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Post how you want, when you want. That's the rules. Rant's, fiction, poetry, whatever, but expect to be critiqued. If you don't want an honest appraisal, don't post it.

Getting ready to write my query letter and got alot of good points from this article.

The Complete Nobody's Guide to Query Letters

Dissected and examined critically, the query letter is an elegantly concise piece of promotional writing. You have exactly one page to introduce yourself ...

www.sfwa.org/writing/query.htm

Wanted to share our annual Valentine's Roast with you!

Hope you enjoy! We did!

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I am new here... but I WAS invited... lolol See under replies for the almost daily (sometimes) edition of the News... Also, be advised that I pick on everybody so be prepared!

Hugs all... meems, the bad

Okay, somebody tell me a story. 1500 words minimum, 3000 max, about a gunfighter that's tired of being one, but has the rep, so he's always got guy's trying to best him. This could be old west, but for a switch, make it more modern day.

The sun comes through the window and I wake up. It's another day, Friday? Yes, maybe Friday… or it could be Tuesday… I don't know. I can see, I can feel, I can cry, I can laugh… I can.
The clock chimes three or did I miss a chime… it could be two or six for all I know… I check.. I was wrong, it's nine.
What have I done today? I remember dressing otherwise I would be writing this naked as the day I was born and the same amount of wrinkles showing. Did I eat today? Let's see, ya a banana and a few drinks of water… but mostly soda and four or five hours in front of the computer trying to understand a story or two.
Giving up on the stories, I tuned in wimp dot com and watched some videos… cars skidding out of control on slick roads in Salt Lake City… why would anyone think that's interesting except for the poor man or woman who's driving that car which is about to hit the curb possibly breaking something. Or maybe it's funny to them because it is not their car that's skidding down the road sideways… maybe?
I skip ahead and find a woman on a unicycle which is about ten feet tall… exaggerated… and is about to pile a bunch of plates on one foot, balancing with the other and flip those pates up and on her head. I applaud her skill. Maybe I should try it… nah, I would fall off the unicycle before I got the plates in my hand let alone get the unicycle up and balanced.
A penguin is my next feature… it was born with a deformed foot. Doctors designed a makeover foot for the creature so it could make a living, eat, walk, and possibly be eaten by a shark. (A delicacy to them).
Flip the channel and watch a video about giving and caring. A man is walking down the street and sees another trying to get an overstuffed suitcase out of the trunk of his car. The man could just walk by and do nothing, instead he stops and helps. The man with the suitcase appreciated his help and paid for the kindness by helping a young boy who had just fallen off his skateboard… who then helped a lady across the street… hummm… she was so moved she helped another woman trying to find change in her purse for the parking meter. The lady who was helped by the boy dropped two quarters in the meter and walked on.
Farther down this road of helping others, was a man who dropped his wallet. The woman who didn't have change for the meter picked up the wallet and gave it to the man who in kind saw a homeless man sitting in a doorway. There was a vendor on the corner. The man bought two hotdogs, one for himself and the other for the homeless man. The vendor saw this and gave the homeless man a bottle of water.
All morning and into the afternoon I watched video after video, about science, about cars skidding out of control and one about love for a stranger, another human being.
I sat here and cried until I knew I had to write something about my morning… sitting here alone with a dog who think she owns me… she might… and a cats who knows she owns me… check out the fur balls on my clothing… and wonder where these people are in my town.
News report:Two people got into a fight over a cell phone… one is now dead, the other in fear of his life because he protected his Mother from the gun wielding punks who were only on a mission to join a gang and this was their invitation to prove themselves of being rough enough to kill another… instead he died… I guess he wasn't as tough as he thought… he would have been 15 this year.
Flash: A fight broke out in a bar over a spilled drink. One man critical, two women who were celebrating their birthdays, were cut from flying glass but would live. The man who pulled a knife and shanked the first man will spend 30-50 years in jail over a $2.50 beer.
Good News: The highway department is getting 3 million dollars to upgrade street lights to the new low cost ($250.00 each) lamps so the city can save $10,000 over the next five years. Guess what? Those same street thugs will shoot out those lights with automatic weapons before the seal has set on the glass.
Where in the town I live in is that man who bought a hotdog for a homeless man? He doesn't live here nor would he survive here because the homeless man would shank him for the rest of the money in his wallet…
Just a thought: I think I would like to move into YouTube, Wimp and those other viral video showplaces… it seems safer.

