9 Comments

Can I dictate in the Iron Author? With an audience? Please, pretty please?

(Dictating is the easy part for me. The trick is getting an audience to tune in for that long. I need about 50 hours for a novel.)

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KITTEHS!!!

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Mar 30, 2023Liked by Sarah A. Hoyt

Adorable kittens, and Pol has already mastered the skills of my Jack and Rosie

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This is why I like to read your blogs and newsletters-- YOU BREAK the RULES. :)

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Here's my submission! ;)

The sound of my sneeze echoed through the banquet hall, rebounding in explosive waves for three full seconds. Blasted fleas. I wrestled with myself, trying not to wipe my eyes, sniffle, or reach for a handkerchief. My plaid umbrella did a great job of keeping me hidden in what passed for a floral arrangement on this planet, but stealth always depends on noise discipline as well. My cover was about to be blown. OF COURSE my daughter’s tortoiseshell Manx would find its way into the royal banquet. OF COURSE he had ripped off his flea collar weeks ago and nobody had told me. OF COURSE he had contracted a flea infestation that made my allergies go nuts. OF COURSE my daughter had been playing in the garage with him and left the door to my interstellar transport open. And OF COURSE the cat had decided to take a nap under the seat of the Toyota.

The clicks and whistles of conversation had passed into silence the instant my sneeze had rocketed through the chamber. Eyestalks turned this way and that, searching for the source of the minor explosion. Since humans weren’t bioluminescent in the infrared spectrum, I was safe for now, but this couldn’t last long. And if the royal guards discovered what amounted to a large bipedal shadow wandering about the Sovereign’s country estate trying to catch a small quadrupedal shadow, things were going to get very complicated, indeed. Was the umbrella really necessary? Maybe not, but since the Telorfians believed in Beings of Light and Beings of Darkness, it was probably wise to break up my profile inside this three meter wide flowerpot.

“Scruffy, I am going to KILL you.” I muttered my new mantra through gritted teeth for the twentieth time as the conversation in the room appeared to have resumed. I finally spotted Scruffy. There she was, half a meter away, in this very same flowerpot. Her feet were bunched under her, ready to spring, her stump of a tail twitching, hindquarters shifting back and forth. Her ears were up and forward, and here eyes were no doubt wide as she focused on the Queen’s twitching eyestalks a couple of meters ahead of her. This was NOT GOOD.

“Scruffy, come HERE!” Our observation mission briefs had informed me that the Telorfian hearing register was much higher than ours, so speaking in a low voice wouldn’t immediately betray my position. That said, my sneeze had been the equivalent of loudly breaking wind in the middle of a nearly silent church. The plant life here would be a mixture of light and dark in infrared (which technically made plants a balanced mix of Light and Darkness, or neutral beings), so Scruffy was easily obscured from the Telorfians in the foliage.

The pounce was imminent. There had been a thousand year war fought on this planet to eradicate the Beings of Darkness. When Scruffy went for the Queen’s eyestalks, it would be seen as the Second Coming of Shaitan. Religious fervor would reach a boiling point, political systems would break down, and people would take to the streets in a frenzy of madness and bloodlust. That bit from the old movie we watched in my Sociological History of Earth class in college suddenly popped into my head: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!” Funny, the things that come into your head when you’re about to plunge an entire civilization into an existential crisis. I was just glad I had my other two umbrellas positioned within easy reach. Because it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a cloudburst and the sulfuric acid rain started coming down as I made my way back to the Toyota. They would provide me about ten minutes’ protection each before getting soaked and starting to break down.

I was going to spend the next two weeks filling out reports about this.

I hate Mondays.

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I did not know this was something I wanted to participate in until you just now posted it! Even if no one else reads mine!

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When the archeologists of the future look upon the smoking rubble that was once the internet...

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Oooo, oooo! I wanna play Iron Author, the Postcard Microfiction Edition!

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