The Cricket Apocalypse

This is a modified snippet from the comedy-fantasy short story I wrote for my friend as a Christmas present. FYI, this takes place inside Braum's (an ice cream shop).

           The mouse-size cricket chirped as it washed its face. Then it raised its head, and fell silent. Suddenly it jumped up on the table, and people screamed when it dunked its face in the sundae.

            “It's eating ice cream!” Sasha said, putting her hands up to her head and stepping back. The woman in the track suit returned. “Oh, this is just bizarre!” she said. Suddenly, Sasha's hand slipped and gathunked into her head. She felt something hard and metallic in her grasp. There was more screaming behind her as she pulled her hand out of her head and wrestled a metal spoon from her hair. A broad grin spread across her face for a moment, but it slipped as she realized a spoon wouldn't do her much good. She stashed it and looked down at her body where the utensil had just been absorbed. Concentrating hard, she imagined her hand gathunking into her body and grabbing something more useful. She closed her eyes and reached in, and her hand closed around what felt like a knife handle. She opened her eyes and swung out with it, making the runner lady jump back.

            “Careful with that dagger!” she said.

            “Here goes nothing.” Sasha raised the knife over the cricket and took aim. In one swift slice and a crunch the cricket's head fell to the floor, still latched onto the ice cream. A couple drops splattered Sasha's new white TOMS.

            “You did it!” Danny said. “You figured out how to use your metal-absorbing superpower!”

            “That is so freaky,” Sasha said.

            “But awesome!” Danny said.

            “Bizarre!” said the runner lady.

            By now, several people had run out of the store screaming, several had called the police, and the rest were either watching in horrified fascination or complaining to Patrice, the manager on duty.

            “Oh, that's just bizarre!”

             Sasha barely heard Runner Lady's declaration. What she did hear was a strange clicking sound. One look at Danny's wide eyes staring behind her made her whirl around. A huge cat-sized cricket crouched on the table in front of cone line. It gave a chirp, and before Sasha could use the six-inch blade that was in her hand, it leaped to the ground and dug into both the peanut butter cup ice cream and the smaller cricket's head.

            “Ugh!” Danny said. He stood up in his seat and hopped over the table to the aisle. A strange noise came from the bug, and it slowly increased in decibels. It sounded like, “mmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMM! YUUMMM!” Then it lifted its shiny black ice cream-smeared face. “Heh! Yoo tink yoo so bigbig cause yoo kill bugbug?”

            “Ahhhhh!” Sasha and Danny both screamed and jumped back.

            “Look out, yoo hyoomans. He is coming. DESDEMONE is coming. He is big, and he is coming to get yoo.”  To Sasha's horror, it pointed two spindly antennae at her.

Merry Christmas!

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

  Well, I failed to wish my readers a merry Christmas this morning, but in my last two minutes...Merry Christmas!! Have a fun and safe time. Maybe use your extra time to write a poem about what Christmas is about or what it looks like.
   I don't have my story handy to update you on number of pages (for my goal project) but I did write a 14-page story for my friend at work! Here is one of the illustrations.

A Change in the Weather

 
 Winter arrived yesterday. As we get into December and start to feel a little more frigid, are you thinking about New Year's resolutions?
   In my Intro to Human Behavior class, our last project was to make two goals, one long term and one short term (3-6 months). Guess what I picked for short term? To write 100 pages of one story by May 2013! That might seem like a lot to some people, and to others it might seem like nothing. But it will definitely be something for me who has probably never written more than 25 pages of the same story. Especially recently my greatest obstacle to writing is...writing. Actually sitting and putting the words down.
   So help me keep my commitment and reach my goal! Once I decide which story to stick with, I'll start page number updates.

What are your short term goals?

*Free photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Lest We Forget

I have to add that in case you've forgotten, today is Pearl Harbor Day. We can remember in a lot of different ways. By reading the news, watching a movie, writing a poem, posting a status.

How do you remember on Pearl Harbor Day?

Book Review: "Code Name Verity"

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.   

