It's Christmas Eve so I thought it a good day to give my best wishes for the season, whatever days you may be celebrating, to the folks of StoriesSpace. We are few but dedicated, it seems. Hoping you and yours have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year when we get there in a week.
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Talia has never seen the movie
😲 Yeesh, I kind of thought that movie was required viewing for boomers and Gen-X, maybe millennials, too. I've probably seen it twice but not in a very long time.
Good day before the day before Christmas (aka Christmas Eve Eve). Just chillin' and looking at possible vacations for 2026. I am still working on my story but it's kind of stalling. And it's turning out longer than I expected. I had been shooting for something I could get out fairly quickly but it's evolving into another long piece.
I'll refresh the coffee and tea. Here's some seasonal goodies, too.
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I’m headed to a handbell concert at Dad’s assisted living place. Dad’s in it… the red bell.
Oo, that's an interesting activity for a place like that. A couple churches around here have handbell "choirs" but never thought of it for an LTC (longterm care, as we call them in the healthcare world in Ontario) or retirement home activity.
Writing a new fantasy story. It's set in winter and gets a bit nasty (dismembered corpses appear) so will likely fall under "dark fantasy" genre-wise. It's nominally in the same world as the Chronicles of Tana and Shadows of Tan Maldrin (which also get pretty dark) but I'm avoiding connecting it to those beyond some setting elements.
Coffee and tea are freshened up. How's your weekend going?
Still lots of snow on the ground here but it's not coming as much and we are supposed to be into warmer weather by Christmas Day. So maybe not a white or green Christmas but somewhere in between. Which usually means kind of miserable, to be honest.
I am off work and trying to write. Got a story in mind, but my mood today isn't quite in the right place and I'm not sure where it's going. Still, I'm writing.
Coffee and tea are refreshed. Cold beverages, hot chocolate, and goodies all lookin' good.
How's things this second last weekend of 2025?
From their 2023 album Light Up, the beautiful "Bulbul Tarang" with guest vocalist Christopher Sampson. Lead vocals are by Jess Holland of the band. Those gorgeous harmonies are at it again and there's some terrific guitar work from Andy.
The title, I have found out, is the name of the Indian instrument that Andy plays at the beginning.
I discovered Solstice recently. They are a prog band with strong folk, new age, and other influences. It's a large band, an eight piece with 3 vocalists plus a violinist who occasionally doubles as a fourth vocalist. Like a lot of prog bands, they've been through myriad lineup changes. The only member who has been with the band from the beginning is guitarist Andy Glass and its basically his pet project. He's dissolved and reformed it a couple times since starting the band back in 1980. This is the current lineup doing a song dating back to the very first Solstice album. Vocalist is Ebony Buckle and she has a lovely voice. I love the harmonies that they get going among the three vocalists, which come out nicely in this performance.
Author's Publish for this week offers 30 magazine markets taking Flash and, in odd cases, shorter fiction. Flash here seems to mean anything from 600 words for one pub to 1500 for some others (and that's the limit the article uses). Our familiar 1000 shows up a lot, too. Genres and themes are all over the map. I do like writing flash but obviously it isn't going to pay that well even if they pay per story rather than per word. Still, if you want try publishing professionally and prefer shorter lengths, here you go.
https://authorspublish.com/30-magazines-accepting-flash-fiction/
Good that your father seems to have found some friends, or at least kindred spirits. Hope that keeps things easier for you going forward.
Winter is back after a couple warmer days. My son and his wife came down last night rather than risking the weather turning foul again. They're crashing at her mom's place. We will see them later, hopefully a few times.
I'll put some seasonal coffee on, the Holiday Winter Blend from Pilot Coffee. For teas, there's Assam and Irish Breakfast. We have hot chocolate with marshmallows available. If you're needing something cold, there's iced tea and lemonade in the fridge. And I will set out some goodies. I'll get some Christmas-y ones later.
Hello. No, I haven't vanished from the face of the Earth (I know, I know, sighs of disappointment there 😜). Just been kind of neglecting this place for some reason. I'll get back in the swing of things. New Year's Resolution is to get more writing going and some of that, maybe all of it, will go here.
Cora, nice to see you back around. Sorry to hear about Rose but glad Sasha has come into your life.
Take care all and have a good holiday season! I'm off work next week so might be around more.
That's rough. My Dad kind of clammed up and went into almost a coma once he was in care so we didn't have a lot of experiences like you're describing. Vibes to you and others affected.
Love that Christmas village. My mother did some neat decorating but I don't think she had an actual village, though I have seen them before. We did have this big Styrofoam church with a light inside that shone through the fake stained glass windows (just colourful paper, basically) and then a couple clay figurines of choirboys that we set alongside it.
Lot of snow here and it's cold (-5C or so highs, lows below -10C). Winter is quite early this year.
Crap, has it been almost a week? Sorry, didn't realize I had been away that long.
Anyhow, there's fresh Kicking Horse Grizzly Claw in the coffee pots. For teas, we've got Irish Breakfast and Earl Grey Cream. Fresh pitchers of iced tea and lemonade are mixed up and the sodas are stocked. Hot chocolate, with or without marshmallows, is an option, too.
Not much happening here, at least of a literary nature. My wife's new desktop PC came so I spent the weekend working on it along with my usual weekly cleaning. Now that's done, I can maybe get back to writing.
Later alligators. Here's yummies.
At seven, Taylor Momsen played Cindy Lou Who in How The Grinch Stole Christmas opposite Jim Carrey. In that movie, she sang "Where Are You Christmas?". Now 32, Momsen quit acting several years ago to be a singer full time. Today, she fronts the rock band The Pretty Reckless (and is doing a fine, bangup job of it, too). And one of the tracks on their new Christmas EP is, you guessed it, a rocked up version of "Where Are You Christmas?"
Love the opening with Taylor watching her seven-year-old self on Leno with her childhood version of the song playing. And the outro with adult Taylor singing the original arrangement is nice, too. Ties everything together with a nice red Christmas bow.
A influenzas are the worst, I find. H1N1 is an A strain and that was the last really bad flu I had. Went through my son's school before the vaccines were out so we hadn't been vax'd yet. That was a long time ago now, though.
Good morning. Snow is here again. That's now three times shovelling and there's still three weeks to go until the solstice. Ugh. Not looking forward to this winter. At least it was less, and lighter, than the last one.
Coffee for this week shall be Fire Roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Teas are Assam Organic and Yorkshire Red. Fresh pitchers of iced tea and lemonade are mixed up in the fridge. We have hot chocolate available with minimarshmallows (which, sadly, aren't going down as fast as they used to). And there's some fresh goodies out.