Afternoon in Biarritz

by

Steven Hunley

F. Scottt was looking at his shoulder, checking out his tan. Zelda was the first in the surf. Crazy Zelda anyway. She was such a risk taker. She found the page of the ‘mystery’ novel draped over the deck of a toy French battle ship, the 1928 Dunkerque Battle Cruiser out of Brest. It was a wooden model made to scale, bobbing up and down in the surf. Some captains of the French navy were at a meeting, got drunk on Cognac and stole it off the mantel from the officers’ club, and brought it to Biarritz to float in some kind of an experiment that the men were betting on. French sailors are big on gambling. They’d lost it in a rip current, and eventually it washed in near Zelda who was wading in the next hidden cove.

Dear Valentine
By Rosie Summerplace Another year has passed and I find myself staring out my office window. I am daydreaming about the day we met. It was cool, somewhat like today. I shivered with delight the day you saw me. My heart pounded as you moved close to me. I couldn't hardly breath as you touched me.
Now as I scan the sky I watch a wayward cloud pass the building across from mine, the clouds edges twist and turn until its outline is of your handsome, but not too handsome, face. I press my hand against the glass to brush your golden hair from your sky blue eyes so I may see them again.
Valentine, you were one face in a sea of faces... but to me you stood out among the many faces I saw that day. I thought back to the many Valentine's in my lifetime... some said hello kindly... others held a door for me... you were the one who swept me up in your arms and cradled me. Your strong arms held me as if you were afraid you would drop me... but you didn't allow yourself to squeeze too hard.
It was as if it were yesterday, light flakes were falling from the sky. When you saw me, you reached down, picked me up and walked slowly so not to slip on the already slick sidewalk. As more flakes fell, you held onto me harder but not so hard to crush the breath out of me. My arms were around your neck as you softly set me on the awaiting bed... I looked up at you and smiled. I remember the smile you returned as you turned and walked away. That smile was for me, only for that moment, and I shall never forget it. I felt in my soul the love you had in your heart.
Dearest Valentine, I knew the day we met, I wasn't the only one whose day you brightened with your wonder smile and gentle arms. I hope you know I would never be jealous if you shared your beautiful smile with others, your love should never be for one.
The sadness of the day we met was, I never got to know your name... the flecks of ash covered your name tag, but know I did see the Harold which held your Code of Honor and the honor of the men you were with... Fire Department of New York City.
My Dearest Valentine, know I love you and always will remember you and the day you gave me the most wonderful of gifts, the gift of life.
Sweetheart, please know you are always in my prayers and I will write you again next year and the next and next.
I am again crying at the cost, because… My Valentine, I know you were one of many Valentines who didn't go home that September day in 2001. This tear stained letter and all that I have written each year will be saved to give to you when I know your name, until then they will remain To The Unknown Valentine who saved me... and when we each other meet in heaven... you'll be my dearest Valentine and I yours'.

