February 18th, 2552 A new Project Shuttle pilot/Lab Rat/mechanic’s apprentice – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting It seems that before I can work on adding an arm to the Gumbo, I need to work on the arm on Big Momma. It started malfunctioning during some of the training runs for taking samples. So, I have to […]
Read More 49-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsFebruary 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 16th, 2552 Assignment Envy Shuttle pilot/Lab Rat/Mechanic’s Apprentice – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting The science boys have mapped out the area and have identified several likely planets to explore – with FTL up and operational, the plan is to leave the Valhalla as our base of operations and then have different ships take different […]
Read More 47-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsFebruary 14th, 2552 Shakedown cruise Pilot of the RS Gumbo/Lab Rat/mechanic in training – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting I have been informed by several people in several departments, that I am not taking myself and/or my position seriously enough. Several people demanded I rename my ship with something more heroic but— that’s just not who […]
Read More 45-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsFebruary 8th, 2552 Arcade Games Flight Simulator Failure/Lab Rat – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting Today, based on the new protocols, all pilots were called upon to report to the simulator for training. My problem is— the simulator isn’t real. In the history of simulators, I have yet to find one that actually handled like a […]
Read More 39-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsFebruary 7th, 2552 New Protocols Metallurgy trainee/Lab Rat – Katherine ‘Kat’ James Reporting Spending the night onboard the Twilight was— surreal. There’s only a skeleton crew, and everyone there was either sleeping with a spacesuit in hand, sleeping in an escape pod – or simply not sleeping. I spent most of the night dozing in […]
Read More 38-Valkyrie’s View: A Year Among the StarsToday I’ve decided to do something different with my ‘post game’ analysis of my FlashFiction story. Today, rather than watching the actual story develop, I’m going to talk about how the idea of the story developed and the adventure and inspiration behind the story. Last week’s FlashFiction challenge was posted here: Flash! Friday # 37 (and […]
Read More Anatomy of a story – FlashFriday #37This week’s flash fiction presented a unique series of problems, both expected and unexpected. The prompt itself was a picture of a cable car: The target word count: 75 words (give or take 5) My mind went immediately to ‘Where Eagles Dare’ and I came up with the rough draft almost immediately. Martin looked at […]
Read More Stories in the 75 word rangeWe all like to put our best foot forward. As a writer, I want people to be interested in what I write, I want them to see what I can do and I do not want to fall flat. So when I went to Flash!Friday and nothing called to me… I had a decision to […]
Read More To Post or not to PostYesterday I posted my edits for the flash fiction contest I’d entered, taking the story down to it’s required 150 words (give or take 25), and I said, that it would be a better story if I could take it to the 300-500 range. This sounded like a good exercise to me, and so this […]
Read More FlashFiction rewrite