Storytime

[autographedcat]

Nicked from cadhla, who got it from smallship1, who got it from Agnes....

Make up a title for a story I didn’t write, and I will respond with details of those non-written stories. You may, if you like, include details, such as pairings or fandom or whatnot. Any fandom I know is fair game. (Not, I hasten to add, necessarily fanfic, since that really isn’t my thing, but I wouldn’t rule it out either.)

Comments

[quadrivium.livejournal.com]

Hiding Under a Card Table

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Little Johnny was only eight years old, and wasn't supposed to be in the basement where his father had been building a new game room. So when he heard steps coming down, he hid the first place he could get to. That evening, he leanred many sorts of things -- the things that people only talk about around a lively poker game when the beer is cold, the chips are hot, and the wives are safely out of earshot.

[porpentine.livejournal.com]

My Time in the Maharajah's Court

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. This was my attempt to write a Bollywood screen treatment of Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress". Most of it is regretable, but I though the big musical number "Funny Once" had some promise.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

"What My Guitar Said About It All", filking world.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Ah, this was a nifty bit of wish-fullfillment. Robin Hardison is a newbie filker who chances to buy a psychic guitar in an Interfilk auction at her first filkcon. No one knows who donated it, and no one but her knows about its speical properties. When she's playing in a group, the guitar taps into the thoughts of the other musicians and she can instantly play along perfectly with whatever they're doing, even if she's never heard the song before.

But that's just the framework. The plot really drops into high gear when she finds out, through the guitar, who in the circle has an enormous crush on her, and what happens when that blossoms into a real romance!

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hope you write it. I want the guitar, and I'm a sucker for romance.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

To Say Nothing of the Bifurcated Colon

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I was attempting with this story to combine two of my favourite books: Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, and Edwin Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.

I learned a lot of lessons from writing this tory, not least of which was that unless you're Chuck Jones, a period makes a lousy protagonist.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Professor Drybone's Thursday Afternoon

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Approaching 80, Professor Drybone thought a fellowship at the natural history museum would be a nice sinecure to pass his twilight years, but when he discovers the baby dinosaur living in the basement of the abandoned library stacks, it leads to a friendship he never imagined, and the adventure of a lifetime.

[wheezinggirl.livejournal.com]

Something Isn't Right Here

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

It seemed like a normal day for Jessica, as she got up and prepared for school. But all through the day, something kept nagging at the back of her brain that the world was just a bit odd. When she finally realizes what going on, it'll take all her cleverness and the iventiveness of her her best friends Sprocket and PJ to save her town from certain disaster.

This was sort of a pre-teen Buffy the Vampire Slayer story. With zombies. For some reason, the young-adult publishers didn't exactly ring my phone off the hook.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

A Word in Spanish

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Harry expected to learn a great many things on his exchagne semester but he never expected to fall in love with Julia, his host family's pretty daughter. A touching coming-of-age story, as two young people struggle to explore their feelings through a slowly crumbling language barrier, and Harry learns there's more than one way to say "I love you."

[kitanzi.livejournal.com]

That Would Be a Good Name for a Band!

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

This was actually intended to be a faux-reality teleplay to showcase cool obscure musical artists. Think A Mighty Wind for indie rock.

Greg is the editor of Indie & Outre, a freebie weekly paper devoted to the local college music scene. When he decides hold a big music festival, he chooses the contestants soley based on how much liked their names, leading to one of the most interesting lineups in history. Features appearances by Haiku Outbreak, Peking Luck, Gods Can't Be Mammels, Fundamental Daveness, and Halfway to Elijay

[vila-resthal.livejournal.com]

"Tom Swift Jr. and the Goblet of Fire"

Ooooo, there's a very big evil grin on my face right now...

(I've been reading Wold Newton websites for the last week. It's an addiction, I tell you!)

Dan

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

When Voldemort teams up with Gharlane of Eddore and Ming the Merciless, Harry knows it'll take more than magic to save Hogwarts. Calling upon his good friend Thursday Next, he assembles a team which includes Tom Swift, Jr, Doc Savage, and Professor Bernard Quatermass. Can the combination of wizardry and muggle science defeat the evil trio once and for all?

This was written as an exercise to demonstrate how *not* to write a Mare Inebrium story. Sadly, it was wildly successful, which defeated the purpose.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

"My Accountant Is an Alien."

"Harold Was a Good Boy, until the Apocalypse."

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Trying to bring the Ace Double to fanfic, this was an odd pair of stories, which had nothing to do with one another. The first was an attempt to marry Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters" with a Douglas-Adamseque satire, but it really fell apart during Inland Revenue audit scene.

The flip story was far more successful, which simply explored the notion of a crossover between Crockett Johnson's seminal Purple Crayon series and Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens. If you thought Adam could warp reality already, wait until he teams up with Harold, and things *really* start to get strange.

[vampry.livejournal.com]

"What I Did During the Apocalypse"

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Just because the world has been plunged into nuclear winter doesn't mean you get a snow day from school. Five linked short stories, as the children at Oppenheimer Elementry School present essays about their experiences during the war.

This was a satiric period piece, set during my own middle-school years in the late 70s/early 80s, when we were all convinced that someone was going to Push The Button any day. An odd mixture of disturbingly funny, touching, and alarming call-to-action.

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

Mommy, My Manatee's Dead, Or Why You Shouldn't Shut Off The Aquarium's Heater And Air Pump When You Go To Sleep.

Related (or maybe not) lyric that's been swimming past me lately -

o/~
I'm a manatee and that's okay.
I've manna all night and tea all day.
~\o

Ann O.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Award winning oceanographer Jacques Fondmarin is away, leaving the care of his acquarium to his wife Angelique. When son Pierre realizes that the star of his father's collection is floating at the top of the tank, he and his mother have just days before Jacques returns to find an identical Manatee to replace it. Madcap fun in a screwball comedy featuring cameo apperances by Captain Nemo, Mr. Popper, and Arthur Curry.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Last Train to Lidsville

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

This was an attempt to write a parody of Jack Kerouac's seminal beat novel On The Road, in the style of Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings. Mel Utopia and Doyen Macavity take a train trip cross country in order to try and buy new hats, and on the way encounter such memorable characters as beat poet Fredericko Engels.

vila_resthal, the editor of Aphelion Webzine, called it "an masterful expression of the American mind". Three days later, when he sobered up, he added "...but largely incomprehensible. The most unreadable thing you've ever written."