Category: Fiction Friday

To Talk Like a Pirate

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

Today is a very special day.  🙂  Today, Pirates of the Caribbean 4 premieres, so you can imagine where I’ll be tonight!

If someone had told me eight years ago that I’d one day be going to see the fourth adventure of Captain Jack Sparrow…I might have believed them!  Especially since Johnny Depp said, way back when, that he’d be in for Pirates 6 or 7.  And I’m right there with him.  In some ways, I’m an easy fan–put Johnny on the screen as Captain Jack, and I’m there.  Throw in mermaids and zombies and Blackbeard, and that just makes it better.

Considering the occasion, I naturally have to give you a POTC story for Fiction Friday.  I decided to go with a short story I wrote, almost eight years ago.  This is set midway through the first movie.  Jack and Will are on their way to Tortuga, to pick up a crew before going to rescue Will’s kidnapped ladylove, Elizabeth.  And along the way, they have a language lesson.

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            Will realized, as he turned away from the railing of the ship, that Jack was staring at him.  He frowned.  “Something wrong, Jack?”

“Well…I’ve been thinkin’,” the pirate captain admitted.

Will felt a qualm of worry.  He hadn’t known Jack for long, but it had been long enough to know that when Jack started thinking, things started happening.  “What about?” he asked warily.

Continue reading “To Talk Like a Pirate” →

A Day for Bad Luck

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction FridayLeave a comment

Today happens to be Friday the Thirteenth.  So I can’t resist sharing a story I wrote several years ago about how my recurring character, Sam Jones, spent Friday the Thirteenth.  This is a scene from a long Star Trek serial I wrote.  The only context you need, aside from a slight knowledge of major characters from the original Star Trek, is that in a previous chapter Dr. McCoy adopted a black cat and named him Surak, after the Vulcan philosopher (on the theory that they both had black hair and pointed ears).

And, of course, it also helps to know that traditionally, terrible things always happen to the red-shirted security guards aboard Kirk’s Enterprise.

For more backstory on Jones in particular, check out the Richard Samuel Jones category of Fiction Friday posts.

One other note: Jones was always my red-shirt when I was writing Star Trek stories.  For this scene I also borrowed a friend’s red-shirt, Lt. Simmons.  Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I can send you over to her blog as a years-later thank-you for the loan.  🙂 So I don’t own Lt. Simmons, or Star Trek, or any other copyrighted material involved.  On to the story…

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Simmons, deputy chief of security, had a problem.  He often had problems, to tell the truth.  Problems happened when your department lost a man or two every week or so.  But this was rather a different sort of problem.  And whenever someone had a different sort of problem, they tended to call up the captain.  No particular reason, simply because.  So Simmons contacted the bridge.

“Captain Kirk?  I have a slight problem,” Simmons said over the comm.

“Oh.”  Kirk considered.  On the emergency scale, ‘slight problems’ could rate anywhere from one to ten.  From Scotty, ‘slight problems’ could mean imminent warp core ejection.  Definitely a ten.  Tens rarely came from security though.  “What slight problem is that?”

“Well…one of our security guards, Ensign Jones, is refusing to report for duty.”

Continue reading “A Day for Bad Luck” →

Bookish Hostilities

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday4 Comments

Some backstory on the inspiration for today’s Fiction Friday–I was talking with a friend last week about e-readers, and she was explaining a problem with hers.  I don’t pretend to understand exactly how it all works, but apparently she had downloaded books from one source, and now it was refusing to let her download another source’s books.  This led me to comment that my paper books had never objected to sitting next to each other…which led us into a conversation about books elbowing each other off of the shelves…which led quite natrually to this comic I couldn’t resist drawing…

In the interest of full disclosure, perhaps I should confess that I did actually enjoy Twilight (in a WHY AM I ENJOYING THIS? kind of way) and Dracula has been sitting on my To Be Read pile for way too long…but quite apart from my own preferences, I can easily imagine the books engaging in hostilities!  Do you have any books that would hate each other?

Facing Down the Royal British Navy

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction FridayLeave a comment

It’s been a little while since I shared a scene from Red’s Girl, so maybe it’s time to drop in on one of my favorite pirate captains.  You can click the category at right for past posts.

I’m going to pick up shortly after chapter two (posted here).  When last we left them, Red and Tam had just met, and Tam was helping Red escape from a lot of Navy soldiers who are searching the port for him.  This plan does not actually go all that well, as they end up on the same street as a few of those soldiers. 

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Tam’s Point of View

           “I hope you know a way off this street, kid,” Red said.  He didn’t sound worried, but he was walking faster.

            I struggled to bring my mental map of the town into focus.  It was fuzzier than I would have admitted to Red.  I had only lived here a month.  “Um, right.  Right at the next alley.”

            The soldiers noticed us—or they noticed Red.  I don’t think they cared about me.  I don’t know what made them notice him, if it was the vivid blue coat or the way he turned around so fast when he saw them.  Any case, they started following us and when Red picked up speed so did they—which makes it sound calmer than it was.  Everyone else on the street must have had an instinct that something was happening, because they were disappearing fast.

            We turned onto the alley I’d indicated, and came to an abrupt halt.

            “Left,” I said, staring at the solid wall cutting off this particular avenue of escape.  “I meant left at the next alley.”  Continue reading “Facing Down the Royal British Navy” →

Not Evangelina Angelica Juliana Lianora

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

A month or so ago I posted the first chapter of an incomplete novel, and got some really nice responses, in comments and elsewhere–which is lovely, but I feel sorry now that I can’t share the rest!  Drat that “incomplete” aspect of the thing, and the fact that I still don’t quite know what to do to keep the action going for a major chunk of the book.

But I thought I could at least give you chapter two, which explains who my main character is–rather than leaving you only knowing her as “Not Evangelina Angelica Juliana Lianora, princess of Beaumont.”  It doesn’t resolve everything–it is, after all, only chapter two of what would be a novel, if I could work some things out–but it answers some of the chief mysteries that chapter one presented.  I hope you enjoy!  And if I keep thinking about it, maybe I’ll figure out what to do to write the rest…

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Chapter Two: Maggie

            Her name was Maggie.  Not Evangelina Angelica Julianna Lianora, as she had told Michael, but just Maggie.  Marguerite, technically, but Maggie for day-to-day.

            Lina had always called her Maggie.  One would likely expect a princess to treat her maidservant with some degree of informality.  Maggie had always thought it was a mark in Lina’s favor that she was willing to be called by an informal name too—rather than Evangelina Angelica Julianna Lianora, which both girls agreed was simply too long to be convenient for regular use.  Besides, it was hard to be formal with someone who, on more than one occasion, you had gone splashing through mud puddles with in childhood.  Full names had been used (by Lina’s nurse and Maggie’s mother, which only added to one woman) after those occasions.

            By the time they were both nineteen, they were focused on more important matters than mud puddles.  Matters like Lina’s engagement to the King of Gaicaveen.  Continue reading “Not Evangelina Angelica Juliana Lianora” →