Quote by verbal

Based on the book. We made sure it wasn't a musical first.

A song titled "I Am Going to Break Your Ankles Now" would make a pretty interesting first act climax, wouldn't it?

Quote by Molly

I'm sure everyone is aware that the site was down for a little bit. They were doing an update and there was likely a server issue but it should all be sorted now. Thank you for your patience.

I had noticed. Thanks for the update, Molly. Bad server.😁

Quote by verbal
We are seeing the play Misery this weekend.

Based on the King novel or the movie? There are differences. Or something else entirely and I am leaping to a wrong conclusion based on you being psyched for it?

Started notes for a new s-f universe. Still not sure what the stories in it will be like. Might end up being something I build that I can plug various stories into, even for that other site.

Basic premise is that aliens are more or less besieging Earth. They have banned space travel (they destroy anything that goes higher than 100,000m above sea level) and more or less enforce global peace by destroying military bases, military formations in the field, and such with brutal, powerful attacks from orbit when a war breaks out. If we give up things like nuclear weapons, then they will lift the "Alien Laws" as these restrictions are called.

This has a number of impacts, including things like losing the use of geostationary orbit and other high Earth orbits for things like GPS and communications satellites. Transoceanic cables come back into vogue for carrying communications between continents, high altitude atmospheric vehicles like balloons and planes are used for spying and collecting weather data, and so on. Still thinking through ramifications.

Rumours and conspiracy theories abound, of course, including the belief that the aliens actually have secretly landed on Earth and have somehow infiltrated governments, corporations, etc.

There's a couple core mysteries involved:

Who are they? Other than a few one-way communications in which they handed down the "Alien Laws", we have had no contact with them and have only seen their spacecraft.

What is their real agenda? Are they actually trying to force us to live more peaceably? Or some more sinister operation happening?

To be honest, even I haven't worked out those details yet.

Hurt - Hart

And that's actually the second duet with Halford on the album. The other is, not surprisingly, one of his old hits from Judas Priest, "Living After Midnight"

Oo, a new metal cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart and it may be even better. The singers each has over 40 years experience. Doro Pesch fronted the band Warlock in the eighties and her own self-titled group DORO since. Rob Halford has been lead vocalist of Judas Priest for most of the band's history. The track is from Doro's new album Conqueress - Forever Strong And Proud, which also came out today.

Hard top, assuming we are talking cars. I've never seen the point of a convertible in a country where you can only put the top down for maybe four months out of a good year, and even that depends on how much rainfall there is.

Tea or coffee?

Quote by verbal
Can I just say I have the best wife in the entire world? I’ve been a bit of a mess, but I’m doing better, and she is just unflagging loving and strong. I’m lucky to have found her.

I've interacted with her on forums a few times (albeit mostly before you were married, IIRC) and have always found her quite a nice lady. Yes, you are lucky. Always remember that. I sure got reminded of how lucky I am to have mine yesterday (see below). And congratulations on finding her. 😊

And hello StoriesSpace. I am popping in to whip up a pot of PC West Coast Dark, some Earl Grey and Yorkshire Gold teas, and fill the cold rink pitcher.

Had a hernia repaired yesterday so sore but managing. It's day surgery and was booked for 4:30pm so the worst part was fasting. Nothing but clear fluids (mercifully, they consider tea a clear fluid) after midnight.

Lovely day here but the weekend looks like it may suck. Oh well, with the surgery looming, we tried to get most of our yardwork out of the way last weekend. I'm banned from heavy lifting or strenuous work for four weeks or so (depending on speed of my recovery).

Fortunately writing doesn't count as strenuous, at least not in the 21st century. Maybe if I was a monk in a scriptorium eight hundred years ago or something.

And from their first album, featuring now ex-member Amanda Somerville on lead vocals.

The late Jim Steinman wasn't really a heavy metal writer, but his songs often work well as metal nonetheless. This one, of course, made a star of Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler.

Exit Eden is an all-female metal vocal supergroup that happens to include French soprano Clementine Delauney, a favourite of mine. They used to be a quartet but founding member Amanda Somerville has left leaving them a trio. This is the first original song from the group who started as a cover band. And the icing on the cake is that ex-Nightwish bassist and singer Marko Hietala is along for the ride on this one and I swear it is one of his best vocal performances in a while, certainly since leaving Nightwish at the end of 2020.

Another fine, if less experienced and powerful, female voice is up-and-coming singer Lucy Thomas. Among her current projects is releasing material from the upcoming musical Rosie, in which she will star. Here's the latest.

Depends where I am going. I have done and enjoy both. If it is an English or Chinese speaking country, often on our own. For countries where neither of us speaks the lingo, guided is more common. But we mix that up. In France, we did Paris on our own but took a guided tour of the Loire Valley. Iceland was similar (Reykjavik on our own but a guided tour of the rest of the island). Those aren't hard and fast though. One of our best guided tours was of the UK where we most definitely speak the lingo (sort of, they talk funny over there 😉).

Love having kids around or keep them as far away as possible?

And good morning to y'all. Distinctly chilly here but the rain seems to be over for a couple days.

