Challenge #01829-E005: Working Holiday — Steemit

Even divinities need a holiday. After inspiring dancers to do new and interesting things with their bodies, with their costumes, even with lighting and how they made the music they danced to - while they were dancing - even a divine force needed a breather.

But a goddess of dance must go where she is worshipped.

You could spot her if you tried. There’s just something more about the embodiment of a divinity. A glow. An imperceptible something-something that inspires everyone around them. Even on their day off. On a cruise ship. Late at night when everyone is inebriated enough to think that a conga line is a cool idea. The influence of Terpsichore is obvious. The conga line is not only in sync, but actually looks good.

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Challenge #01828-E004: A Little Inspired — Steemit

Gods cling to that which feeds them. What they are responsible for, especially the performative stuff, is also their meat and milk. Thus, you might expect Erato to gain the sickly pallor of the people one expects to find in seedy adult stores, as well as the general doughy body of the assumed clientele. Such is not the case. Erato is healthy, well-traveled, and very, very fit.

Why? Because erotica is not just dicks in the bathroom and skeevy people in trenchcoats with brown paper bags and oily complexions. Because erotica is an international art. Erotica is not just doughy men masturbating to breasts on their computers. It is reams of fanfiction in which true love is found and erections lasting longer than two hours are both possible and merited. It is art of lovingly rendered lovemaking between impossible creatures. It is even in cuddle-fic, where the protagonists do little more than soak in each other’s company in front of a fireplace. Cat optional.

It is for all these reasons that Erato is a very attractive being of indeterminate gender and nationality. They are approachable, amenable, and down for whatever. This has caused quite a lot of upset to anyone in their aura. But that doesn’t stop them noticing the little things. Like, for instance, this particular dick on the wall of a cubicle in the university that Abe ‘Bubba’ Jenkins is about to quit.

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Challenge #01827-E001: Speech of the Gods — Steemit

In the lack of belief, gods and demigods go to wherever their name is still spoken, written, or known. She was once such a demigod. The muse of music. She had had believers. She had had worship. Now… all she had left was her name. Calliope. And it was here that her name was given to a machine.

They counted the year as 1850. And in a steam workshop in Vermont, Alex Durry tooled around with his master’s equipment. Steam could work wonders in this world. It moved great loads. It saved lives. And, as he discovered by moving an organ pipe over a steam vent. The noise startled him, and almost made him dent the pipe. But it did give him an idea…

They had all the equipment they could need to make a prototype in this workshop… Alex got all the spare parts he could together on one workbench. Enough to demonstrate the principal. Mister Stoddard might even be pleased enough to let Alex keep the idea. But then again, that was a high hope. White folks didn’t like the idea of escaped former slaves inventing things[1]. Alex believed in Mr Stoddard, all the same. He was a good man, and had a head for useful inventions.

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My muses, my characters, and the workings of my butterfly mind…

I apparently have a poetry muse that only turns up at BF in the morning. If I’m asleep, I miss it.

This muse can also turn up when I’m rat-faced tired. Often, too tired to write anything down.

Same way my story muse tends to bug me when I’m driving the car. Dang muses. Always turning up at inopportune moments.

And then there’s my characters.

Argumentative bunch, the lot of them. Some get really pissy about what they’re doing. One even insists that I learn some more herbology than my usual “five seconds on google” that has covered my arse in the past.

I swear blind that common weeds have herbal applications, but I can NOT find anything anywhere that doesn’t focus exclusively in America. Y'know, because America is the only country that exists or is worth mentioning… [eyeroll]

Meanwhile, I get ten billion and one ideas on other subjects and the prize of being written goes to the plotbunny that chews the most painful part of my imagination in the most niggling way possible.

But, every once in a while, I run out of ideas on where to take everything. When that happens, I go over all my unfinished works [nineteen and counting…] and re-read them to lure a muse back and see where I’m going with it.

Sometimes, this works, and I make progress.

Sometimes, getting a sentence out and onto the page is like pulling teeth. Sometimes, it’s even harder.

On those days, I give up and go play some games.