February 17th, 2552 Stir Crazy Shuttle pilot/Lab Rat/mechanic’s apprentice – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting It seems that the attitude of the flight deck is following the science department’s lead – the only pilots who need to work on landing and dusting off from different surfaces are the pilots selected for the exploration missions, so all […]
Read More 48-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsFebruary 13th, 2552 Christening Shuttle pilot/Lab Rat/mechanic in training – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting I know Cookie is trying to bring me out of my funk – and I know we need proof that we can adapt vehicles to our new environment but it seems a little crass to launch the Franen-ship, not this close […]
Read More 44-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsJanuary 11th, 2552 Evac Drill A Bunny suited Katherine ‘Kat’ James reporting There’s nothing like an emergency drill after the fact. The ‘Twilight of the Gods’ hull ruptured. The emergency call rippled through the fleet. Before the klaxons fell silent, half the crew was gone. There was a tense silence as the recovery teams were […]
Read More 11-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsJanuary 10th, 2552 Ship Shape isn’t all that shapely Pilot Katherine ‘Kat’ James reporting Now that we are officially in unknown territory we’re working our way through systems checks. I’m learning a lot about swearing, detecting areas of radioactive saturation and stress, what Cookie calls ‘an RS and S’ check. My part of the check […]
Read More 10-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsIt’s hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since I started entering flash fiction competitions but I’ve learned a lot in that year: the most important lesson I think is to trust your instincts and don’t get too hung up on the judging: focus on the story. Sure, winning is great (and addictive) […]
Read More Flash Fiction – a Matter of OpinionAs stated in the overview, emotion, rhythm and meaning are building blocks of poetry. In Part 1 we discussed them in relationship to words, now it’s time to think about their relationship to each other. One of the best examples of this relationship is music. Strip out the lyrics and you are left with rhythm […]
Read More Poetry: Part 2 InterrelationshipsFlashFriday just celebrated its anniversary last week, and this week marks the start of a new year and a new judging cycle… only this quarter: I’m a judge. Friday arrived and I did what I do every Friday since I discovered FlashFriday (http://flashfriday.wordpress.com/) I waited until after midnight to look at the picture before going […]
Read More Flash Friday Vol.2 -1 Adventures in JudgingI’ve talked about the rhythm we can create with words and the emotion we can convey with them. What I’d like to do now is talk about meaning. The values we assign to words depend on our experiences, or point of reference and our culture– the key when writing, especially when writing poetry is to […]
Read More Poetry: Part 1 Words and meaningI used to like yard sales, a lot. I loved going through things and finding lost treasures; getting a good deal. And then I grew older, and more to the point I joined the Reserves (not the Military Reserves, but the Deputy Sheriff’s Reserves.) Then I saw the traffic hazards. Then I saw people parking randomly […]
Read More Things I used to like