, but random muppets demonstrating how to put clothes and toys that are OUT away IN the closet or IN drawers, singing "We're In with the In Crowd.") No need to include muppets in your drabble, though.