Mags.
My name is Margaret Sybil Broadly Benson (nee Spencer) but you can call me Mags. I should tell you I’ve been married three times, not twice, but the last guy, Jimmy Hooper, hardly counted. We were only married for five months before he died. I didn’t even bother to change my name, not that I would have because Henry Benson was the love of my life and I wasn’t about to give up his name, especially not for a little marriage of convenience like my last husband was. You don’t have to become my friend to call me Mags; I’m Mags to everyone: friend and foe alike.
Only two people ever called me Margaret. The first was my mother. Most people will tell you their first memory is of their mother bringing home a sibling or of going off to the hospital for a tonsillectomy, but my earliest memory is of Mother and Father arguing about my name.
“Mags. What kind of a name is that to be calling our girl, George? It sounds like she’s a larval stage of some unpleasant biting insect. If you must give her a pet name, what’s wrong with calling her something more conventional like Maggie or Meg?”
“You’re looking at Mags the wrong way, Henrietta. Think of Mags as the name of a girl whose life will be full of freedom and possibilities. It would be perfectly acceptable for a girl named Mags to have skinned knees and learn to kick a ball as well as any boy does. She can become a scientist or live her life as an explorer who studies Egyptian pyramids. Why, one day Mags might go to The Valley of The Kings and discover a tomb that’s grander that King Tut’s.”
“I’ve given you three sons, George. They can do those things for you. I finally have my precious little girl. I want to put her in frilly pink dresses and white Mary Janes and have her learn what it means to remain a perfect lady even under the most trying conditions. I want her to marry well. No young woman called Mags can make the kind of marriage I envision for Margaret.”
“Humph, “he blew air out of his nose, “if the name Mags is unacceptable to her future husband, it will be because you’d have her married to some stogy type who doesn’t appreciate her or her accomplishments.”
“Not at all. I can imagine Margaret as the wife of a prominent man, possibly a renown general or a diplomat to an important country, or a Senator—why, I could even see her as The First Lady of the land—and for that kind of future, she must be able to command respect in the world. She will need to be taken seriously. No one will take her seriously if her name is Mags.”
They went on like that until my father said with grand finality that Mags suited me better than any other name, but I know suitability was only part of why father insisted on calling me by that peculiar abridgement of Margaret. He relished the tiny irritated twitch that flitted across Mother’s lips anytime he or my big brothers called me Mags. Oh, don’t get me wrong, my father loved my mother, but by the time I came along well after my mother passed the age when it was considered polite for a woman to produce a child, he’d had enough of her proper demeanor and Episcopalian managerial style —what with him being one of those radical Methodists — that he’d do whatever he could to loosen her up, or barring that, shake her up. So he dubbed me Mags not so much because the nickname was apt but because it perturbed my mother.
My parents lost my oldest brother, Richard, to pneumonia when I was ten. Had he become ill just a few years later and been treated with penicillin, he might have survived. Unfortunately for him, and for all of us, his death occurred before its advent. Brother Morton died suddenly in a boating accident the following summer. He was so alive and teasing at breakfast and so pale and still before nightfall…at least with Richard, even though there was the worry and the pleading with God, there was a little time to prepare.
The telegram that arrived telling them James, their youngest son, died on Omaha Beach as an Assistant Division Commander leading his men ashore made his death even more sudden. Everyone understood what telegrams meant that far into the War, and to this day I remember Mrs. Anderson collapsing to her knees when the postman came, and how Mother dashed across the street not even looking both ways for cars like she taught me to do…still. That telegram killed my father as surely as if he had been shot through the heart like Robert was; it just took him three years to die from his wound. After that, Mother had me to herself, and I, not wanting to risk her health, too, as she said I would if I insisted on being called Mags, felt too alone and heartbroken to resist her. I allowed myself to become Margaret for a year and succumbed to a huge June wedding at age nineteen to the man of my mother’s dreams— the second person in my life who called me Margaret.
I knew the enormity of the mistake I was making as I walked down the aisle toward Bradley Broadly. Can you imagine the cruel thoughtlessness of a father who would name his son Bradley Broadly? Oh, I know, his name came from an amalgamation of two prominent families and their names, but really. It was no surprise to me that our marriage did not go well. I tried, but without a heartfelt commitment, it was more of a challenge for me to be Margaret Broadly than I was up to; I left him after two years much to the chagrin—no, to the utter mortification— of my mother, who found herself having to cope with the scandal of having a divorced daughter.
