There are many advantages to living mostly inside one's own head.

So we've been in Southland a little over a month now.

It still doesn't feel like home, and it's a weird place at the best of times. Not to mention that it's one the best places I can think of to start a post-apocalyptic colony, if only because it's barely pre-apocalyptic in the first place. But we have Internet now, and (some) furniture and I'm veering wildly between days when I think 'this place is freakin' marvelous' and days when I would give a thousand dollars to be at home with my man on my sofa with my cats, in our old and drafty cottage somewhere south of Norfolk.

Climate-wise things are pretty much like England, maybe slightly better. But the sea out there stops when it reaches Antarctica, and there are fur seals and penguins and dolphins (OMG DOLPHINS) and different chocolate and slang words and beer and a disturbing number of tales of early settlers that died in even more disturbing ways. Kindle books are my saviour, and I'm reading a lot (Scalzi's Old Man's War series, Bujold's Vorkosigan saga and OMG Mirror Dance) but I've found a common theme that most of the stuff I'm reading is about characters dealing with change and loss, and moving on. In a funny way, fiction is, once again, helping me deal. Fiction, and the Cool Stuff I've found on the Internet. None of it by me, though I'm making some honest-to God attempts to write Bold and Brilliant Sun, my epic novel of procrastination. And I got some cool AO3 reviews for the Assassin stuff. I love AO3 reviews.

Anyway:

Kate Elliot on story openings. I like Elliot's blog posts more than her novels (with the exception of the Prince of Dogs) and this one is a gem.'The Information Business.'

Bioware According to Mom is back up in the usual place as Mom hacks her way through hordes of bad guys and emerges once again victorious.Saving couches everywhere from the scum of the universe. Mom, we salute you.

Ex Urbe's latest article in the Machiavelli series, Julius the 2nd, the Warrior Pope. I am interested to see what she makes of the new Pope. He can't be much worse than Borgia, anyway. 'Persuasive, Power-starved and Patient'

Marie Brennan's Natural History of Dragons which looks awesome but which isn't yet available on Kindle, worse luck. Buy it on Amazon here.

There's a release date for Scott Lynch's Republic of Thieves! I've been following Mr Lynch since his first novel came out and I'm really, really, excited for this one. Doubt he can invent a more extreme sport than shark-jumping though. Nice cover.

Also The Shattered Pillars by Elizabeth Bear is out soon. This series is awesome and it has pseudo-Assassins in, worse luck they're the bad guys. My mental version of Malik would feel extremely comfortable in this world.Link is to Bear's lj. Again, nice cover.

The three sentence ficathon over here is an amazing idea. I want to play!

And HOLY SHIT there is more Assassin's Creed and I haven't even got an Xbox let alone played AC3 yet!

Also WHY is there no good Miles Vorkosigan fanart on deviantart? The guy's amazing and he's the same height as me and quite frankly, short people rock. And they do it while consuming less resources than tall people.

three sentence stories: much harder than I'd thought.

 Mass Effect, Garrus + Ashley, distrust, prompt courtesy of wallwalker  

Ricochet.

Ashley Williams didn't trust aliens; and she never let Garrus get behind her.

Garrus's first bullet ricocheted from the shield of the geth in front of them, flew down the corridor over the turian's head and dropped the husk shambling up behind Williams in its tracks.

"Relax, Williams," he called, "If I wanted to shoot you, I would have done it by now."

Mass Effect, anyone, what happens now, from hot_tramp 

Crashlanding.

"What happens now?" asks EDI.

The Normandy is a scarred hulk in a shroud of smouldering tropical vegetation, and the universe is not as they once knew.   

"Whatever we want," Joker says, and takes her hand.

Game of Thrones, Jon Snow, I never knew my parents/I wonder which one has my eyes, from vialethe 

Promise (four lines, but I just couldn't get it any shorter)

Jon remembers the day Ned Stark left him on the cold fells with one last parting promise, "Next time we meet, lad, I'll tell you about your mother."

Now Ned Stark rots in King's Landing, and his bones have forgotten the promise they once made.

But Jon Snow's eyes are dark as tarns, and the Starks' eyes are pale like their wolves, so he searches everywhere he goes for a woman with the same dark eyes as him.

He never finds her.

***

This is fun! It's a bit like limbering up. for a run Bloody short punchy sentences, though. And there's a few good unclaimed prompts for a handful of fandoms-A Hundred Thousands Kingdoms, Sabriel, & co- I'd I really like to fill but can't, as it's too long since I read the books themseves to do them justice, and I still don't have my library.

BTW, I've suggested another prompt, 'Assassin's Creed, Malik, mapmakers don't travel'. Hopeful, since there's a load of AC prompts (all answered, worse luck) and if nobody answers it then I will bloody well have to write it myself. 

this is surprisingly addictive as it turns out

More three sentence stories

Any, Any, manic Mondays, for with_rainfall ,

Interview
 
"You rescued a krogan team from tunnels no human being has ever entered, saved the life of a rachni queen, and salvaged Reaper tech that may help us win this war. What sort of mission was this?"

Shepard grins, "Round here, we call it 'Monday.'"
 

 For hostilecrayon 's prompt Assassin's Creed, Desmond Miles, wanderlust.

Travelling Without Moving

Desmond has travelled many places in his mind, although his body has left America only once. He's probably the only person alive who remembers the stinging scent of Damascus steel as it quenches in a puff of steam, the rosy sheen of the Mona Lisa's freshly painted cheeks, and the exact lyrics of rowdy colonial marching songs.  

 

He stares at the lid of the latest Animus and wishes that he didn't always end up in the same place.
 

And a reply to my prompt, 'AC, Malik, mapmakers don't travel', by degrees 

"The quill scratches over the blank paper, copying thick and thin lines gleaned from his collection of maps, highlighting valleys and peaks of lands both distant and near. With a steady hand, he fills in the details a traveler would need to find his way, the black of the ink glistening in the lamplight. He has piles and piles of maps made the same way, maps of places that he'll never go except in his mind, of places that for him exist only in black and white."

Many thanks!