So, let’s talk promo. No, let’s do promo. And vignettes. In fact, I’m copying here my post from ATH. Because I can. Got a problem? Bah. You can send us a post, then.
The Oyster Returns to Promo Town
G. Scott Huggins
A Doctor to Dragons
Everyone says it was better in the Good Old Days. Before the Dark Lord covered the land in His Second Darkness.
As far as I can tell, it wasn’t that much better. Even then, everyone cheered the heroes who rode unicorns into combat against dragons, but no one ever remembered who treated the unicorns’ phosphine burns afterward. Of course, that was when dragons were something to be killed. Today I have to save one. Know what fewmets are? No? Then make a sacrifice of thanks right now to whatever gods you worship, because today I have to figure a way to get them flowing back out of the Dark Lord’s favorite dragon. Yeah, from the other end. And that’s just my most illustrious client. I’ve got orcs and trolls who might eat me and dark elf barons who might sue me if their bloodhawks and chimeras don’t pull through. And that doesn’t even consider the possibility that the old bag with the basilisk might show up.
Mary Catelli
Through A Mirror, Darkly
What lies behind a reflection?
Powers have filled the world with both heroes and villains. Helen, despite her own powers, had acquired the name Sanddollar but stayed out of the fights.
When the enigmatic chess masters create a mirrored world reflecting her own home and the world about it, it’s not so easy to escape. All the more in that the people of that world are a dark reflection of all those she knows.
RD Meyer
Akeldama
Seth Gendrickson has worked for the Catholic Church’s Order of Mount Sion since his initial encounter with a vampire during seminary years ago. Finally working his way up to the rank of Hunter, Seth’s first assignment is to investigate a spike in vampire activity in Kansas, an area previously quiet. The region between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River had been a kind of neutral zone for the two main factions – The Assembly of Cairo and Los Muertos. The Assembly hails from Europe, and although few in numbers, is the older of the sects and far more powerful. Los Muertos saw opportunity in the New World, so they established themselves in the Americas and began to multiply. They are young, aggressive, and passionate.
And they’re moving east.
Seth is under orders to figure out what’s going on before an all out vampire civil war brings knowledge of such supernatural creatures into the open and causes societal panic, a situation the Church is keen to avoid. During his mission, Seth captures one of the enemy and interrogates it, but he soon finds that the movement east is less an invasion than it is an influx of refugees fleeing a greater threat. Something is hunting the vampires out west, something more terrifying than the risk of conflict. Seth tracks this threat from California to Japan and across Europe to discover the heart of a conspiracy that stretches back 2,000 years and threatens the future of the world.
Anthology
The Fantastic Flying Saucer Stories
Lights in the sky. Strange visitors. Clashes between the FBI and a mysterious group of men clad in black.
For as far back as history goes, there has been one unanswered question that just won’t seem to go away: What are those unidentifiable flying objects in the sky? And furthermore, who are they?
With stories spanning the past, present and future, this anthology focuses on this question that has made Science-Fiction great for the better part of a century. Enclosed in this book are stories of survival, as children under the care of a church group rebel against authorities in hopes of reuniting with their family, as well as tales of friendship, as a hunting instructor finds his strange visitors to be not quite so fearsome as the town thinks they might be. Tales of simple curiosity are found here too, as a young couple set up recording equipment in hopes of finding answers, and learn that just maybe this abduction business isn’t for everyone.
Jon M. Jefferson
The Black Medallion
In an age of steam, the world is divided by the power of aether and the shapers who can pull power from crystals. Little magics define the course of lives for those who can use them and those who can not.
Tisdan Thinkledor, a thief from lowtown has never thought of the politics or games played by those in power. His days have been planned from the next purse he can cut to the next mark to be tagged. A life led from station to station along the path of the trains that connect the lives within the city.
Sometimes, it is the little things that change the world around you. A matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, can change the future.
Henry Vogel
The Recognition Run
Recognition Book 1
Jeanine is on the run from someone very powerful. She doesn’t know who wants her dead, or why. She only knows they have already killed her family, and if they catch her, she’s next.
Drake’s family was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now, he drifts from spaceport to spaceport, searching for cargo and running from the grief he can never escape. When Jeanine barrels into Drake’s life, he must push aside his grief and run with her.
But time is not their ally. When they cannot run from their enemies, Jeanine’s and Drake’s only hope is to run toward those enemies. Their only hope is to make The Recognition Run.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.
Your writing prompt this week is: rotten
Mad Genius Club 
So do we copy and paste our vignettes from ATH here then? One copy and paste deserves another. 😀
You can send us a post, then.
And if you send it Express, it’s post haste.
And the poster, the haster.
Hastily re-posted from my previously posted post:
Just then an errant breeze wafted the smell of the corpse briefly over Cook. He’d been to some ripe crime scenes before, but this was different. Not the smell of rot or corruption, those were bad but natural, expected. This was something out of his experience, and it turned his stomach. Revolted, he poured the rest of his coffee on the ground. “Little green men, eh?” he muttered. “If I get my hands on one of the bastards, he’ll never make it to the station alive, that’s for damn sure.”
Cut-and-paste for the win! ~:D
I’m pretty new here so I hope I’m not stepping on any toes, but, depending on what you wish to focus on, I can think of two ways you can shorten this down to 50 words or less.
If you want to focus on mostly on the smell, you could try something like this:
An errant breeze wafted the smell of the corpse briefly over Cook. He’d been to some ripe crime scenes before, but this was different. Not the smell of rot or corruption, those were bad but natural, expected. Stomach churning, he poured the rest of his coffee on the ground.
Or if you wanted to focus more on Cook and his reaction to both the smell and Little Green Men in general, you could try something like this perhaps:
“Little green men?” Cook muttered. He’d been to ripe crime scenes. The smell of rot or corruption was bad but natural. Nothing like this. He poured out the rest of his coffee. “If I get my hands on one of the bastards, he won’t make it to the station alive.”
OK, here goes. Down to 50 words. Only you can judge if it keeps the essence of what you were trying to say.
This was worse than just another ripe crime scene. Corruption’s odor was foul, but natural; the stench from this corpse was anything but. Sickened, Cook let his coffee dribble to the ground. “Little green men? I get my hands on those bastards, they’ll never make it to the station alive.”
Nice! Thanks Dan and Catrin!
Thank you for saying so. I was feeling guilty for barging in and stomping all over your work. But I couldn’t resist the challenge. *looks embarrassed*
I just wanted to second this – both the thanks and the awkward-guilty-embarrassed parts.
Here’s my rotten inspired 50-word vignette – no, wait, that isn’t right.
Here’s my 50-word vignette inspired by rotten:
The Zeppelin had crashed some time ago. The dust storms had reduced its fabric shell to tatters that clung limply to bent and broken support ribs reaching forlornly toward the clear winter sky. There was no movement, no sign of life, and the smell of rot tainted the still air.
I’ll play, if that’s all right:
_Rotten_
It began as creamed chicken. Now it regards me greenly from the refrigerator shelf.
I’d throw it away, but I’m tired and I don’t want to lose the jar.
Oh crap. An eye. It _is_ glaring at me.
Is that a tentacle?
I think I’ll have dinner out this evening.
That’s almost like a haiku. 🙂
Thinking I should change the last line to:
“This evening, I’ll have dinner out.”
The rhythm’s better.