Raven's View

Looking at the objectives met in the last few days would have to select mostly "Other" or "none of the above."  

But I did have a good time. I watched Quest For The Spear and Return to King Solomon's Mine - two Librarian Movies, made for TNT channel. Sort like Warehouse 13. Light and distracting. I also enjoyed a local band Saturday night - Rocket Rached and the Fat City 8 - and a local tavern, the Carleton. Very basic and down to earth place, described in one review as being like a Legion. Met two friends there, more showed up and we just kept adding on tables to one end until we had about 20 there. 

Sunday I dropped by the Tech Wall here in Ottawa - one of our few legal walls for graffiti art. Some friends were painting for Spenny of Kenny and Spenny it turned out. He's in town filming for a reality tv show, and wanted an edgy background I think. Had my friends add his portrait to the wall and then he posed with them. I talked to one of the staff after, chatted up mural work as community building tool in general - and specifically the work my friends do. I suggested some cash for paint and time would be nice - we'll see if he comes through. Posted some more photos here - which reminded me I have a lot for this same wall waiting to be edited and uploaded! 

Sunday was also the first chance for musicians at another local, Daniel O'Connell's, to sit around outside and play in the sun. Cool breeze, maybe only 10-12C, but nice in the sun. I joined them, took some photos, then as they played on I caught up on reading - my Grimm book I'd mentioned before, by Maria Tatar. Still very interesting, might end up buying a copy. Rebuilding my library.

A Travelling Tale

 This week's challenge from Terrible Minds was to write about Travel, as in a journey of some sort.  Moving from one place to another. Point A to Point B.

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I decided to talk about people moving from place to place, and also a bit of an internal journey. I re-used my Fairy Tale characters of course, as they are real keeners now. The ending might seem a little gory, but it actually was Red's idea, as was much of the story. She's really come out of her shell lately. 

Yes - that's with two "mm's". I did a Flash Fiction a while ago that was to start with the words Once Upon a Time. I had fun with this one, as I decided to tell it from the point of the view of the suggested characters - a witch, a wolf, a woodcutter. And tell it while they were in between stories, sort of in the style Jasper Fforde uses. The next challenge was to be fairy tale related also, so I used the same characters and concept. And have continued with that approach - four short stories so far, latest one being Doubt. Another one due tomorrow. 

All of which has given me an idea for doing a collection of these, based on the characters from some of the folk stories collected and edited by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Grimm's Fairy Tales actually started off as an attempt in the early 1800's to collect and document the oral folklore of the lower classes of Germany. The initial stories were quite earthy - the gossip and porn of the masses at times - so were gradually edited by the brothers as the audience of their book, Nursery and Household Tales,  changed from fellow scholarly researchers to parents reading their children to sleep. Parents who wanted an entertaining story, with a good lesson at the end, more violence (kids seem to love it) and definitley less talk about sex, pregnancies, and incest. 

As you may have guessed, I've been distracted by yet another sparkly thing - researching the stories collected by the Grimms. I'm reading a couple of related books - listed below - and developing my characters with each story. I'll eventually collect them all together I think, and edit the earlier ones to make them all link together better.

This is for Flash Fiction Friday - F3 - Cycle 76 - Doubt

Due 6am Thurs - gives us some late night time - 1200 words

Challenge is to write about doubt - in particular, the lack of it.

Cue: Write a story where your protagonist is mistaken about something they “know” to be true.

Doubt can be crippling, but nothing is more dangerous than someone who has absolutely none. It feels so good to be right, and we’re always right, aren’t we? How could we not be. We’re intelligent people. We don’t let our fears and past experiences cloud our judgment. Only other people do that. Right?

What I want you to do is explore the value of doubt. Someone in your story is wrong, but thinks he or she is right. It is easy to write a zealot; go a little deeper, find something you absolutely knew to be true, by gut feelings, that turned out to be wrong, or much more complicated than you imagined.

Of course I had to bring out my fairy tale characters. Last story we saw Red looking for a magic potion.