Yes, I’m aware there are two lines that sound better than the rest. I fixed my audio settings after recording, then realized I’d gotten the URL wrong. Which meant I had to re-record that part so AudioGuy could patch it in for me.
Episode Transcript:
Hey everyone, and happy 2020. How have you all been?
So it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. I’m going to see if I can throw something together once a week, but who knows. Life is weird, and I’ve been running low on hit points for a while now.
I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with Inane Babble, and I’m thinking that since imPROMPTu is on hiatus at the moment, maybe I’d take that concept and use it in a modified format here. If nothing else, it’ll make me write, which has been something I’ve been blatantly avoiding for months now because depression is a thing. So I think what I’ll do for now is start with the prompt and the story that resulted, then go into whatever else I intend on mentioning. That way if any of you just want to listen to the fiction and not the blah blah blah, you can skip that easily enough.
This week I pulled up a couple prompt generators, and got a list of opening lines. One of them caught my eye, so that’s what I’m going with. So this week’s prompt is the opening line “Do you think I’m evil yet?”
“Do you think I’m evil yet?”
I looked across the table as I drank my coffee. The demon stared back at me, their eyes wide with eager anticipation. They’d shown up the week before out of nowhere, announcing that they were my own personal demon and I had to deal with them for the rest of my life.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected a personal demon to be…well, adorable. They stood about five feet tall, with red skin, curly white hair, short black horns, and equally dark eyes. They had tiny star-shaped marks scattered across their skin like freckles, except their marks glowed like fire. And while they’d informed me they were centuries old, they looked like they were maybe only old enough to have graduated high school. They also insisted that, as a demon, they were innately evil, and they were going to prove it to me.
Thus far, they had failed miserably.
“I woke up to discover that you’d already walked and fed my dog, had done my laundry, and even made breakfast.” I savored another swallow of coffee, then pointed at the mug. “And can I just say this is the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life? I’m not exactly certain how all of this is supposed to convince me that you’re evil.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” the demon said cheerfully. “I denied you the pleasure of an early-morning stroll outside, since Rupert was already taken care of.”
Rupert wagged his tail where he lay curled up against my personal demon, possibly in agreement that I had indeed been denied something amazing in being allowed to sleep in. I, however, didn’t see it that way.
“I only did your laundry because I was going to mix your reds and your whites so I could color everything pink. But did you know you don’t own anything red? Or anything white, for that matter. It’s like everything you own is either black or grey. You could use a little color in your life. It makes me worry about you.”
I hid my grin by taking another sip of my coffee.
“But at that point I’d already separated everything, so I figured I’d wash it all without fabric softener so your clothes would be full of static.”
That seemed more of a minor inconvenience than actual evil to me, really, so as far as I was concerned they’d struck out twice.
“And I used raisin bread when I made your toast this morning.”
Well, they had me there. I narrowed my eyes at them. “I see that you are, indeed, a formidable force of evil.”
They beamed at the compliment, and I couldn’t help but smile back in return.
“Can we go to the aquarium today?” the demon asked. “I want to torture you with the shrieks of small children.” They looked away, and I couldn’t say for sure but it looked to me like the red of their cheeks deepened a little. “And see the sharks,” they mumbled.
“Sure,” I said, reaching across the table to ruffle their curly hair. Then I picked up the perfectly-toasted raisin bread and took a bite.
For now, I’ll just be pulling prompts from random generators, but if you have an idea for a writing prompt you’d like me to tackle, feel free to either email me at andi at andivan.com or send me a message on twitter (@defiantandi).
So now, the blah blah blah:
As some of you may know, I pulled all my works from my now-former publisher. I’m not going to get into my opinion on what’s going on with them because it adds nothing to the narrative. But I’m in the process of getting my entire catalog back up under my own imprint, Cranky Tiger Press. Starting With The Unexpected should be back out within the next couple of weeks with some additional content, and I’m hoping to have the Mages’ Guild Trilogy back out by the end of March. Please note that the audio for Starting With The Unexpected is not new, that’s the edition still owned by my former publisher.
Krampus Hates Christmas was re-released in December, and is also available in print as well as digital this time around. Props to ML Rhodes for taking the cover that was 100% not formatted for either print or for the cover size I needed it for and making it perfect, after she’d already run the manuscript through her copy of Vellum for me so it had all new formatting and listened to all my whining. You are a rock star. For those of you who have not read any of ML’s stuff, you should. Visit authormlrhodes.com to check her out, and maybe ask her why she hasn’t written a sequel to Falling yet. (Falling is currently out of print, but I’ve been assured it’ll be available again.)
In the meantime, I’m trying to make myself get back into the swing of things with writing. I’d like to get something new published by the end of the year, but we’ll see what happens. Really, I’ll take what I can get at this point.
Thanks for listening, everyone, and don’t forget: Life is hard, so take a fucking nap.