I like water chesnuts.
- posted by jennifer joy staab @ 7:25 AM

 
To All Members:

Meeting.
September 30, 2006
8am
Usual Location.

Who's in??
- posted by jennifer joy staab @ 10:42 AM

 
Dear HGS,

It's true. I am not going to post an excerpt of said NaNoWriMo novel. I never will. You can' t make me.

OK, here it is:

It was six o'clock in the morning

GOTCHA! This is not an excerpt of my book. Ha!

I am done with the medium of the novel for a while. (Or, more accurately, I never started.) (Or, even more accurately, I started, floundered, restarted, and quit.) I have been doing a lot of learning in the area of screenwriting. I am working on two different projects right now. One is a loose adaptation of Manalive by Gilbert Keith Chesterton, and the other is an original, yet to be titled.
- posted by justin @ 12:53 PM

 
Still waiting for that excerpt, Gus..............................
- posted by Timothy @ 5:31 PM

 
“Let your words be steel! Let your tongue be a flint! Do not waver, do not hesitate!” the Prophet announced, eyes on fire, hands raised in proclamation. People on the sidewalk gave him wide berth and would not make eye contact. “Beware the coming darkness! Do not be at peace, and neither rest, for war is upon you! War I say, war is upon you. Gird your loins for battle and prepare your hands for war, beat your plowshares into swords, slay your oxen and join the fray. Ha!” The old man jumped up once, and bent low, then jumped up again, his frayed clothes flapping in the windy evening, his beard pushed over against the side of his face. Laughter somehow gripped him and he bent low, holding his sides, laughing boldly into the ground. When he once again regained composure, he brought his head back up and stared down several passer-bys before speaking again.
“Let the joy of the warrior’s zeal grip you, I say. The warrior’s zeal!” and a whoop, a battle cry echoed off the buildings and down through the street. Then the man broke into another fit of laughter, this time his head thrown back, his arms stretched out to either side like a man enjoying the feeling of rain coming down on him. “Oh Father, let them hear my voice, let my words be words of steel, oh yes, striking, oh yes, striking.”
Suddenly the Prophet stopped speaking, stopped moving, and stared down at his feet, quiet, swaying. Then he turned on his heel and walked into the front entrance of the building that he had been standing in front of, the Regence County Hospital.
- posted by Timothy @ 1:11 PM

 
Rain lashed the windows of Doctor Philip Stanton’s office as his coffee maker noisily pushed out the last few drops of water. His wife had bought the small coffee maker last Christmas for evenings such as this one. It was eight o’clock and Dr. Stanton was just beginning his shift, which wouldn’t end until six the following morning. Sitting in his chair behind his desk, he yawned and stretched his arms. It had already been a long day, and it was going to be another long night. At least I’m not out in that weather, he thought, listening to the storm push against the hospital. It sounded like a doozy.
A short, balding man with gold spectacles and a slight limp, Philip looked every bit the aging, wizened doctor. Having worked his way up in the world from a poor lower-class family background, he never took for granted his fortunate position in the hospital, even if it did demand some sleepless nights. He was single, though he had once proposed to his best friend who was a female. She had turned him down, laughing, saying, No, no, Philip, marriage is not for us. He hadn’t tried again.
At the moment, he had some emails to catch up on. The hospital had just upgraded his computer to the latest model, and although it was very fast, Philip felt lost on it. He appreciated the convenience that the machine provided him, but it was also a ceaseless cause of perplexity whenever a simple problem arose. Tonight, however, he was having no issues with it, and he was thankful for that. He was responding to an email sent to him by his sister, who had just returned from a trip to New York, where she had seen The Phantom of the Opera at the Lyceum Theater. He smiled as he read her account of the evening. The musical was one of his favorites, and sometimes he felt like the phantom himself as he strolled the deserted halls of the hospital in the small hours of the morning, lost in his thoughts. Sometimes the hospital felt haunted to him, as if the souls of those who had departed their earthly bodies still resided in the building. And twice he had heard voices.
He had never told anyone about these occurrences. He felt ashamed that he had experienced something like this—the sort of thing that belonged on a television special about haunted houses that you could see in the early hours of morning. He was a doctor, a scientific worker of health, not some shaman or voodoo practitioner. No, he had determined that he would never tell anyone about what he had heard, what the voices had said, how it seemed that they knew him.
He got up from his chair and walked over to the coffee maker, pouring a cup of the strong brew, savoring the smell. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, wasn’t addicted to any medications—this was the one vice that he afforded himself. He breathed deeply, letting the aroma wake up his senses and clear his mind. He already felt more awake before he even took his first sip. It was going to be a long night, but he was going to make it through just fine.
- posted by Timothy @ 11:41 AM

 
Yada yada yada, blaugh, plooooop!!!!!!

(got tired of no new posts on this blog)
- posted by Timothy @ 6:31 PM