Hello! Hope you’ve all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year.

Mine was wonderful, filled with family time and seeing friends. Miss home already, but it’s nice to be back in France.

For the most part, this journal will be dedicated to those I critiqued for  The Spirit of Generosity and CRITmas.

PS, has anyone else noticed the totally awesome cool profile I decided to treat us to for Christmas?

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has released its first workshop on Kickstarting the imagination.

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Feel free to drop by and join in the fun!

Recent Commented/Critiqued Pieces

These writers all deserve a bit more recognition. Give them a read and perhaps even a watch!

B!TTtL... TFSoH, Chapter 1: Tum BalalaikaBehold! The Thesis to Life...
The Free Spirit of Hope
The Entire First Chapter -- TUM BALALAIKA
[New 2014 Edit]
Eidan James carefully folded his suicide note and placed it purposefully underneath the penultimate page of the ancient, loosely bound manuscript. He then opened the right hand drawer of the antiquated mahogany desk and placed the manuscript into the empty drawer, before closing it back firmly. Pausing momentarily to listen out for any sound that would betray a presence, he sighed softly. Then, pulling out his beloved music box from his badly re-sewn jacket pocket, he wound it up before setting it on the bookcase behind him. As it began to tinkle the nostalgic sound of Tum Balalaika, he held back his emotions and walked around to the other side of the desk. Looking straight ahead at the empty section of wall he had created, by removing his brother’s various awards for outstanding achievement and excellence. Without fail, the famil The ProductFinally, a man with a beige suit dared break the awkward silence. Capalbo’s eyes quickly fixed on him. He was in his forties, with sparse, but tidy blond hair, beady eyes, and a precisely calculated smirk on his face.
'I believe I have exactly what you need, Mr Capalbo.' He said in a calm, measured tone. A trace of exotic accent marked his speech. Capalbo guessed Eastern European.
'And you are…?'
'Oh, forgive me.' Beige suit apologised indifferently. 'Vladimir Marinov, from Bulgaria.' The other presenters coughed in attempt to cover their surprise and amusement, but Vladimir apparently ignored them completely.
'Our company hires only the best designers and psychologists. Our advertisements make the product wanted and needed by addressing the precise factors needed to make an impression. We believe in impact, Mr Capalbo, not flashiness.'
His words were followed by a gloating laughter that nobody even attempted to cover anymore. Some of the presenters snorted through tighten Luna Prime Chapter 1
Chapter 1
“Ninety seven, ninety eight, and ninety nine and...” 
“Madame, the guests have arrived and are awaiting your arrival.” Jonathan said in that controlled way butlers seemed to have about them. Jonathan had been a butler for the Commonwealth family for thirty years taking care of everyday affairs and making sure the estate was in tip top shape, so the family could do as they wished.
“Tell them I’ll be out in a minute Jonathan,” she replied as she continued to brush her silken black hair, “and… one hundred, there done.” As she looked at herself in the mirror admiring her figure. She wasn’t the curviest of the women at the party, but she was the leanest and with the legs of a model, she was going to flaunt them in her silken dress with its gold trimming and figure hugging cut. She smiled looking at her ass in the mirror as she walked out, “that’ll show ‘em.”
The party was just like any

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:thumb411947459: Hearing Half of a Conversation                    Forgive me for helping you understand
                    you’re not made of words alone.
                         —Roque Dalton; Clandestine Poems
I first learned how to build a house of playing cards in an adolescent psychiatric unit in suburban Chicago. A roommate taught me a trick, a mindset really, to have while placing the cards themselves— that a house of cards is always stacked against itself to stand. My trial-and-error attempts led to a lengthy row of playing cards

Just BugsIt thunders, the first time in his life. Lightning on repeat.
The people in the dustbowl town exit their households, eyes fixated starward, dry lips cracking and bloodying with their change in expression. The ground thirsts; it anticipates rainfall with the loving desire of a virgin.
The sky. Thick with clouds, black, a huge mass glowing with static and rolling, thunderous murmurs. He has not seen the like in his fifty years of religious servitude to the people; he remembers arriving at the town, twenty and verbose and Catholic, and the deterioration since then.  What air conditioning his shack of a house had once had is gone and he lives with dry sweat on his arm and parched dreams in his head.
There is collective shuffling of dried feet across the dirt, drone-people swarming towards the edge of town and further into the desert. Buzzing.
The priest rounds off the back of the crowd, grateful for the night. The heat is less violent.
The people collect, standing in the sunken area t Extinct Biology   The clinking of claws against tiled floor resounded throughout the room. Talking grew quieter as the clinking became louder. Dr. Barbank paused the lesson as eyes turned toward the door. Chirping, yelping and hissing was heard s the clink, clink, clink stopped for a moment. The students (college-aged) continued to stare at the classroom door. The clinking of claws returned as the noises subsided. Dr. Barbank, professor of Animal Development, took a deep, shaky breath as he tried to think of a quick solution. Something, human or not, was walking toward the room. From the noises produced, the thing sounded extremely dangerous.
    "Lock it," a student harshly whispered. "Lock the door, turn the light off and move everybody to the farthest corner of the room."
    The professor argued not a word as he commanded the occupants in the room. No later than the last person smashed against the wall, a long, reptilian snout appeared near the window. The :thumb416248532:

