M Van Vleet @signalstation@wandering.shop

Since I don't enjoy coming up with titles, you'd think I'd be postponing this step and getting back to editing, but editing is intimidating and feels like work, whereas seeing how dumb I can make a title I'm never going to use is always fun.

All coffee'd up. Got music on. Scrivener is open. Now all I need to do to get editing is /anything else/ like typing in this box, or maybe vacuuming or maybe I should go run errands.

trying to save some time on this script by macro-ing the characters

GOOD COP:

BAD COP:

OK COP:

FORENSICS COP:

YET ANOTHER COP:

COP ON ANOTHER COP'S BACK, PART OF A SECOND LEVEL OF COPS JUST BELOW THE CEILING:

COPS CRASHING THROUGH 1-WAY GLASS, PUSHED BY CROWD OF ADD'L COPS BEHIND THEM, ALL TUMBLING:

A ROARING SEA OF COPS OUTSIDE TO THE HORIZON, SUNGLASSES GLINTING, EACH WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT WHERE YOU WERE ON THE DATE OF:

THE CHIEF:

Anyone here got much experience with how to turn collected micro-fiction into a pleasant reading experience, and not like reading a book of Bazooka Joe comics?

Fiction that works fine online, in context for short attention spans, just seems like thin gruel when lined up together... easily sped through.

My only thought at present is to combine pieces and insert artwork.

Editing prep: drank a lake of coffee, got Europeans playing retro-rock'n'roll in the headphones, pajama bottoms are go so we're not tempted to leave the house... all we have to do is fight our natural inclination to accomplish nothing.

Piece of cake. Let's pretend someone's waiting to read what we write.

Just got this month's Mr Guns subscription box: Three men's adventure novels every month!

This month includes:

The Meat Master: Spies of the Kremlin (vol. 8 of The BBQ Files) - The Meat Master meats(!) his match in Moscow's grilling underground!

Jake Stevens: SPY COLLECTOR! vol. 23 - Jake parachutes into Afghanistan to locate a Czech spy... mint on card!

The Demolitioner: Fists Over Tokyo - It's Slab vs Kenichi, fists versus feet, crime vs even more crime!

The entire world is haunted, actually. So crowded with former spirits that they can't move or speak, crammed like Tokyo commuters, dinosaurs crushed against homesteaders crushed against suicides crushed against skittering creatures that crawled in extinct seas.

The only ghosts we see are the jerks. The ones every other spirit gets as far away as they can from.

An exorcist with a burn book, reading "no one likes you" over and over again 'til the spirit flees.

me: Ah, time to check a few websites in bed, get ready to wind the day down before sleep.

my brain: It's been weeks since you worked on editing your most recent project. Have you given up? Is it because you don't think anyone would read it? Hey, are we done forever now? Just gonna coast on our existing mediocre accomplishments 'til death?

me: ... This is not winding down.

The first prisoner on a new planet.

Literally, we just wrote down some laws, and this jerk-boots went and broke one and now, when we should be rigging the terraforming loafs in sequence, we have to build a prison.

Space is at a premium, as are building materials, so we launched the prisoner into orbit. Their sentence ends when they survive re-entry.

An exciting jailbreak from above the clouds!

When this dame entered my office, I knew she was trouble. For one thing: she floated through the door. For the other: I had already been hired to solve her murder.

Based on a photo I already had of her, she had the kind of legs that wouldn't quit, but they must have changed their mind at some point and handed in their walking papers, because the spectral figure in front of me didn't have any getaway pegs danging from underneath her translucent form.

The 3 Meanest Things Critics Have Said About Kylie Jenner's $360 Makeup Brushes

1) "A makeup brush will never truly know love. Not in this broken-down world."

2) "In my dreams each night, I find myself in a throne room, adorned in gold, and a capering makeup brush dances for my amusement. Poorly. It reminds me of Kylie's.

3. "At the end of all things, when the last star cools, and everything is dust, at least I won't have spent a single moment of existence as a makeup brush."

Jobs are tight, so instead of paying for a neural network to come up with dumb names for mystery novels, I've done it myself. Work your own hustle, neural networks!

The Corpse in the Red
My Bullets Are Missing
Hangman's Delivery
The Case of the Case
Blonde Justice
The Case is for Judgement
Stop That Case!
Witness for the Dragon
My Gun Waits for the Case
The Talented Bones
Bullets Bullets Bullets: My Crime Struggle

On the more run down side of town, you can see delivery trucks dropping off smartdoors all the time. Lots of households order a door, but the freeware version only lets you lock your door for 30 days, and then it's time to have some other vendor drop by to install a new door and start the 30 day cycle all over again.

None of us have money to subscribe.

It's either that or you have to watch an ad to enter your house and no one's got time for that. Keep them free doors comin'.

#smallstories

Sure, there's "friends," but even better there's "people who instantly follow your new account on a new instance".