Coffee is a Costa Rican dark roast. We have English Breakfast and Sunday Tea in the teapots. Cold drink pitchers are refreshed and refilled with some of our fine unsweet iced tea and lemonade.

I have been a busy beaver today doing work on how I store and manage my stories. Probably doing it to avoid actually writing anything, but it was kind of needed. Separated my "Completed" folder by site, converted stories that were in Google Docs, text, and PDF format to Open Document (the preferred format for LibreOffice), moved my stories off of Google Drive to my local and set up a backup process. Oh, and created a LibreOffice template for poetry since my story template has issues with formatting poems.

That should be it for now, though I am trying out a couple different backup processes so might eventually zero in on one.

Quote by JustAnotherSapphic

Anyone know whether we're allowed to post nonsexual age regression stories here?

Everything is totally nonsexual and all parties are of adult age biologically.

I don't know why not. So you're thinking of something like Freaky Friday where an adult returns to being a child (so fantasy)? Or just adults behaving like children (so more humour or drama depending on the approach)? I think you would need to keep things age-appropriate but it sounds like you have thought of that. Maybe drop Molly a note or post about it in Forum/Site Guidelines?

Window. Like to look out and try to guess where I am.

Arena/festival concert or a smaller, more intimate event?

Moat - Goat

Oo, monster cookies. Mwahahahha.

takes a Dracula and a Frankenstein and starts pretending they are fighting until a much bigger monster, perhaps a giant gorilla, bites both their heads off😎

Well, we're still in the runup to Halloween, so how about some Deathwish Dark Roast as today's coffee? Teapots have Assam and Russian Caravan. Cold drinks are looking good.

Now between stories so looking at some of the drafts that I have lingering and figuring out whether to continue with one of them or get something new going.

And from about a year ago with Nightwish, her current band, and her friend Henk Poort.

Floor Jansen has announced officially that she is a mommy for the second time. In celebration, here she is in her younger days with After Forever, the band that launched her 25+ year music career.

An ape walks into a cafe. Looks around, sighs, and grabs the vacuum, mop, and cleaning cloths. After half an hour or so, the place is all spiffy.

Coffee is PC Gourmet Medium. Teas are Yorkshire Gold and Earl Grey. Pitchers of iced tea and lemonade are washed and refilled.

Yorkshire Gold is new to me, but seems to be a fairly popular blend. I swear that I read somewhere that the late Queen Elizabeth II drank it and I know that Canadian folk-pop-rock singer songwriter Rufus Wainwright had his dressing room stocked with it during recent gigs at Royal Albert Hall.

Cool. Sounds like a fun day.

There's PC West Coast Dark brewing for the coffee crowd. Teas are Canadian Breakfast and Russian Caravan. Cold beverages are refreshed.

Kicking around a couple ideas for my next story here. Not quite sure where either goes yet. Just weird ideas at this point.

Economy. Maybe if I drove highways more I would lean more to performance but I rack up mostly city km.

Gas or Electric (or split the difference and get a Hybrid)?

Quote by verbal
The Great Googley Eye of God

I am so using this as a title someday (if you don't beat me to it). Though "Great Googley Eye" would be a terrific band name, too.

Quote by Molly

I've actually written a story for it. I haven't posted a story since 2021! I should change that.

Oh yes, more Molly, please. You really had me going with that one. See my comment.

Quote by Molly
While you wait for the comp and considering it's Spooky Season, my favorite time of year(I need to read Mendalla's story), I wanted to remind everyone about one of the writing prompts.

I was interested in that prompt at the time it went up, but then got off on to other writing projects and it kind of slipped out of my head. I already have a new project in mind (we'll see if it goes anywhere) but I will start looking back at the old prompts and challenges again if it falls through.

And will put in the time to read yours. I've been very concerned about the degree to which stuff like micro, flash, and poetry has been dominating since the last comp so glad I am not the only one still posting longer works on here.

And since we have spooky cookies, I've made some of the suitably named Death Wish Coffee. There's two pots, one of their regular dark roast and one of their pumpkin spice. Teas are Canadian Breakfast and Pumpkin Spice Chai. And there's the usual cold beverages if you want/need one of those.

Later, alligators.

One of my goals with this story was to create something vaguely in the vein of a Cthulhu Mythos story but without some of the more annoying tropes. So you've got the dark multi-generational family secrets, a terrible something lurking at the edge of reality, and even a creepy book in a forgotten language. However, you don't have letter salad names, reams of adjectives, or an italicised over-dramatic closing line. All in all, I think I managed to get some of the atmosphere of a Lovecraftian tale without the bits that don't stand up well today.

Quote by Mendalla

New story is queued. It's my (sort of) annual shot at a horror piece for Halloween. I think I nailed it. Kind of a creepy family secret in a Lovecraftian way kind of thing.

And poof, just like that, it is up! Thanks to Gil!!

Down In the Well

A spooky tale with some Lovecraftian elements is my contribution for Halloween this year. It all begins with a return to a decaying family home.

Down In The Well

Curious to hear reactions to both story and to the cover image. It's one of the better ones I have generated using AI (I use a site called Nightcafe that offers access to multiple image generation algorithms).