I felt guilty but free. I reclaimed my name the day I walked out of the grand house and the ostentatious future that marriage to Bradley Broadly promised because Father was right; Mags did suit me.
Possibly it was having three older brothers during my formative years that made me the way I am, still a tomboy at the age of eighty three, but more probably it was because my second husband, Henry Benson, saw me as the Mags of my father’s imaginings. With my hand in his, and my name forever Mags Benson, I became a true adventurer and a world wanderer.
Wherever Henry and I settled, we knew our tenure was temporary. When we found ourselves staying overlong and beginning to feel stifled by our surroundings , we would buy a crisp new map, open it and refold it haphazardly, and then stick a pin though it. We would pick a letter of the alphabet, unfold the map, and the pinpricked town that began with the letter closest to the one we chose would become our next stop. One day when we were beginning to feel caged by The City by the Bay, we found an old globe for sale in a second hand shop called Rotten Tillie’s. It was out of date and cheap as a result, but it still spun wonderfully on its stand…we immediately decided to broaden our horizons from the United States to the entire world. It meant we didn’t have to pick a letter any longer; we simply had to give the globe a spin and, with eyes closed, stop it with a touch of a finger to find our new destination. On occasion we did have to go to a library and match our globe’s coordinates with an updated world because our fingers pointed to a country that no longer existed, but cities and towns didn’t vanish under new management, so we were always able to locate our goal. Spinning our globe to find a new home worked remarkably well; we only found ourselves destined for the middle of open ocean once, even though so much of our planet is covered by water.
Henry had a small inheritance. His father, Reginald Benson, had carefully selected conservative but steady dividend-paying stocks which passed to Henry after his father’s death, and I was usually able to find a small job teaching English to locals or tutoring the children of American ex-pats wherever we went. Henry held a B.S. in Botany and indulged in his passion for studying local flora as we traveled. He produced three scholarly works based on his discoveries which were published by his alma mater, but they were hardly titillating best-sellers. We had to be careful with money because we never had a great deal of it. It didn’t matter—we had the life we wanted, the life we loved living.
I also believe it was my name being Mags that led to me enjoy the company of men more than that of women, well, that and the fact I have more of Father in me than Mother. I do have female friends who count as more than mere acquaintances, but they are few in number and all are past sixty, a requirement for me to feel close to them. Women younger than that trouble me. They aren’t old enough to have been aware of what it was like just a few decades ago when women weren’t allowed to control their bodies or their purse-strings. Their lack of age isn’t their fault, but they should read some history so they understand. A quick little look at recent history and they’d never have stood for some talk-show natterer who thinks his opinion is as weighty as he is saying stupid things about how he’d never vote for Hillary Clinton for president because he couldn’t stand to see her age in office. They’d boycott his show, and they’d be right to do it.
Of course it’s possible I prefer the company of men because they generally seem less well suited to learning patience and acceptance than women are. You don’t hear “long suffering” ascribed like a badge of honor to men like you do to women. I think that’s because men don’t bear children: they’ve never had their bodies taken over by a being growing inside them and been acculturated to think of it as a normal part of life, a blessing as it were. And since I’m what in the old days was called barren, maybe that’s why I’ve never learned patience and acceptance either.
That’s probably why I’m sitting here staring at the Great Seal Of California displayed on the courtroom wall behind the judge’s bench wishing the jury would come back rather than counting my blessings that they haven’t. I want to get on with it—however things turn out.

The Loneliness of the ‬Long-distance Postman
‬‬‬
by
‬‬‬
Steven Hunley

Do you know where the world’‬s only drive-in post office is? ‬It’‬s in Chicago. ‬But there have ‬been post offices even more remote than that. ‬You didn’‬t have to drive to get there either.

I can’‬t say this is my own story, ‬or even that it runs in the family. ‬It was, ‬in fact, ‬related to my grand-father over a glass of port by Somerset Maugham one night after dinner in Villa ‬Mauresque in St Jean Cap Ferrat, ‬in France. ‬You’‬ve heard of it no doubt. ‬This happened in about nineteen sixty-four. ‬It’‬s never been written down. ‬Maugham died shortly thereafter. ‬He discovered it on one of his trips to the ‬South Seas. ‬While pouring two glasses of port for himself and ‬Granddad, ‬he hesitated a moment, as if he was remembering, then said,