The BottleWhat happens if Alice finds out that she doesn’t have to fill the bottle to leave?
.
“What’s wrong?” Ace bent down next to Alice who sat on a log next to an open fire that Ace had set up for the night. He placed a hand on her shoulder, his eyes narrowing, watching every movement he could of the foreigner. A friendly smile sprouted on his lips when Alice looked over his direction. She smiled back.
“It’s nothing, Ace. I just...” She pondered her words for a moment. There was something mysteriously eerie about saying something about being lost to Ace that sent a shiver down her spine, even though she’d told him the same thing countless times already. Despite her initial doubt, she spoke the words, anyways. “I’m just a little lost is all.”
Ace fought the urge to laugh, to grab her and tease her about everything like he so wanted to. She was so like him yet completely different and didn’t even notice that it hurt :thumb421592606: :thumb420339335:

FFM1: Stale ChipsTim opened the door after a long, crummy day at work. Setting down his suitcase, he made a beeline for the single recliner in the living room—only to find that his obese, lazy sister had beaten him to it... For the third day in a row.
He glared at her, steely gazed. She slowly lifted herself off the couch and lumbered into the kitchen to start making dinner.
Tim grimaced as he sank into the armchair and immediately changed the channel from “Grey's Anatomy” to “CBS News.” He had taken her in out of pity, but she wasn't even trying to get employed somewhere like she promised. She just sat on her ass all day, eating all his food and watching soaps and medical shows. The only thing he could get her to do was to cook for them. Although she was good at that, he was still getting pretty frustrated fast at her unwillingness to do anything else.
He continued stewing as he reached into the nearby bag of tortilla chips, putting three or four into his mouth at :thumb363756086: :thumb328848014:

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Little White Flowers"Marty! Concentrate!"
He was day dreaming, again. Why couldn't Father understand that Math was boring, and all he wanted was to go out and play? He would have said this aloud, but last time Father had said that he wasn't learning enough, and had added another hour of literature every day. He looked at the problem again. It wasn't that hard when he put his mind to it, and it was the last lesson of the day anyway.
"Okay, you can go now, and tomorrow I want you to concentrate. And don't forget to go over the multiplication table tonight!"
Marty ran outside. He loved their isolated farm, the fresh air, the long stretches of grass that seemed like they went out forever. All that day he played in the meadow, conjuring imaginary friends of whom he was the king. He ventured farther than he had ever gone before, and finally, worn-out, he lay down on the grass between two oak trees.
As he rested, Marty noticed something odd in the way the little white flowers grew between the two trees. He had n Wingless Angel Stories: Wrath Of The ExcretonWingless Angel Stories: Wrath of the Excreton
Chapter 1
615 Waters Ave, Apt 4G
Doris DeSantos woke up to the smell of crap. No way did this stuff come from me, she thought. I will definitely make this guy pay extra! Well, if I can. He is a stingy SOB. She looked over at her john. The guy looked like he jumped in a river of excrement and crawled into bed afterward. The bedsheets were smeared with crap.
She checked out his face to see if he was still breathing. Probably not, his mouth was covered with feces. She got off the bed and crossed over to his stinking side of the bed. Damn, even his nose was clogged up. Maybe he has some extra money?
While Doris went through the fecal smelling apartment, she wondered why she was still alive. Heck, how come she did not see or hear anything? No time to think, grab the money, get dressed and leave.
A small creature watched from a shadowy corner in the garbage filled hall while a woman ran from the reeking apartment. It smiled a small malicious smil :thumb260416501:

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:thumb419884570: The Beard of intrigueHis beard was fascinating.
It was a loom, woven with intricate detail and so long it would put any wizard to shame. Each pattern in the coarse mound of hair seemed to share a secret. Perhaps they were memories- I’d heard others collect memories in such ways- etchings on their bodies, collecting objects and even journal writing. Maybe this man was his own journal.
The rest of him seemed positively ordinary. He rested in his chair in a blue business suit- albeit a little outdated for fashion, but suited the character I had begun to form in my head for him. His sorrowful eyes narrowed on a frustrated brow of greying features, illuminating a sense of tiredness. Perhaps the beard in all its might was weighting down. His skin was as rough as sandpaper, blotches and scars etching his hands and face with no revelation to the puzzle of his beard.
I wanted to move closer, debating whether it was rude to ask. The very notion excited me as I built up theories as to why his beard had the

Dishante PassBlack waves crashed and broke across the hull of the Zo’nix as it tore through the violent storm. The giant turbine-like engines allowed it to glide on the surface of the sea, but the waves grew higher and the fog grew thicker, making the voyage even more unpleasant than it already was. The crew had been searching the seas of Petr’a for almost a thousand years, trying to navigate an unnavigable ocean. Storms had always been present outside of the mainland on Petr’a, but this one blew the ship side to side sending cargo and the crew toppling about. There was something fierce and unrelenting about the rain as it pounded down on the deck, almost trying to force the ship into the depths to rest next to the others who failed in their journeys. Yet a burning desire, a voice, called out to Salem inside his head; he needed to get to that island.
“Captain!!” a dull scream made its way through the overpowering rain as a thin humanoid leaned out from the crow’s The Hartglade | ch 1My subconscious mind registered Parker’s eavesdropping eyes, but my hands were too enthralled with writing to stop him.  A minute later, my newest story was whisked away from my desk and Parker held it up to his eyes, announcing the words, as if he were a warlock casting a curse on me.
“People say the forest is in love with the moon.” Parker held the paper above his head, sneering as he read.
“Parker!”  I swiped at his shoulder and he stepped to the left.  In one quick swoop he leapt onto a wooden chair to escape my batting hands.  God damn jock.  
From the chair he read the next line of my story.  “Each evening, the forest waits for the moon to rise.”
“Asshole!”
“And each evening, when it does-” he paused and waved his hand, dramatically.  “The people say the forest changes.”  
With a smack, I landed a punch to his thigh.  Parker’s athletic balance to

Quote of the Week

“For last year's words belong to last year's language 
And next year's words await another voice.” 
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Pictures of the week

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