Despite pulling the prompts for my patrons at the beginning of the month, other responsibilities leached my time away from my writing endeavors. Thankfully, I have a stubborn streak a mile long and I was not about to let a month go by without crafting the exclusive stories for my patrons. So early last week, I buckled down and started fleshing out the stories. Fortunately, when I pulled the poll, I planted a few seeds and so I had the skeletons of a handful of stories. Up first was the crime caper and a direct follow up from Misdirect...

With Misdirect and Drifting Earwig finished, and the month rapidly coming to a close, I turned my attention to the last piece of flash fiction for my patrons. While I’m not entirely comfortable with Romantic Comedies, I was eager to stretch my skills. Despite having watched several RomComs with friends and family over the years, it was difficult coming up with the initial storyline for my patrons. So, I rushed to my catalogue of NYC Midnight’s prompts and plucked a random one from the depths. After spending some time thinking about the elements, the seed of a storyline geminated within my mind...

Moments after completing Misdirect, my mind picked up the draft for July’s Ghost Story. While there was a little dust on the mental copy of the tale, I quickly dusted it off and dove into the last phase of editing the latest tale of Benjamin and his living partner. When I first sat down to flesh out the story, I wanted Benjamin to chase down the man he’s convinced killed him. Despite the sudden emergence of the fuzzy memory, the shade’s partner tried to keep him from storming off into the city...

While I love that my mind drifts from topic to topic, sometimes it prevents me from focusing on the task at hand. A little while back, I stumbled onto a YouTube channel that captured my imagination, Skill Tree. I don’t remember what the first video I saw first, but I eventually fell into his leatherworking videos, and it didn’t take long for me to dabble in the craft myself. Unfortunately, that desire stole time away from my writing, which left my flash fiction for July lingering like dust in the wind. While I’m certain that I’ll publish the stories to my patrons, it’s unfortunate that they’re bunched into the final three days of the month...

Despite my frustration when I was a child, I’m glad that my parents kept me busy every second of the day with countless events and activities. One of the more pivotal groups they put me into was the Boy Scouts. Unlike every other troop that sold popcorn to fund their activities, my troop sold Christmas Trees. We never We were so successful, that we never had to do anything else. Of course, as a kid, I didn’t really understand the importance of the event. All I cared about was the yearly ski trip...

While I cannot remember the first time I played poker, I have some vivid memories circling around those crowded tables. One such memory took place during a tournament at an old Hard Rock Cafe. As the evening wore on, I kept moving from table to table, adding chips to my growing stack. Unfortunately, I don’t remember if I won the night, or simply took second place. Either way, the core of the memory took place earlier in the night and centered on eliminating someone from the tournament...

When I sat down to write this nano drama, I stared at the action in the prompt. As the seconds ticked away, a distant memory thundered through my mind. Since I was a middle child, there were times my older siblings had to keep tabs on me. Looking back at those times, I can appreciate how much trouble I caused them. One particularly stressful occasion happened during my brother’s watch and dealt with a roll of tape. While I’ll keep the details of that escapade to myself, it sparked the basis of the narrative...

As Daniel sauntered past the pile of crates, he snatched the lone pad sitting atop the stack. Once the screen flared to life, he thumbed through the files. Halfway through the documents, his head fell to his shoulder as he lifted the top from the nearest box. With a sigh, the captain turned toward the massive fellow and poked him with the tablet’s edge. “Robert, is everything on this manifest packed into those containers?”

Laughter bubbled out of Robert and his crew as the jolly mountain thumped the metallic mound with his palm. “Nothing on that list is large enough to require an inordinate number of boxes.”

As the mirth filled the air, a streak of white raced across the night’s sky. Daniel touched his ear while tapping the pile. “Let’s grab the goods and get them loaded into the ship.”..

Just before Independence Day, I sat down in front of my laptop and poked through a collection of past prompts from NYC Midnight. After a few minutes of deliberation, I selected the genres for July’s Micro Fiction. Ultimately, I leaned into a random number generator for the selection, and up first was a Comedy. However, with my recent work with Crime Capers, blending the two was an easy decision. However, when the prompt called for centering on massaging, I didn’t know what to do at first...

After confirming the results from Tarian’s logs, Jarvis waited for the dwarves to return. When the stout warriors returned, the party’s leader instructed most his dwarves to remain while he led Jarvis into the woods. With a brief back and forth, the dwarf agreed to let a handful of Jarvis’s crew to join him...

With Friendly Banter and Reunion written, I turned my attention to my patron’s last story for June, a mystery. Thankfully, I’ve developed a couple of characters that are perfect for helming this tale. Unfortunately, the only difficulty is how much I love both detectives. That love makes it all too hard to choose which one over the other. This month, my earlier stories simplified my decision with the interaction between Jessica and Kyle in Friendly Banter. I couldn’t leave Kyle being shown up by my master thief...

While June was rapidly ticking away, I stared at my second prompt for the month and nothing was springing to mind. Thankfully, with a moment of clarity, my mind snatched onto a bit of world building I did for a story that spawned from a piece of art I stumbled onto over on Facebook. I created a wonderful character for Siphoning the Stone and while I didn’t mention her lineage in the tale, I always wanted to connect her with another character, Leodor from Darren Gilbert: Journeys...

The summers of my youth consisted of lots of swimming. Unfortunately, all that swimming was for the local swim team, and I was very much in the middle of the pack. Despite that, I remember pushing myself so I could be a member of the first relay team. Towards the end of my time on the team, I finally achieved that goal. Even though my place on the first relay team didn’t last long, the fact that I reached that level meant a lot...

According to the plans I’ve devised, I should have finished this draft earlier in the month. However, after running around completing so many things that have vied for my attention, I returned to the story of Jarvis and his crew. During a brief lull in the siege between the never-ending horde and the crew of the Discovery, Jarvis seeks confirmation of certain claims from Tarian’s logs. Despite trusting the leader of the previous expedition, Jarvis is unwilling to spread the information about his crew without independently having key members of his team confirm the troubling truth...

From the moment I pulled this month’s Genre poll, I knew I wanted to have Jessica cross paths with Kyle Rickman. While these two briefly met in Knight’s Dual, they didn’t really interact. With that deficiency in mind and the fact that I’ve created characters perfectly opposed to each other, I knew they would eventually have to interact. As a result, I was eager to craft their true meeting. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the best way to narrate it...