--Ernest Hemingway   I've always thought this quote was about being a writer, but all of a sudden I wonder if maybe Hemmingway meant it about life? Anyhow, if it's about writing, I'm going to disagree, because there are writers like Elizabeth Wein (author of Code Name Verity). On Wednesday I said I'd post a review, so here it is!

   What I Thought: Chocolate is so good for comparisons. Code Name Verity is a dark chocolate book. With caramel and truffle. And nuts. It's so rich and full of gobsmacking surprises, relatable and strong and heroic characters, humor despite the circumstances, tons of conflict, and all those things that make a good novel. Elizabeth Wein is a master storyteller. There are so many different pieces to this jigsaw plot that all fit together perfectly in the end. Novels are about change, and I liked seeing the progression of Maddie and the narrator's friendship and how they see each other. History really "comes alive" in this book. I particularly liked learning about English and Scottish culture.

Me feeling small

   After reading CNV I felt very, very small, because you have to be some kind of genius to write such a very, very good book. What a life accomplishment! I wonder what that feels like to be the author? Even the "mistakes" were intentional. In the afterword Ms. Wein explained any historical inaccuracies and why  she chose to fudge a little on certain details. If you not only can recreate history but also can judge which parts you can manipulate (not because you're too lazy to get it right, but in order to get the best effect), I think you're about as close to a master as you can get.

Jargon: Because Maddie is a pilot, there are a lot of descriptions of plane-flying and a little bit of pilot jargon. Some people might dislike it for being too technical. I liked it because it made me feel smart. Or I just didn't notice because it's described so matter-of-factly and woven in so seamlessly.

Notes: I'm going to read it again now that I know the big secret and look for all the clues. Maybe this time I'll make notes of what I did and didn't like because anytime you look back at a good memory, you tend to forget the bad and see the good as better. Maybe I'll write out interview questions, too! It doesn't hurt to try...
(Random fact: for some reason almost the whole time I was reading, I imagined the narrator to look like Birdy, the English singer. The narrator would be furious, because she's Scottish, not English.)

  I hope this book wins a lot of prestigious awards. The least of which needs to be "most quotable book of the year."
  For any of you Bible-readers (other readers too, but this happens to me most with Bible verses), you know how sometimes there's a verse you want to find, and you remember that it was towards the bottom righthand corner of the left page around chapter five or six, so you fix yours eyes on that general area and flip-flip-flip until you see it? That's how I re-found the quote that I'm ending with. It tells exactly how I feel about a lot of stories and movies! The quote is by the narrator, who is a very well-read character and understands these kind of things.

"It's awful, telling it like this, isn't it? As though we didn't know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It's like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him." --Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein, page 174

*Free photos courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

"Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein

  I heard about Code Name Verity on the book blog called "Yearning to Read," which is on my bloglist. The review said it was good, but I wasn't expecting that much. Then I read it...and, it was pretty intense. I've spent hours figuring out how to do this review (then writing and editing it) and I finally decided. In this post I'll introduce the book, and in the next one, I'll tell you what I thought about it.

   Genre: A review somewhere called Code Name Verity a "spy thriller," and yes, it's definitely thrilling to read, and it is about spies, but that label cheapens it. I would just call it "historical fiction."

One of the planes Maddie flies

   The Barest Details: This book is hard to summarize because most details about the plot are also huge spoilers. I want you to be surprised! So I'll just give you the barest details. If you want a more comprehensive review and don't mind spoilers, Google the title.

   Code Name Verity is  about two girls, Maddie and the narrator, who both use their special skills to help the war effort. It takes place in England, Scotland, and France during World War II. The narrator writes from her prison cell, recounting for her Nazi captors how she got from her homeland of Scotland to where she is now. Maddie is a pilot, and the narrator is a radio operator.

Here is the book trailer: Code Name Verity
Before you read CNV, it would be helpful to know the song "The Last Time I Saw Paris" .

Rating: 16+ (I'm stricter than "Yearning to Read")

*Free photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net